Even those who advocate nuclear power will admit there are problems with its current incarnation – the spectre of waste that stays lethal for thousands of years being one of them. But alternatives may be available. Using the plentiful element thorium as a nuclear fuel would produce waste that decays much more quickly, and as an added bonus it’s no good for producing weapons-grade material.

NASA are providing podcast updates and streaming videos in the run-up to the next Space Shuttle launch; to access them, the place to look is here. In light of the concerns of their engineers about the frost shields, I hope with all my heart that we get to watch a perfect lift-off and a successful mission.

Every now and again, a simple application of modern technology is announced that could really make a difference to the lives of those who most need it; the poor and dispossessed, the ecologically and economically abandoned. Provided it can filter microbes as well as dirt and impurities, this filtering water bottle could be a potential lifesaver for the third world.

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York has recently deployed a system for integrating real-time patient data and displaying it on flat panel displays for instant evaluation. The linked article is more of a press release than a detailed description of the system, but it’s worth reading as a teaser of things to come.

Anatoli Bogdan, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, has published a paper that suggests that under the right conditions, water can be frozen and reheated without causing the formation of ice crystals. If true, it suggests that larger scale cellular structures have a better chance of surviving supercooling and reheating.