I wanted to do a large one year anniversary post for this a couple of days ago, but honestly I have so much to do already that I don’t have time to fawn over that fact . It did remind me, however, that it has been a while since I’ve put up some stuff on science, so I’ve decided to put a little something down on this question: should we clone neanderthals? This article points out the way in which we can do it, and all the ethical implications of doing something like this.

On the cool side, German scientist have made a 3D invisibility cloak that covered a gold surface. This is a great proof of principle for how transformation optics can actually bend light around objects. what made me smirk was this little comment right here:

He added, however, that it would be many years before anything as large as a person, car or tank could be made to disappear with this technique

Leave it to a German to be thinking of invisible panzers.

Moving right along to another post-Axis nation, Japanese designers have made some cool elastic iron alloys. What’s really cool is that beyond its super-elasticity, the developers are trying to find ways of using it for stents for heart surgeries where the normal nickel titanium wire is too weak along with other uses.