[Better Humans]
A type of hereditary deafness has been cured in mice by silencing a gene that causes hearing loss. Researchers from the University of Iowa and Okayama University in Japan say the study is a proof-of-principle experiment that may point the way to new deafness treatments in humans.

[The Engineer Online]
Students in the Chemical Engineering Department at Loughborough University in the UK have developed a completely synthetic alternative to blood that could be used for transfusion purposes. The product is compatible with all blood groups, is stable for several months at room temperature and remains completely sterile.

[Download Squad]
Microsoft takes the next step with DRM, implementing their Windows Genuine Advantage program. The WGA software will automatically scan your hard drive and if you're running a bootleg copy of Windows, you won't be able to install updates (other than security updates).

[BBC News]
Makes one wonder what and how much else the brain "routes around"...

[ideasling.com]
Ideas and innovations offered into the public domain.

[University of Manchester]
A team of British and Russian scientists have discovered a whole family of previously unknown materials, which are one atom thick and exhibit properties which scientists had never thought possible. Not only are they ultra-thin, but depending on circumstances they can also be ultra-strong, highly-insulating or highly-conductive, offering a wide range of unique properties for engineers and designers to choose from.

[Guardian Unlimited]
An ecosystem undamaged is very, very resilient, and the more simplified it gets, the less resilient. Globally, what we are doing is simplifying them all, simultaneously, which is a very dangerous large-scale experiment.

[Discover Magazine]
Digital cameras and photoblogs: the new eidetic memory?

[The Times Online]
An explanation of why race-based medicine is a simplistic and misguided approach.

[NASA]
Collection of Deep Impact comet-busting photos.

[The New Atlantis]
Why we are failing in teaching and textbooks: Paradoxically, we have here the worst of both worlds: an anti-elitist rhetoric that discredits the higher human possibilities, the very possibilities by which the author orients his own life as a scientist, together with a more substantive elitism that views students from so far above that it can’t be bothered to cultivate in them those same human possibilities.

[Science Magazine]
Science Magazine asks scientists to pose 125 big questions in science that we don't have answers to today but which might be answered over the next 25 years.