Medical science is still a fair distance away from being able to simply grow replacement organs for patients in need of transplants, notwithstanding recent hyperbolic headlines. What can be done is to use cells from donor kidneys to grow more of themselves for use in ‘renal assist devices’ – special filter tubes used in dialysis machines that extend the life expectancy of renal failure patients by mimicking the processes of a real kidney more closely. The only problem is scaling up the technology to meet the potential demand while staying within FDA regulations.

Lunar missions take a lot of planning – there are a lot of eventualities to take into consideration. One such complication is the fact that the mass (and therefore the gravitational field) of the Moon isn’t distributed evenly. Rather than being a uniform density all across, our nearest neighbour is loaded with mass concentrations (aka ‘mascons’) – big lumps of matter that are significantly heavier than their surroundings, whose distortions of the gravitational field mean that low orbiting satellites can easily be pulled to their doom.

While the open source business model is in many ways an admirable thing, it might be possible to become a little too enamoured of it. This may well be what has happened with the founder of OpenHuman, who suggests that we all go public with the source code of our lives and bodies – his argument is that, thanks to Google, social networking and everything else, trying to maintain your privacy is a futile struggle anyway. For those who recoil at the notion of baring their entire existence online, lest it be spotted by a prospective employer, the services of new start-up ReputationDefender may be just the ticket.

Hard times in Hollywood mean smaller salaries for stars and writers alike as the industry struggles to keep its head above water. The studios may well be keeping a close eye on the Machinima Work Group (and others like them), who are using the 3D engines of virtual worlds like Second Life to create a new breed of cinematic art where the only budget restraint is that of man-hours. And not a moment too soon either, as we hear reports that Second Life is about to become host to another iteration of the inexplicably popular Big Brother franchise – it may be a brilliant PR move, but that’s a big dent in SL’s cultural kudos from where I’m sitting.

Say what you like about DARPA, but sometimes the projects they drop for lack of funding end up proving to be extremely beneficial for everyone, not just the US military. Point in case – the Walrus, from Aeros Aeronautical Systems. The Walrus is a prototype huge rigid-hull airship that was originally designed for shifting whole divisions of military units as a group, but it’s now being considered as a potential revolution for the cargo industry – it could open up land-locked nations to bulk trade and free roads from lorry-loads of building materials headed for urban areas.