Also in today’s links: human-cow hybrid embryos, morphing gel displays and more.
- Ew, ew, this is not a good use of science: a glaucoma drug is set to be sold under another name as a prescription drug for growing longer, thicker eyelashes, presumably for the same people who like to inject toxins into their foreheads. On the other hand, though, if this drug gets sold full-price to people with too much money to spend, perhaps it’ll allow the pharmaceutical company to sell other drugs at more affordable rates.
- Anyway, the secret to stars’ apparent youth is not botox — it’s combining with other stars within a globular cluster, transferring matter, to become what astronomers call “blue stragglers.”
- Sadly, a whole lot of hybrid embryos created from human and cow cells are sitting around, useless, because of an apparent reluctance in Britain to fund human-animal clone research. (Not that this is the intent or anything, but a human-cow hybrid would probably also have long, thick eyelashes. Maybe it’s something the drug companies want to think about funding.)
- Remember the debate about the energy cost of a Google search? Here’s further discussion, making the point that — accurate or no — the original article helped point out the carbon cost of computer usage.
- Some electrical engineers have developed a form of display that uses blobs of gel to display tactile images. I’m imagining a braille iPod in the future out of this stuff.