An "Invisibility
Cloak" For Sound?
by
Kendall Morgan, Duke University News
Durham, NC --
Contrary to earlier predictions, Duke University engineers have
found that a three-dimensional sound cloak is possible, at least in
theory.
Such an acoustic veil would do for sound what the "invisibility
cloak" previously demonstrated by the research team does for
microwaves--allowing sound waves to travel seamlessly around it and
emerge on the other side without distortion.
"We've devised a recipe for an acoustic material that would
essentially open up a hole in space and make something inside that
hole disappear from sound waves," said Steven Cummer, Jeffrey N.
Vinik Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. Such a cloak might hide
submarines in the ocean from detection by sonar, he said, or improve
the acoustics of a concert hall by effectively flattening a
structural beam...
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3D Television 'a
Reality Within Five Years'
by Roger Highfield,
Telegraph
A true three
dimensional TV that does not depend on wearing strange glasses could
be demonstrated within five years. Scientists have at last started
to catch up with the 3D holographic displays that have become
commonplace in science fiction films.
* Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'
* Beatles space broadcast 'risks alien attack'
The Princess Leia figure projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars is one
example of moving holograms that have been shown in a wide range of
films over the decades since the invention of holography in the
1960s...
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Scientists Create
See-Through Fish, Watch Cancer Grow
by Jeanna Bryner,
LiveScience
A newly bred fish bares all in the
lab, revealing brain, heart and other internal organs in the name of
research.
Scientists are breeding zebrafish with see-through bodies in order
to make studying disease processes easier, including the spread of
cancer.
The transparent fish, described in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal
Cell Stem Cell, are allowing researchers at Children's Hospital
Boston to directly view fish's internal organs and observe processes
such as tumor growth in real-time in living organisms.
Scientists previously studied disease in the embryos of zebrafish,
which are naturally transparent. But their clear bodies turn opaque
when they grow into adults. The newly created zebrafish stays
transparent throughout its lifetime...
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One Embryo from
Three Parents
Genetically Modified Embryos
May Be Answer to Deadly Disease
by
John McKenzie, ABC News
British researchers today are
reporting a potential new technique to spare thousands of children
each year from a group of deadly inheritable diseases known
collectively as mitochondrial disease.
These diseases might be prevented by altering human embryos, which
are the product of two mothers and one father, the researchers said.
Isabelle Christenson, 9, has mitochondrial disease, which is passed
from mother to child via the egg. Mitochondria -- the parts of cells
that convert food into energy -- have their own DNA which is
separate from that in a cell's nucleus. Isabelle has already
suffered a stroke and undergone a kidney transplant, a stomach
transplant and a liver transplant.
"Isabelle has about a year to live, the doctors told us about a week
and a half ago, barring no more complications," her mother, Michelle
Christenson, said...
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Blind Irishman Sees
with the Aid of Son's Tooth in his Eye
Yahoo
News
DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irishman blinded by
an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors
inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday.
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Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost
his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded
at a re-cycling business in November 2005.
"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life,"
McNichol told RTE state radio.
After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do,
McNichol heard about a miracle operation called
Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr
Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England...
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