Hardware pirates are about to get another force to contend with: The new EPIC chip locking system developed by computer engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University. While not infallible, the new locking technique should make things very difficult and costly for hardware pirates to copy chips that come armed with it. More in the full article.

There's a patent waiting for the green light passed by firm Nanopoint. The yet to be named technology is capable of intracellular imaging at high resolutions. This means live cells can be monitored from the inside like never before, allowing numerous research possibilities to take place.

The patent illustrates a high-tech instrument which works in conjunction with graphics software that will give new views inside cells. Biologists say that if they knew more exact details about what goes on in the cell, they can better come up with treatments for diseases.

Organelles enclosed within the cell membrane can be viewed in high detail once the technology is applied. This should also allow researchers to confirm their theorized functions for a more accurate understanding of life's building blocks.

Healthcare consumers will soon be able to access their personal health records through their mobile phones thanks to CapMed's acquisition of Juke System's ICE First technology.

The patent-pending ICE First technology is expected to enhance CapMed's suite of personal health management solutions. It gives healthcare consumers immediate cell phone access to emergency and routine health information for themselves and up to 10 family members. Personal health information can also be updated through a web-based database.

"By combining ICE First technology with the award-winning products from CapMed, users of ICE First are better positioned to monitor and manage their own health, as well as the health of family members," said Keith Buckley, president and CEO of Juke Systems.

"The ability to access up-to-date health information from cell phones will go a long way toward improving consumers’ interactions with physicians and clinicians and with the entire healthcare system.”"

Supported mobile phones will include popular brands from Nokia, Palm, Blackberry, Motorola, LG and Samsung. Apple iPhone support is also in development. ICE First is now available for download by individual patients and healthcare consumers.

Chez-williams.com compiles a list of the world's hottest sauces, and we're already sweating just from read ing it. To give you an idea: Tabasco sauce doesn't even make it to the list, scoring only 2,140 in Scoville units.

Scoville units? How is the spiciness of food measured, anyway? Capsaicin is the chemical in hot peppers that is responsible for their heat. Named after pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, Scoville units measures capsaicin in peppers, with bell pepper having zero Scoville units and habanero peppers having  100,000 to 300,000 Scoville units.

Starting from the bottom, we picked out some sauces to show their scale in Scoville units.

1. Dead Heat - Hot Sauce Harry's limited edition, coming only in 600 bottles, has a Scoville rating of 100,000 units. It even comes with its own coffin and death certificate.
2. Not Cool Chocolate Habanero Sauce - Coming from a patent pending cultivar and rating at 225,000 Scoville units, this sauce has the flavors of coffee and cocoa.
3. Dave's Private Reserve - Claimed to be the first and only product ever to be banned from the National Fiery Foods Show, this sauce scores 300,000 Scoville units. Every bottle has been hand-signed, numbered and dated by Dave.
4. Hard Time Humble Sauce - 400,000 Scoville units in a bottle of Red Savina habaneros.
5. Pure Cap - This mixture of vegetable oil and capsaicin has a rating of 500,000 Scoville units and is 100 times hotter than a Jalapeno.
6. Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally...The Slap Heard Around the World - Despite the silly name, this sauce has been featured in national magazines, and rated having 700,000 Scoville units. It's the hottest condiment on earth.
7. Satan's Blood - Said to have been conceived during a full moon on Friday the 13th in October, 2000. It's chili extract and red wine vinegar, coming at 800,000 Scoville units.
8. Mad Dog's Revenge - Scoring at 1,000,000 Scoville units, this product is not a hot sauce or a condiment, but a chili extract to be used in recipes by the drops as food additive only.
9. Demon Ichor - One of the most potent, ready to use pepper extracts available in the market, scoring 2,000,000 Scoville units.
10. Blair's Caldera - A collectible item with pure capsaicin crytals suspended in oil. It scores 10,000,000 Scoville units.

