Latest Inventions

posted by admin on Nov 21

Just a quick note to congratulate the scientists at CERN for finally getting this machine into action after a 14 month stall!

Cheers all round as the machine creaked back into action like nothing had ever been wrong in the first place.  Take a look at the BBC’s updates or at the CERN website for all the latest info…. 

Similar Articles On This Site: Latest Inventions In Physics: The Large Hadron Collider

posted by admin on Sep 16

Hello again, and welcome to the carnival.

There don’t seem to be many articles this month that are worth sharing with you.  Many left over from last month and the new ones are either not really ’latest inventions’ and many of the submitted articles are just a few paragraphs long and full of links!

These aren’t articles - they are not sharing anything new with readers or even treating us like readers - they are trying to get clicks by using key words!

Where are all the great articles about actual new inventions, great technology and interesting new gadgets?

Lets hope we get some in for next month otherwise this carnival will have to change it’s name to ‘X new iPhone applications for Y’ as these are all I get plenty of!

And here is the latest one:  Shannon Wills presents 50 iPhone Apps That Will Make You Much Healthier

Hope to see you next month…….

posted by admin on May 23

Would You Spend $155,000 to keep your dog forever?

Well, news has it that an American couple did just that!  5 years ago, they decided that they loved on of their pets so much, that they were willing to pay to have it’s DNA cryogenically frozen so that when the technology had improved enough - that they could get their little bundle of joy to walk again!

And the technology was improved last year - and so now they have a little puppy which is exactly the same genetically as their first one!  It was the first single-birth commercially cloned puppy in the world.

But why stop there?

There are plans afoot to clone animals that have been dead for some time - and in the case of the woolly mammoth - 40,000 years of it!

Cases in Japan recently have allowed scientists to clone mice that have been ‘dead for 16 years’ - so why not other extinct animals?

San Diego zoo have been busy with cloning - but with live animals.  They are not just cloning something normal like a sheep from a sheep - a la Dolly from the UK, they are cloning an endangered animal and crossing the species barrier by allowing the eggs to develop inside a bog standard domestic cow!

They basically made it possible for 2 south-east Asian oxes (Banteng) to be born through a cow mum.  Therefore paving the way for an elephant to give birth to a baby mammoth!

The Mammoth Task:
In December 2008, 70% of the mammoth genome was published from frozen specimens which had ‘fallen out’ of the permafrost in remote parts of Russia.  Obviously there is still 30% missing - but expert say that this won’t take long to overcome.

Basically, experts are claiming that the cloning of a mammoth will happen - it is just a matter of when!  The technology exists to re-create long dead animals - someone just needs to foot the bill.

They have several ways to clone the mammoth (or Tasmanian Tiger, or Dodo, etc..) and all depend on the getting the frozen cells to replicate and grow inside another animals womb.

They don’t actually need any sperm or mammoth eggs to perform this cloning (although that is a viable option) as they can electrically or chemically stimulate any cell into dividing sexually - so one dead mammoth can offer them goodness knows how many attempts at this!  All they need is the DNA - and this is found in every (non-sexual) cell of every living animal.  It’s just not always 100% there in long dead ones!

And Then?
Obviously, they need an animal from a similar taxonomic group and of a similar size, but everything else is a bit of guess work!

They also have no real idea of what they will need to don once the animal is born - as they have no ‘real’ mammoth breast milk to use - in-fact no idea at all about what it should contain - other than basing it on it’s only realistically useful relative - the elephant.

Another potential ethical issue at this point would be that there is only one - or a very small group, and possibly they are all the exact same animal genetically.  Needless to say, this won’t create a viable ‘herd’ or ‘flock’ of clones.  They would be just ’something to look at’.

We are also going to be bringing them back into a world that they no longer live in!  Yes, it is possible that humans were the main reason for their decline and extinction in the first place - but how do we know that they will survive in a new and changing world when we get them back?

Some people don’t even want beavers to be re-introduced into their neighbourhoods - so who is going to want a few giant hairy elephants roaming about their woods?

And are we not in a recession, with environmental issues all around us and medicine in desperate needs of funds?  Children starving, wildlife made extinct and forests being destroyed?

Would spending a fortune on raising the mammoth be a wise choice right now?

posted by admin on Mar 1

I want to get fit with Wii Fit, and I burnt a lot of calories trying to find it!!!

I don’t know what it is about high street retail at the moment, but they never seem to have what they should or they have a display model but no actual stock!

I have been in and out of a variety of stores who should have had games for sale, but have returned home after a whole days shopping with nothing to show for it other than a grumpy other half who would rather have gone walking in the woods rather than up and down a bus lane, past hundreds of dithering old people and families who appear to be in town only to buy some fast food or a coffee!

Hello Internet!
I know that ordering on the Internet can be easy, but I have still got that little part of me that wants to hold something in my hand before buying it - but this is seemingly getting harder and harder to achieve.

You would think in today’s financial climate, that high street retailers would be clambering over themselves to stock the items people want to buy and stop wasting time and money showing customers display models of products they have no intention of ever selling you.

Well, I soon got what I wanted: My Wii Fit game - with no hassles from Game Stock Online.   The game was showing on the website, it had a picture, it had the price and it told me who actually had Wii Fit in stock! It was sooooo easy - Sold!!!!!! They got my money because they had what I wanted!!

This price comparison site says it is constantly updated with details about stockists and prices without the wasted hassle of the high street brigade! You can even subscribe to email alerts to find the best deal or another product you fancy.

So put your coat back in the closet, make a nice coffee and wait for the game to find you rather than the other way around!!

posted by admin on Jan 1

Happy New Year to everyone reading this.

Just a quick note from me to say that 2009 should be just as promising as 2008 was, and there is going to be plenty to talk about in terms of latest innovations, newest creations and technological advances to keep us on our toes!

Thanks again for joining me, and hope to see you again soon….

Regards.