The beleagured space telescope we all know and love has suffered another failure of its main camera, the second such fault this year. The other instruments are working fine, and are shouldering the workload as best they can, but Hubble needs some serious repair work to extend its working life. NASA still won’t commit to doing a maintenance visit, however, which may mean we have to wait for the James Webb telescope to replace it, set to be launched in 2011.

Seems we are seeing the emergence of the exoskeleton from the pages of science fiction into the ‘real’ world. We’ve already had people carrying paraplegics up mountains with the assistance of a robotic power-suit – now we see a system designed to help stroke victims retrain their limbs to perform their proper functions. The suit mimics the motions of a working limb onto the paralysed one, aiding the reacquisition of muscle tone and mobility.

Move over obesity, there’s a new epidemic in town – metabolic syndrome. Actually, obesity is a component of metabolic syndrome, which is a catch-all term created to describe the wave of health problems that are connected to diet and its effect on the human body. But is it really a disease per se, or merely a convenient label that the pahrmacology industry can use to shift product? Wired has an extensive article on this issue that covers both sides of the argument.

Electric-powered transport is in increasing demand, but as with all electrical devices battery life is still a serious issue. A company called EEStor claims to have cracked the problem with its ‘Ultracapacitor’ storage banks, which it claims will be possible to charge fully in a matter of minutes, as well as possessing other advantages over chemical batteries such as a longer working life.

Urban real estate is always in short supply, and where there’s scarcity there’s money to be made. The LoftCube is a modular penthouse apartment designed to be helicoptered in to those last bastions of available urban space – the rooftops. One assumes, once all the rooftops are covered with LoftCubes, they’ll bring out a LoftCube designed to fit on the roof of another LoftCube…