Killing tumours is a risky business; current methods like chemotherapy are very hard to target, leaving the patient exposed to risky and unpleasant side-effects. What is needed is a good accurate delivery system that gets the medicine to the relevent position effectively. Fortunately, University at Buffalo researchers have demonstrated a way of using magnetic fields to guide drug-loaded ‘nanocarriers’ to a tumour site before they unleash their payload. This could mean a lot less suffering for cancer patients in the future.

Satellite imagery has just gained a whole new dimension, literally. NASA’s new CloudSat is sending back its first images, which aren’t just normal pictures but three dimensional profiles of cloud formations. These radar images should supply us with new data that will increase our understanding of weather, and consequently the environment in general – which, at the moment, can only be a good thing.

After years of research and experimentation, scientists can finally grow diamonds that are the same (or better) quality as the ones that come from mines. Bad news for De Beers perhaps, but not for the electronics world – diamonds grown like this could be used as a semiconductor alternative to silicon. The repercussions on the next few decades of Moore’s Law are potentially huge, as Brian Wang points out.

Mike Kuniavsky (he of the magic wand) has put together a bibliography of the use of magic as a metaphor for interacting with electronic devices.

Alloy is an application that tests software at the design stage, where the kinds of problems that ruin an application can appear. It’s not a trivial problem; an application of moderate complexity can have a near-infinite number of possible states.