Star Trek fans, here's something you might get a hoot out of: NASA has developed its own Tricorder. Ok, it's not exactly like the Tricorder, but it could be its ancestor. Details in the full article.

Apparently, scientists have been able to do something simply astounding with Linden Labs' MMOPRG. They were able to create artificial life in the form of a child-like intelligence in Second Life, named Eddie. Read more on this by heading over to the full article.

A Canadian man was taken to the St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver for an emergency procedure called fasciotomy to save his limbs. The operation was a success but what the doctors found along the way reminded them of old Star Trek episodes.

The patient actually had blood with a dark-greenish shade similar to the character Mr. Spock in the famed TV series. Upon further investigation, the doctors found out what was causing the change in color.

As it turned out, the patient was taking medication for his migraine and was popping in 200 milligrams of a drug called sumatriptan into his system every day. Doing so resulted in a very rare condition called sulfhaemoglobinaemia, which happens when components of the drug mix with the color-causing hemoglobin in red blood cells.

The doctors, led by Dr. Alana Flexman, ordered the patient to stop taking the drug immediately. After five weeks of observation, the man's blood was back to normal and the legs that were operated on had almost fully recovered.

Today's world requires that the human race come up with a cleaner, more efficient, and more nature-friendly solution to keep up with energy demands to power an economy. A lot of measures have been introduced, but Austrian engineer Franz Zotler's water gravitational vortex show the most promise and added value to it.

"Gravitational vortex"? It seems to sound like it's straight out of Star Trek or something. No, we won't be powering our homes with black holes any time soon. The gravitational water vortex is actually a lot more earthbound. It's essentially a whirlpool that gives us electricity and cleans the water all in one action.

If you've ever read about the principle of hydroelectric power plants, this one should be easy to visualize. With hydroelectric plants, the motion of the water runs a turbine that generates the Watts. However, dams have sometimes been accused of endangering local wildlife, spurring animal rights groups to cry foul. With this vortex system, fish will be safer than ever.

The vortex and the turbine can be set up on streams and rivers, with safety enclosures that will keep most unwanted objects out. If small fish do get in to the enclosure, there's still a very small risk of them getting harmed because the vortex system's turbine doesn't need to spin at high rates to churn out the power. The slow turbine velocity doesn't suck the critters in and allows them to get out of the zone with ease.

What's more, the turning motion of the turbine sets the water spinning not only in circular motion, but also brings water from deeper areas to the surface. When this happens, water meets air, allowing oxygen particles to set in. The water is then oxygenated, making it healthier for aquatic life.

The system is still under study from other groups. Here's hoping that it can be perfected soon so that the world can benefit from the greenest energy source yet to be devised.

Montgomery "Scotty" Scott of the Star Trek fame has finally taken his place among the stars after his death. His cremated remains were shot into orbit from Spaceport America, a launch site south of the New Mexico desert.

Scotty is James Doohan in real life and had his ashes honored along with those of Colonel Gordon Cooper, a real-life astronaut. A medium-sized crowd of fans, family, and friends were there to cheer the rocket that carried the two luminaries 70 miles above the surface.

Doohan and Cooper's wives were there to "press the launch button" after the countdown. Both women expressed their appreciation and sense of honor that their great husbands shared the same vessel for a very emotional event.

Space America is a commercial establishment which seeks to pioneer space tourism in the U.S. A gram of ashes aboard the small pod that the service launches is charged US$ 500. The remains won't remain in space, though. A capsule containing the remains will detach in the late stages of the flight and float back to the ground with parachutes. Those who want the ashes of loved ones aboard a one-way trip to deep space will have to wait until 2009 for the option.

Scotty was most famous for the immortal line "Beam me aboard, Scotty." Strangely enough, the line was never uttered in the series. The closest was "Scotty, beam me up" by Captain Kirk in the fourth movie. It's essentially an urban legend of a line comparable to stories of crocodiles in sewers and The Ultimate Warrior dying of a heart attack after he lifted Andre the Giant.

In the future, when man finally dares to move further and further into the outer reaches of space, deflector shields will help protect astronauts against space radiation. Yeah, the whole "deflector shields" thing sounds like something straight out of "Star Trek", but if current experiments pay off, it could become a reality.

According to the New Scientist, a group at the University of Washington in Seattle has just completed a round of experiments investigating one possible approach: using a bubble of charged particles, or plasma, as a deflector shield. A second team, led by Ruth Bamford of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, has also begun deflector shield experiments. Bamford's team also hopes to eventually fly a test satellite surrounded by a cloud of plasma in space.

