Current Technology Report Updates...

I've recently read a rather thick book on philosophy, with various philosophy papers by numerous authors like Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, etc. Topics include relation between language and mind, the famous conversation between Socrates and Euthyoprus, Religion, God's existence, Self-Awareness, Can Machine thinks, etc. A nice book, but leaves you headache in the end. I figure it won't interest you all, so let's talk about the most current technological achievements.
GENETICS
Scientists discovered a plant's ability to summon the gene of its ancestors to replace its mutated gene. That really violates Mendel's laws. Scientists believed that ability to store genetic information of its grandparents(but not parents)' genetic information is due to the RNA's special double cylindrical structure. The plant, whose petals are fused due to mutated Hothead genes, had some of its offsprings returned to normal, which is rather surprising. Scientists hypotheised that such ability allows an organism to experiment with new genetic designs without permanently altering its original genetic information.
ENERGY
So we know the future of energy lies in the little couple of proton and electron, or Hydrogen. We derive its energy by combining it with Oxygen and with a clean by-product, that is Water. But the main concern here lies in the storage. We can't pack enough hydrogen into a tank which is practical enough and comparable to today's gasoline's capacity. We need more volume to produce the same energy capacity of gasoline-powered vehicles. For years scientists were frustated by such limitation, until recently two companies achieve a breakthrough in hydrogen storage technology. The first one would be by cooling Hydrogen down to -196 degrees celcius and then compressed to 1000 psi. This makes Hydrogen more easily adsorbed into a material made up of Carbon and possibly other polymers. This is what we call Cryoadsorption. Another one would involve adding silicon into complex hydride system, e.g Lithium Borohydride. That makes the breaking of bond between the metal and hydrogen easier, and thus a lower temperature can be used.
NEUROSCIENCE
Scientists has initated a mega project called the Blue Brain project. Using supercomputers composed of about 8000 parrallelly running microprocessors built by IBM, scientists attempts to simulate a part of a mammalian brain right down to the molecules and expressive genes. The patterns and data gathered from this experiment will be invaluable to both neuroscientists and computer scientists who are frustrated by the hurdles faced in engineering artificial intelligence due to the immerse and enourmous complexity of the brain and hence the more abstract part of it, namely the mind.
ASTRONOMY
NASA's deep impact project will see a coffee table-sized impactor plunged into the Tempel 1 comet with relative velocity of up to 37,000 km per hour. That'll effectively create a crater of about the size of a football field. Particles and pristine materials shall fly up and analyzed by another satellite that's trailing 500km behind. Fortunately, such an impact will not change the course of the comet to such a dramatic extend that it'll collide with our dear Earth. The impact will at most change the comet's velocity by 0.04cm per hour. Another big news would be the bright magnetar flare that occurs on 27 December, 2004. Nasa's Swift Satellite's B.A.T(Burst Alert Telescope) was simply completely overwhelmed by the sudden burst of gamma rays that the intelligent software system onboard took it as anomaly in data and almost discarded it. That burst was touted to be the brightest throughout history. It's created by a near-by star, which experienced star quake, resulting in dramatic change of Magnetic field. Nevertheless, gamma ray burst could be due to two supermassive spinning neutron stars colliding into each other. The burst described has thus helped scientists solve some of the mystery of the universe. For more accurate info, surf to www.nasa.gov.