Spitting Monkeys and Burning watre

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Foetal testosterone linked to autistic traits - Researchers who having been tracking a group of children since birth have found that the level of testosterone they were exposed to in the womb is linked to whether they show autistic traits throughout childhood.

Mini-muscles go for a swim - Rat heart muscle cells have been grown on the surface of a polymer, and the resulting thin film can twist, grip and pulse like a real piece of muscle. Researchers hope the material may one day be used to make patches to repair a disease-damaged heart, although it may also find a use in tiny robotic devices.

The gene that makes your mouth water - Spit might have helped human evolution by enabling our ancestors to harvest more energy from starch than their primate cousins. The change could possibly have supported the growth in hominin brains that occurred some two million years ago, says Nate Dominy, an anthropologist at the University of California in Santa Cruz involved in the study. "Our diet must have had some shift to feed that brain," says Dominy, who thinks root vegetables like African tubers allowed large-brained humans to flourish.

BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition

All UK 'must be on DNA database' - The whole population and every UK visitor should be added to the national DNA database, a senior judge has said. The present database in England and Wales holds details of 4m people who are guilty or cleared of a crime. Lord Justice Sedley said this was indefensible and biased against ethnic minorities, and it would be fairer to include everyone, guilty or innocent.

Face scans spot gene syndromes - 3D face scans are set to speed up the diagnosis of rare genetic conditions in children, UK scientists say. More than 700 genetic syndromes affect facial traits, but some are difficult to spot because few cases exist. Now new software that compares an individual's face with a bank of 3D images of people with known conditions is aiding diagnosis. The technology, presented at the BA Festival of Science in York, had a 90% success rate, the scientists said.

Hidden way of reading revealed - Previously, researchers thought that, when reading, both eyes focused on the same letter of a word. But a UK team has found this is not always the case. In fact, almost 50% of the time, each of our eyes locks on to different letters simultaneously.

ABC News: Technology & Science

Man Says Metal Heart Left Him Cold - Facing death in 2000 due to severe heart failure, Peter Houghton's London doctors extended his life by implanting a titanium device in his heart. While the device has given him the ability to travel with his wife, work and even take part in a 91-mile charity walk, Houghton believes the robotic heart has somehow robbed him of his ability to love.

Tots Get Web Identity at Birth - Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name. Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.

Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories

Painless Drug Injections - Researchers at Hewlett Packard Labs (HP Labs) have engineered a drug patch that painlessly delivers medications through the skin via tiny micro-needles. The technology is modeled after HP's inkjet-printer technology. The prototype patch, which is about one inch square, contains 400 cylindrical reservoirs, each less than one cubic millimeter. Each reservoir is connected to a micro-needle, and the whole array is fueled by a low-power battery and controlled by an embedded microchip that's programmed to heat up any given reservoir to deliver a specific drug.

Physics Org

Radio Frequencies Help Burn Salt Water - John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn. The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.