Technology Dose of crystals could make Moon base self-sufficient When NASA sets up its permanent base on the moon, how will the colonists keep themselves going? How will they get oxygen to breathe, and where will they find building materials, not to mention silicon for all the solar panels they will need? Easy, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. … 51¶¯Âþ
Life Over-egging the clones UNTIL the end of last year, fusing human cells with animal eggs to create "hybrid" cloned embryos was considered an obscure area of reproductive science, not key to the future of stem cell science. That all changed, it seems, with the publication of the UK government's white paper on embryo research, which prompted politicians, Nobel … Opinion
Life Tackling depression with ketamine "FOR MANY, it was a huge, obvious effect," says psychiatrist John Krystal. "One of the patients said, 'Don't give me those old medications, I want this again'." Krystal, a professor at Yale University, is talking about the time he gave seven severely depressed patients ketamine, a mind-blowing drug developed as an anaesthetic but better known … Features
Space Nightwatch (4th edition), by Terence Dickinson ONCE, curious readers wanting to learn about the night sky were confronted with tomes full of baffling numbers, jargon, and star charts that seemed to bear no resemblance to the real thing. Then came Nightwatch, a clear, concise manual for backyard stargazing that also managed to convey the excitement of astronomy. This fantastically revised edition … Books & Arts
Feedback Bigfoot's love slave no more IT HAS to be one of the greatest losses of all time to journalism, to history, to human culture. One of the buildings hit with anthrax spores in 2001, by a bioterrorist who is still at large, was the headquarters of The National Enquirer and its sister paper, the Weekly … Regulars