We recommend you not to use the poisonous crystals of the latter part of the list, but for the record, chilies are healthy. Capsaicin in peppers lowers blood pressure, reduces cholesterol, wards off strokes and heart attacks, speeds up metabolism, treats colds and fevers, prevents cancer and controls pain.

A group of researchers are attempting to patent a possible cure for cancer involving nothing more than sugar and short-chain fatty acid combination. However, the Johns Hopkins researchers do caution that their molecule (described in the December issue of the Chemistry & Biology Journal) has not yet been tested on animals or humans.

They do believe it represents a promising new strategy for combating cancer, and have as mentioned, filed an application for a U.S. Patent covering this class of compounds.

Researcher have found that when the right sugar is matched with the right chemical partner, it can deliver a powerful two-pronged attack against cancer cells. They have found that a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate can slow the spread of cancer cells. Back in the 1980s they also found that butyrate can restore healthy cell functioning.

Since then, efforts to use butyrate as a general drug have been hampered by the high doses required to effectively eradicate cancer. This lead scientists to modify the compound. Initial results have been disappointing because the molecular partner added to butyrate produced unsafe side effects.

This has lead scientists to focus on a sugar called N-actyl-D-mannosamine, or ManNAc, for short, and develop a molecule by linking ManNAc with butyrate.

Testing has revealed that while cancer grows back on dishes treated with other compounds, the cancer growth in the sample dish treated with the butyrate-ManNAc has all died.

The long awaited cure for cancer? Let's wait until the experts have figured out if the new compound has any unwanted side-effects first.

Here's one for the paranoid jetsetter: Boeing has a patent pending in Canada for a new anti-terrorist system that they believe will help improve the survivability of passengers and crew in the event of a terrorist takeover. The device takes the form of a  "uninterruptible" auto-pilot system, that once turned one, automatically locks the  controls and redirects the plane to the closest runway, ensuring that hijackers can't use the plane for other purposes.

The device, running on an independent power source to prevent tampering, activates either at the flick of a switch by either the pilot or co-pilot, by pressure sensors on the door reading forced cabin entry, or by ground control in the event the first two fail.

"There is a need in the industry for a technique that conclusively prevents unauthorized persons from gaining access to the controls of the vehicle and therefore threatening the safety of the passengers onboard the vehicle, and/or other people in the path of travel of the vehicle, thereby decreasing the amount of destruction individuals onboard the vehicle would be capable of causing," said Boeing regarding this device.

No details on how the system works yet, though a recent issuance of a $1.9 million U.S. Federal Aviation Administration contract to Raytheon for an Advanced Route Evaluation System does give clues as to how Boeing plans to program the new system with regards to landing spots. With that said and done, we're wondering what sort of protection they're offering for the pilots, as the system assumes that both pilot and co-pilot are incapable of flying the plane.

And yet another citizen of the realm of science fiction attempts to make beam guns a reality with the Microwave-oven beam gun

As we all know, a microwave can burn through meat and skin (as proven by fresh chicken left in a microwave oven for too long); destroy electronics and induce high voltages in chips and wires; cause sparks on metallic objects; as well as induce detonation in improvised explosives by exciting unstable chemicals...all these simply by pointing a concentrated beam of microwaves.

It all sounds cool, that's true, but it also sounds complicated as magnetrons which can handle up to a megawatt is necessary for this idea to become feasible. However, this was all solved by a couple of inventors from New Mexico who came up with the idea to simply take the needed number of magnetrons from common, household microwave ovens, slap them together in the back of a mobile generator, and combine their output into one solid beam. How many microwave ovens do you need to hack in order to create your own mini Death Ray? About 300, apparently,  since each household magnetron takes on about one kilowatt.

This so-called microwave gun is a good idea, but many are questioning the US Patent Office's own idea of putting out a complete set of instructions on how to assemble this machine on the internet, for everybody to see, and we mean EVERYBODY, including dateless geeks, terrorists, and that girl you stood up on prom night.

So, if your new neighbor has a shipload of ovens delivered to his or her garage, or you hear news about a kitchen appliance delivery truck being hijacked, be wary and start reaching for that Cling Wrap.