An intriguing article here about the use of new growth-attenuation treatments to enable easier care of disabled children. It’s not exactly James Patrick Kelly’s “Mr. Boy,” but perhaps a small step in that direction…

The current web2.0 bubble has introduced the world to a new crop of comparatively young millionaires who have climbed the ladder using their innovation and 1337 programming skills. This trend towards youth in the industry seems to be accelerating, if Mateusz Rajca is anything to go by – Mateus has nearly completed coding his own web browser (AuroraBrowser) from scratch, which is pretty good going for a twelve year old. He needs some beta testers, if you’re up for it.

Strange things are afoot at the US/Mexican border, largely involving cameras. A pilot project by Boeing seeks to avoid the erection of an actual fence in Tucson by using remote surveillance technologies, while an assortment of more grass-roots projects seek to crowdsource border guards by making video footage available on the internet in real time to would-be immigration vigilantes. Whether these initiatives will be sufficient to deter or catch those determined enough to take the risk in the first place remains to be seen – economic incentives might be more effective with a similar expenditure.

No, not Cletus (warning: big Flash site, arbitrarily gratuitous pop culture reference) but the real deal. A substance called Belousov-Zhabotinsky gels, which undulate in the presence of the right kind of catalyst, have been modeled theoretically, making it easier to build devices built around the gels.

Improving the environment is best achieved by raising awareness. Here’s a campaign that is sure to raise more that just awareness, though – Japanese undergarment manufacturer Triumph Lingerie have unveiled the ‘No! Shopping Bag Bra’, which (as the name almost suggests) is a bra made from recycled plastic bottles that converts into a stylish shopping bag accessory. Designed to promote a new recycling law, one assumes that very few of these garments will actually be used for their designed purpose – although the thought of a long queue of pretty Japanese girls struggling to take of their bras before they reach the supermarket checkout probably has a lot of retail workers in ebullient pro-recycling frames of mind.