Codename: Roadrunner

An American military supercomputer, assembled from components originally designed for video game machines, has reached a long-sought-after computing milestone by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. The new machine is more than twice as fast as the previous fastest supercomputer, the I.B.M. BlueGene/L, which is based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The new $133 million supercomputer, called Roadrunner in a reference to the state bird of New Mexico, was devised and built by engineers and scientists at I.B.M. and Los Alamos National Laboratory, based in Los Alamos, N.M. It will be used principally to solve classified military problems to ensure that the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age. The Roadrunner will simulate the behavior of the weapons in the first fraction of a second during an explosion. To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D’Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that, "If all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day."

Trouble Deciding?

Yeah right, just the kind of invention humankind need at this crucial period where the question on everyone's mind is... Which is the lesser evil? The Devil you know or The Devil you don't, or The Devil you don't want, and don't care to know? Chen Shui-bian, or Ma Ying-jeou? Barack Obama, or Hilary Clinton? Fret not. Need help making simple decisions? The Instant Feeling concept may just be the ticket. Simply rip off each petal one by one muttering you indecisiveness and let the last petal standing be your answer. It’s supposed to stimulate a person’s sensitivity with an unorthodox reaction because each petal bursts into flames after pulling it out. A reminder that once a decision is made, there’s no going back. Via yankodesign.

The Ultimate Workstation

Bar none, the ultimate workstation. But probably you will get to sleep before anything else.

Thus Antichrist Was Born

Just so you know the source of inspiration of my version of Antichrist... Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs. The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer. Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus. He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep. The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant. "We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,' said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow. "We would isolate the stem cells from them, inject them into the peritoneum of these animals and then these cells would get distributed throughout the metabolic system into the circulatory system of all the organs in the body. The two ounces of stem cell or bone marrow cell we get would provide enough stem cells to do about ten foetuses. So you don't just have one organ for transplant purposes, you have many available in case the first one fails." At present 7,168 patients are waiting for an organ transplant in Britain alone, and two thirds of them are expected to die before an organ becomes available.

Bird-Brain Breakthrough

No, I don't mean the obscure weirdo New Mutant character... Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday. Scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology said ther electrodes could command them to fly right or left or up or down, Xinhua news agency said. "The implants stimulate different areas of the pigeon's brain according to signals sent by the scientists via computer, and force the bird to comply with their commands," Xinhua said. "It's the first such successful experiment on a pigeon in the world," Xinhua quoted the centre's chief scientist, Su Xuecheng, as saying. Seriously, what is this great scientific breakthrough for? Not to mention its blatantly obvious brutality? Soldiers for the impending Bird Flu Apocalypse? Or probably air strikes as such?

R7

This ridable robot called R7 was developed by Korean company Robo3, which makes several other robotic contraptions including a robot bar-tender and a dinosaur. The R7 will set you back a cool $5,250.

Tank Bike

The Hyanide off-road concept vehicle is a concept vehicle dreamt up by two German designers, Oliver Keller and Tillman Schlootz, for the 2006 Michelin Challenge Design competition. And it has to be one of the coolest-looking vehicles ever. It runs on a single flexible caterpillar tread made from 77 separate segments. This is to allow its track to bend so as the rider steers around corners. To steer you'd have to move the handlebars into the turn but also pushing back with the foot on the opposite side - bending the vehicle's whole body for a smooth manoeuvre.

Out-Of-This-World Sex : The Bane Of Future Space Missions

Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars and should therefore be studied by NASA, warns a top-level panel of US researchers. NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2018 and later on to Mars. But a round-trip mission to the Red Planet would probably last at least 30 months and carry six to eight people. That would be a hotbed for intense crew relationships, says a report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). "With the prospect of a very long-term mission, it's hard to ignore the question of sexuality," says Lawrence Palinkas, a medical anthropologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, an author of the report. It reviewed NASA's plans for research to keep astronauts safe and healthy in space – but the plans make no mention of sexual issues in spaceflight. "Breakups can lead to violence and all kinds of things," agrees Carol Rinkleib Ellison, a psychologist specialising in sexuality and intimacy based in Oakland, California, US, who was not part of the NAS panel. "People are very primitive in their emotions around partnering and sex." Sexual harassment may also endanger a mission. In an 8-month space station simulation on Earth in 2000, a Russian man twice tried to kiss a Canadian woman researcher just after two other Russians had gotten into a bloody brawl. As a result, locks were installed between the Russian and international crews' compartments. Palinkas says such problems may be minimised by training astronauts ahead of time in how to deal with stressful situations or by having them speak with psychologists on the ground in group therapy sessions. "You'd deal with it basically the same way you would with any potential crew tension and conflict," he says. But he says sex may also benefit missions by creating "a sense of stability or normalisation". Ellison agrees, saying sex or masturbation could help alleviate boredom and anxiety on the long, lonely journeys through space. "It could help or hinder, depending on how many people you've got, their relationship, and what it means to them," she told New Scientist. Well, at least China can send some Shaolin Monks for space missions.

Ghost In The Shell?

Repliee Q1 (at left in both pictures) appeared yesterday at the 2005 World Expo in Japan, where she gestured, blinked, spoke, and even appeared to breathe. Shown with co-creator Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University, the android is partially covered in skinlike silicone. Q1 is powered by a nearby air compressor, and has 31 points of articulation in its upper body. Internal sensors allow the android to react "naturally." It can block an attempted slap, for example. But it's the little, "unconscious" movements that give the robot its eerie verisimilitude: the slight flutter of the eyelids, the subtle rising and falling of the chest, the constant, nearly imperceptible shifting so familiar to humans... ..."When a robot looks too much like the real thing, it's creepy," Hiroshi told the Associated Press. The future is here. I knew it. They gonna do it one day. An actual robot that breathes, talk and move like a real human does. (Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean.) Just so that we can wax lyrical all day long about the philosophy of the existential theories of the soul, Ghost In The Shell style.