QUICKIES
When one door closes, another
door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. – Alexander Graham BellThe iRobot Corporation, maker of Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner, and Scooba, the robotic floor scrubber, is more than halfway through its first year as a publicly traded company. But the company is about more than cleaning floors: it also has robots deployed in Iraq.There are over 500 "PackBot" robots and the vast majority of them are in the greater Baghdad area being used daily to address the improvised explosive device (IED). threat. N.Y. Times
Scientists have generated rats from mice that developed rat sperm. The breakthrough marks the first time researchers produced healthy offspring from sperm cells fostered in a different species. The hope is this method could help generate sperm from endangered species or prize bulls.
A decade ago, scientists successfully developed sperm in one animal that had come from cells in another. Researchers began by growing rat sperm in mice, and proceeded to foster sperm from hamsters, rabbits, pigs, bulls and humans in mice as well. MSNBC
In the last issue, we ran a picture of an "oxygen sniffer." Ben Best had bought it to monitor the oxygen levels in the cryostat area. To anyone who wondered why the device registered "602," while the accompanying text stated the ideal oxygen level was "20.9," well, as Ben told us "a person would have to stand on their head to read the device correctly." To save someone from standing on their head, we’re re-running the picture in it’s proper orientation!