Cool Invention: We just bought a Dyson vacuum, and it is indeed a superior product. Now Dyson has come up with a better way to dry your hands. Cool.

Cloaking: Lenses that bend light “the wrong way” could lead to an invisibility shield — or maybe just better glasses.

Now that’s black! How about a surface that reflects no light.

Self-healing plastic skin: next stop, robots that bleed.

Synthetic Life: Scientists have created a new life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another. Once perfected, it is hoped that they can create custom microbes designed to produce fuel or eat up oil spills.

Ancient Rome — digitally restored.

Faster Ocean Waves: Global warming is making “planetary waves” move faster. Sounds like a good source of energy, to me.

Fast Matter: Scientists have clocked matter shooting out of a dying star at 99.999% the speed of light.

No Black Holes? The event horizon of black holes contradicts quantum mechanics, and two researchers think they can explain what really happens: black holes are really just black stars.

3 Petaflops: IBM’s Blue Gene/P supercomputer can do 3 quadrillion operations a second, or 3 petaflops. It can do 1 petaflop continuously in real-world operations.

Air Muscles: Japanese robot maker Squse unveiled a robotic hand weighing only 14 ounces with five human-sized fingers and artificial fibres that can be controlled by air pressure delicately enough to pick up an egg without breaking it.

DARPA Arms: But DARPA is overseeing the development of prosthetics that give feedback for pressure and eventually even temperature.

Tetrachromat: Some women may have four colour receptors rather than the usual three.

Blood Pressure Vaccine: A Swiss company claims to have a vaccine that combats high blood pressure. Just a shot every six months.

Marijuana Works: A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial indicates that pot helps HIV-positive patients gain weight, is well tolerated and does not impair cognitive performance. Think anyone stubbornly fighting medical marijuana is listening? Me either.

HIV Hope: Two advances in the multi-billion dollar War on AIDS. First, scientists have engineered an enzyme that appears to attack and remove the HIV virus from an infected cell. Second, there are prostitutes in Nairobi that are immune to HIV. Research indicates the women have unique protein molecules that help cells identify foreign invaders.

Fantastic Voyage: Israeli scientists have created a tiny robot that can navigate through tubes the width of human veins and arteries. It crawls along with tiny arms, and could even go upstream. A nice idea, but it’s a long way from medical deployment.

Nuclear Rockets: A scientist says using nuclear rockets will mean building the moonbase in 9 trips instead of 12 and will save $4.5 billion. A few modifications on the 40-year-old technology would mean not “spewing radioactivity” on Earth.

Opportunity Descending: Mars rover Opportunity is about to crawl into Victoria crater. It has been investigating from the rim since last September. Watch a cool NASA animation about the crater.

Smart Cooking: A new theory says cooking meat made our ancestor’s brains bigger. Way to go Homo erectus!

Giant Penguins roamed the earth 40 million years ago in Peru.

Erectus Rising: Speaking of Homo erectus, it is thought that our ancestor starting settling down about 10,000 years ago. But a German professor claims to have evidence that this actually started happening about 400,000 years ago. That changes everything.

Kitty Roots: Research indicates that domestic cats came from wild cats that interbred over 100,000 years ago in the Middle East. All I know is that if I see any of my cats facing east six times a day, I’m going to shoot the little bastard. That’s all I need, a furry terrorist under my own roof. Careful, they’re cunning!

B
ad Burqa: God created us naked for a reason. Turns out that Muslim women who cover themselves completely are deficient in vitamin D, which others get from the sun. In other words, strict Islam makes women sick.

Hatshepsut Found: In the “find of the century”, the 3,000-year-old mummy of Queen Hatshepsut has been found. Hatshepsut was Egypt’s most powerful female ruler, often appearing in a fake beard.

Peanut Butter Diamonds: Yes, it’s possible to squeeze and heat peanut butter until it turns into a diamond. But this isn’t really news — we’ve been doing it for the last 50 years.

Changing Stripes: A tiger may not be able to change its stripes, but Jupiter can. New images from the Hubble and the spacecraft New Horizons. And speaking of stripes, this is the strangest looking zorse, ever.