Some people have been telling me that they miss the old 'Short Takes' section. I have decided to do an update once in a while on scientific advancements, in the style of the short takes section and this is #1.

It now looks like we have a cure for cancer in mice. Cancer resistant mice have been found. If you take blood from these mice and inject it into mice with cancer they get cured. The hope is that we will be able to find a cancer resistant human so that blood serum can be made from his or her blood that we will be able to inject into people with cancer. We don't know yet if this will work on people, but I suspect that we will be finding out soon. Let's hope that the scientific community keeps an eye on this and it isn't gobbled up by some drug company who wants to shelve it since it would cut off a big source of their income, cancer drugs, if it was successful.

So how did this discovery come about? While researchers were working on a cancer cure they discovered a very rare type of mouse that was immune to extremely high doses of cancer cells. The mice were so resistant that you could inject them with up to three billion cancer cells and still they wouldn't get cancer. When these mice had offspring, about half of them were also resistant to cancer. Research showed that the genes in the resistant mice were triggered and caused the immune system to target and destroy the cancer cells. Even if we don't find that human equivalent to the cancer resistant mouse, gene research might someday find the reason why the mouse is cancer resistant in the first place and apply this technique to our genes.

I wonder how how many people heard of the discovery that was made last month about the human nose? It turns out that all humans have a tiny crystal of magnetite in one of the bones of their nose. It is located between the eyes just behind the top of the nose. This is the same material that allows birds to stay on course along with dolphins, bees and bats. This might have helped our ancestors guide their way across the Earth in prehistoric times. It is a shame that we can't utilize this today. Can you imagine having a built in compass for navigating. No more asking gas station for directions or having your wife holler at you when you make a wrong turn.

Well it looks like our hard drives are a thing of the past. It is only a matter of time before they end up keeping company with those old 5 1/4 inch paper disks. A new type of drive is being developed that is something like a flash drive but works more like burning a cd. A chemical is heated that stores 0s and 1s in a non volatile state. The good part about this is that not only is the memory retained after the computer is shut off, but it is a very fast process, being 100 times faster than flash memory. Other type of memory are also being worked on and the one thing that they all have in common is that they retain data after the device is shut off.

The U.S. military has combined two different apparatus to make jumping out of a plane during wartime more safe. They have taken a winged suit that is popular with skydivers and combined it with a parachute. This allows the jumper to travel much faster and maneuver, making it very hard to hit him with weapons fire. When he is ready to land, he opens the chute for a gentle landing. While flying with the winged suit he is traveling in excess of 200 mph.

When the Gemani space capsule was launched in 1963, it carried two pencils that cost $129 each. The public was outraged. They would have even been more outraged if they found out that astronauts Deke Slayton was carrying pencils he paid about 50 cents for and they were Japanese.

The Nigerians have invented something called the Zeer Pot. It is a pot that can keep food fresh without using refrigeration. It is basically two pots, a large one and a smaller one that goes inside. Sand is placed around the small pot and kept damp. The temperature inside the inner pot is decreased because of the evaporation. Water is added to the sand usually twice a day. It turns out that the pots are also big sellers at the market place in that country.

Have you heard about carbon nanotubes? They are a hot item in the scientific field. Scientists are looking for new uses for them every day. A new use may have been found and it is implanting them in our heads. It has been found that neurons can pick up electrical signals generated from somewhere if carbon nanotubes are used as an interface. It is now thought that these nanotubes might be able to replace damaged or missing nerves. This would help people, for example, that have damaged nerves in their eyes, brain and spinal cords.

The Germans have developed the first full scale pilotless plane. It is said to be far ahead of anything else that is remote controlled and unbeatable by any other pilotless aircraft.

A french company has developed a new type of radar that is said to be capable of discovering where mines are buried. This could be an enormous help to countries that have hundreds of thousands or even millions of buried mines left over from past wars. These mine are still a danger to the inhabitants and are greatly responsible for the many amputees in these countries.

The US Navy's and Marine Corps intranet has cost over 9.3 billion dollars so far. In a review by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) they said that it just hasn't met it's goals. According to the report it might have had money spent on it that would have been better spent elsewhere. The GAO said, the NMCI program, which provides navy-wide IT services, has failed to support information superiority or to foster innovation through interoperability and shared services.