Space tourism tickets are pretty pricey – partly because you’re not just paying for the flight itself, but a whole bunch of extras too. Wired reports that the first hundred people scheduled to head into sub-orbital space on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo are heading to Philadelphia for preliminary training sessions in centrifuges to get them accustomed to the G-forces of launch and reentry. I am insanely jealous.
Monthly Archives: September 2007
Fighting fire with fire – using phage viruses to defeat bacterial infections
It sounds like a crazy idea – but then that’s what they said about penicillin. Scientists from the UK are planning to use a close relative of the E. coli virus as a ‘targeted antibacterial agent’ to combat increasingly drug-resistant bacterial infections like the infamous MRSA. I’m sure they know what they’re doing … but I’m guessing doctors will want to keep fairly quiet on the antibiotic’s origins at first. [Image by Justin Baeder]
An electronic nose to sniff out explosives
The mammalian nose is a powerful and sensitive organ – just ask your dog. That’s why an Israeli company have decided to mimic the olfactory organ in an ‘electronic nose’ that can be used to detect trace amounts of explosive materials, among other things. Yet another device for the street to find a use for …[Engadget]