No laser-armed robots today, I’m afraid, but this lot is interesting:
– Flight researchers build a robot butterfly that can actually fly to test their theories about how it is done.
– Genetic engineers reportedly create the first ever animal with entirely synthetic DNA.
– The Chinese teleport a photon over a distance of 16km.
On Genetic engineers reportedly create the first ever animal with entirely synthetic DNA.
Well it’s not an “animal”; wrong kingdom. It is essentially a recreation of one of the most simple bacteria, Mycoplasma mycoides. See PZ Myers’s description of Venter’s announcement.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/its_alive_1.php
George
Yep, guilty as charged. For some reason I always think of bacteria as animals. They seem much too cunning to be anything else.