The Bamford team's research is built on the fact that plasma clouds have strong magnetic and electric fields that can deflect charged particles. The team plans to use a simple magnetic field generator to trap a cloud of plasma and test its particle-deflecting abilities. The real test of their research, though, will come when they attract funding for a demo mission that uses wires around a spacecraft to generate a magnetic field that can contain a plasma cloud.

"Hopefully we'll be able to fly a test mission in the next, say, 10 to 15 years," said team member Robert Bingham of Rutherford Appleton Lab.

Two decades ago, Americans were much inclined to believe in alien abductions, horoscopes and Bigfoot. Now, they still dream wistfully of being sucked in by a flying saucer or having a quick conversation with the Sasquatch himself, but not too much - really.

Researchers say that this progress in the American way of scientific thinking could be largely credited to the requirement that all college students attend at least a few science classes. Jon D. Miller, a Michigan State University Professor said that in 1988, only about 10 percent of people in the US knew enough about science to understand reports in major newspapers. In 2005, the figure grew to 28 percent. He presented these findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, but we weren't told if somebody actually questioned the professor himself about his belief on whether or not we are alone in the universe...

Carol Susan Losh, an associate professor at Florida State University, however, thinks that the decline in belief on horoscopes and lucky numbers is actually bad. She believes that astrology could explain the meaning of life in a way that science could not. For most women, Losh said, having a good life depends on whom they marry, and astrology speaks to love relationships.

This was probably one of the reasons why Professor Miller named "female" as a leading negative factor in science literacy. Women tended to believe in horoscopes a lot. They also tended  to take fewer college courses.

The second negative factor to science literacy, according to Miller, was religious fundamentalism and aging. This finding speaks of the fact that there has been a drop of people who believe on evolutionism and an increase of people who believe that mankind was created 10,000 years ago.

Miller said that the best way to become scientifically educated is to take science courses in college, inform yourself through the media, and have kids at home. Is it because kids are more scientifically educated, or that they never really grew up on Bigfoot news and Star Trek?

Stephen Hawking - theoretical physicist, Lucasian professor, author of best-selling book, and pretty soon we could add movie star to that jampacked list of description. According to various UK newspapers, Professor Hawking is set to appear in the big screen through a film titled "Beyond the Horizon".

In case you're wondering what will the movie be about, it will try to explain some of the world's most complex theories backed by Prof. Hawking and by other notable physicists. The film is said to be about a fictional The Times religious affairs correspondent who interviews Hawking for a major feature. Apparently, Leonard Mlodinow, a former Star Trek scriptwriter, is working in the project.

Aside from trading colossal scientific journals for the big screen, it was also reported that he will also narrate a soundtrack explaining  cosmological concepts.

We've reported before on Spintronics and its potential applications in information technology. But what exactly is Spintronics? Okay, the term sounds like a name for an audio sound system group for a rave, but Spintronics, otherwise known as spin electronics, is an emerging technology that looks to develop devices that exploit the atomic level world of quantum physics.

Bottom line: conventional electronics use the charge of the electron (+ or -), but Spintronic devices also use the "spin" of the electron (a unique characteristic of the subatomic particles) and the charge achieving new functionality. Scientists claim that Spintronics can bring us steps closer to quantum computing.

One of the current problems with Spintronics is that you need huge superconducting magnets. This won't work in today's age of handheld gadgets. But there is some good news though.

Roland Winkler of Regensburg University, Germany, had this to say: "We believe we've discovered a much simpler way for inducing spin polarization. We don't need a big magnet. The only requirement in our case is an electrical current in the sample, which is much easier to achieve than putting the sample in a magnetic coil."

One step closer to Star Trek speed processing?

The tales of Sinbad the Sailor are based on voyages of exploration by Muslim Arab sailors during the Middle Ages. Zheng-He, the famous Chinese admiral whose ships reached the east coast of Africa and possibly the Oregon coast was also a follower of Islam.

A representative of the Muslim world is now posed to relive a religion devoted to mathematics, science and exploration. Muszaphar Shukor, a 34-year-old doctor will become Malaysia's first astronaut when he blasts off on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft just about a year from now. Malaysian army dentist Faiz Khaleed, 26, will be the back-up astronaut. They will now travel to Moscow's Star City for a year of training.

Shukor and Khaleed were chosen from a list of 10,000 applicants. "I feel honoured and blessed to be picked," Shukor says. "I've dreamed to go to space since I was 10 years old. My favourite TV programmes have been Star Trek and the Star Wars movies."