August 30, 2002 - The Next Great Leap Forward... China Readies Shenzhou 4 - By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer, As China prepares to launch its fourth unpiloted Shenzhou spacecraft, Western observers continue to speculate about the timing, mission parameters and the crew make-up of that country's first ever manned space mission scheduled for next year. It is currently believed that a dozen or more Shenzhou pilots are undergoing extensive training and evaluation. While still guarded in discussing details, Chinese space authorities are clearly laying out an extensive campaign of human space exploits, including the creation of a space station...

 August 07, 2002 - Germinal choice - A “Nobel Prize sperm bank” donor finally finds his daughter, By David Plotz, SLATE.COM, In February 2001, Slate launched “Seed,” a three-month series about the Repository for Germinal Choice, the “Nobel Prize” sperm bank that was started by California industrialist Robert Graham in 1980 and closed in 1999. Slate searched for the 200-odd children conceived through the “genius sperm bank,” their parents, and the men who donated the sperm for them...

 August 07, 2002 - Hunger hormone may fight obesity - MSNBC, A natural hormone that curbs hunger and makes people feel full could help rescue us from our supersized appetites and stem the growing obesity epidemic, scientists say. August 7 — Scientists have discovered the hormone that tells the brain your stomach is full. As NBC’s Robert Bazell reports, they’ve turned it into a possible drug. IN A SMALL EXPERIMENT in London, people who were given the so-called “third helping hormone” before chowing down at a buffet lunch reduced the amount of food they ate by one-third. The hormone infusion was “sort of a fake meal,” said the study’s senior author, Steven Bloom of the Imperial College of London. “The brain was fooled into thinking that it had already eaten.” ...

August 28, 2002 - Space Station Supernova - NASA, Next week, sky watchers in many US cities can see the space station materialize like a supernova in the early morning sky before sunrise. The International Space Station (ISS) had just swung around the night side of Earth when astronaut Peggy Whitson looked out the window. The planet below was dark, but Earth's limb was glowing. "It was a thin, bright band of light--at first a deep royal blue, followed by the addition of red and orange," she recalled. "The rays of light seemed to be wrapping their fingers around the planet." Whitson narrowed her eyes when the Sun finally popped over the distant horizon. It was awfully bright. The station itself, moments earlier dark except for a few glowing windows, lit up from stem to stern reflecting the intense sunshine. What a sunrise!

August 22, 2002 - Eyes that write - Typing without a keyboard just got faster and easier. TOM CLARKE, NATURE.COM, New software could allow computer users with disabilities or busy hands to write nearly twice as fast, more accurately and more comfortably than before. The software could also speed up writing on palm-tops and typing in Japanese and Chinese, its developers say. The package, called Dasher, "exploits our eyes' natural ability to navigate and spot familiar patterns", says one of its inventors, computer scientist David MacKay of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK...

 August 17, 2002 - NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports - By Frank J. Murray, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify. Space technology would be adapted to receive and analyze brain-wave and heartbeat patterns, then feed that data into computerized programs "to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat," according to briefing documents obtained by The Washington Times...

 August 17, 2002 - Winged robot learns to fly - New Scientist Print Edition, Learning how to fly took nature millions of years of trial and error - but a winged robot has cracked it in only a few hours, using the same evolutionary principles. Krister Wolff and Peter Nordin of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, built a winged robot and set about testing whether it could learn to fly by itself, without any pre-programmed data on what flapping is or how to do it...

 August 19, 2002 - PGP is back! - By Andrew Orlowski in London, The Register.com, Phil Zimmermann's PGP is back in the hands of an independent company, after Network Associates agreed to sell the technology it mothballed back in March to a start-up specially created to market PGP. Jon Callas, the former PGP chief scientist, becomes the CTO of the new company, PGP Corporation. Will Price, former Director of Engineering at NAI, becomes VP of engineering. The good news is that the Windows XP and Mac OS X versions of version 8.0 of the excellent PGP Desktop, which were ready when Network Associates canned the division, will now ship in the fourth quarter, according to a company statement...

 August 20, 2002 - Amazing Magnetic Fluids - NASA, Astronauts onboard the International Space Station are studying strange fluids that might one day flow in the veins of robots and help buildings resist earthquakes. If you don't see it for yourself, you might not believe it. A grey blob oozes down the side of a laboratory beaker. It's heading for the table, but before it gets there a low hum fills the air. Someone just switched on an electromagnet. The goop stiffens, quivers, then carries on oozing only after the hum subsides. Is it alive? No, just magnetized...

 August 02, 2002 - Giant galaxy means model success - NewScientist.com, A computer simulation has for the first time created a huge spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, from the dark gloom of the early Universe. The animation could prove a useful tool in investigating that murky period...

 August 04, 2002 - Scientists discover how cancer spreads - BBC News, The way cancer spreads round the body has become clearer thanks to a breakthrough by scientists. They have discovered that a key protein molecule - called Src - helps to loosen the structure of tissues surrounding a tumor, opening the way for cancer cells to spread around the body...

 August 12, 2002 - RIP: Alba, the Glowing Bunny - By Kristen Philipkoski, Alba, the glowing rabbit that made headlines two years ago for being, well, a glowing rabbit, has met an untimely death, according to the French researcher who genetically engineered her. Alba the glowing rabbit was 4 years old. Or 2-1/2, depending on who's talking...

August 08, 2002 - Speed-of-light debate flashes again - Scientists make their case for an inconstant constant - SYDNEY, Australian scientists have proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics — Einstein’s theory of relativity...

 August 08, 2002 - More remains found within ironclad - Monitor’s gun turret yields bones and personal belongings, ASSOCIATED PRESS, RICHMOND, Va., More human remains were found inside the gun turret of the USS Monitor, raising the number of sailors found inside the Civil War artifact from one to possibly three...

 August 01, 2002 - E-Textiles Come into Style - By Eric Hellweg, Technology Review, Next season's smart outfits will be wired. Most people examine fabric swaths for texture and color; Maggie Orth checks them for voltage readings. Orth is the CEO of Cambridge, MA-based International Fashion Machines, a developer of electronic textiles in which fabrics act as electrical conduits, enabling data transfers within clothing...