The Gulf Disaster Video That BP Doesn't Want You To See

Those damn BP liars are making things even worse trying to fix the catastrophe they caused. Their efforts are turning the massive oil flood into giant underwater clouds made of corrosive particles. Here's the underwater video to prove it.

The chemical dispersants that BP is using—trying to fix the gigantic mess caused by their reckless actions—are turning the thick black tide into titanic clouds floating underneath the surface. The clouds are formed by particles made of oil combined with the dispersants. The resulting chemical monster can burn the skin of any human or animal that gets in contact with it.

The commander of the International Space Station said that the oil flood looked "very scary" from space. After diving into one of these clouds, Philippe Cousteau—grandson of the legendary Jacques-Yves Cousteau—gets a lot closer to reality: "This is a nightmare... a nightmare."

iPoop:The bathroom accessory of my dreams!

Inspired by a Photoshop contest, a clever young man came up with a simple yet brilliant multifunction bathroom accessory for laptops and tablets: The iPoop. I just really hope the concept's name doesn't get changed if anyone ever manufactures it.

Peter, the creator of this design, describes iPoop as a "bathroom wastebasket that doubles as a laptop/tablet stand" and is currently attempting to rally interest and catch the eye of a manufacturer using a Facebook group!

Soon You'll Unlock Hotel Room Doors By Playing Songs on Your Phone

Some Holiday Inn locations will soon begin using the OpenWays door system. This means that guests will be offered the option of having a unique melody sent to their smartphones and playing that to open doors instead of swiping keycards.

The OpenWays system is explained as being as secure as a traditional keycard system and sounds pretty simple to use: The technology sends an encrypted, unique audio code to a guest's phone prior to check-in. When played back outside the guestroom, the signal unlocks the door, letting the guest skip the front desk-guests would also receive a text message with their room assignments-while also eliminating the need for keycards.

The first hotels to test the technology will be the Holiday Inn Chicago O' Hare Rosemont and the Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center.

Wow!

Immaculate Creation!

For the first time, scientists have created life from scratch – well, sort of. Craig Venter's team has made a bacterial genome from smaller DNA subunits and then transplanted the whole thing into another cell.

What did Venter's team do?

The cell was created by stitching together the genome of a goat pathogen called Mycoplasma mycoides from smaller stretches of DNA synthesised in the lab, and inserting the genome into the empty cytoplasm of a related bacterium. The transplanted genome booted up in its host cell, and then divided over and over to make billions of M. mycoides cells.

Craig Venter and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California have previously accomplished both feats – creating a synthetic genome and transplanting a genome from one bacterium into another – but this time they have combined the two.

"It's the first self-replicating cell on the planet that's parent is a computer," says Venter, referring to the fact that his team converted a cell's genome that existed as data on a computer into a living organism.

How can they be sure that the new bacteria are what they intended?

Venter and his team introduced several distinctive markers into their synthesised genome. All of them were found in the synthetic cell when it was sequenced.

These markers do not make any proteins, but they contain the names of all the scientists on the project and several philosophical quotations written out in a secret code. The markers also contain the key to the code. Crack the code and you can read the messages.

Does this mean they created life?

It depends on how you define "created" and "life". Venter's team made the new genome out of DNA sequences that had initially been made by a machine, but bacteria and yeast cells were used to stitch together and duplicate the million base pairs that it contains. The cell into which the synthetic genome was then transplanted contained its own proteins, lipids and other molecules.

Venter himself maintains that he has not created life . "We've created the first synthetic cell," he says. "We definitely have not created life from scratch because we used a recipient cell to boot up the synthetic chromosome."

Whether you agree or not is a philosophical question, not a scientific one as there is no biological difference between synthetic bacteria and the real thing, says Andy Ellington, a synthetic biologist at the University of Texas in Austin. "The bacteria didn't have a soul, and there wasn't some animistic property of the bacteria that changed," he says.

What can you do with a synthetic cell?

Venter's work was a proof of principle, but future synthetic cells could be used to create drugs, biofuels and other useful products. He is collaborating with Exxon Mobil to produce biofuels from algae and with Novartis to create vaccines.

"As soon as next year, the flu vaccine you get could be made synthetically," Venter says.

Ellington also sees synthetic bacteria as having potential as a scientific tool. It would be interesting, he says, to create bacteria that produce a new amino acid – the chemical units that make up proteins – and see how these bacteria evolve, compared with bacteria that produce the usual suite of amino acids. "We can ask these questions about cyborg cells in ways we never could before."

What was the cost of creating life?

About $20 million. Cheap for a deity, expensive if you are a lab scientist looking to create your own synthetic bacterium. "This does not look like the sort of thing that's going to be doable by your average lab in the near future," Ellington says.

This reminds me of Frankenstein's monster! Are synthetic cells safe?

Yes. Venter's team took out the genes that allow M. mycoides to cause disease in goats. The bacterium has also been crippled so it is unlikely to grow outside of the lab. However, some scientists are concerned that synthetic organisms could potentially escape into the environment or be used by bioterrorists.

Ellington brushes aside those concerns, noting that the difficulty of engineering cells is beyond the scope of all would-be bioterrorists. "It's not a real threat," he says. "Unless you are Craig Venter with a crew of 20 postdocs you're not going to do this."

However, George Church, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School, is calling for increased surveillance, licensing and added measures to prevent the accidental release of synthetic life. "Everybody in the synthetic biology ecosystem should be licensed like everybody in the aviation system is licensed."

The InfoLadies of Bangladesh, Armed With Bicycle and Netbook

Many people living in Bangladesh's impoverished villages haven't yet been reached by technology. But a determined band of InfoLadies—young women equipped with netbooks, phones, and medical equipment—are delivering technology's benefits to those people, one village at a time.

These villages—and the Bangladeshis who live in them—are held back in many ways merely by a scarcity of information. The InfoLadies are the bearers of that information. Their netbooks come preloaded with relevant content that can be easily translated to local languages, and their messenger bags carry items like blood pressure monitors and pregnancy kits. Says one InfoLady:

Ask me about the pest that's infecting your crop, common skin diseases, how to seek help if your husband beats you or even how to stop having children, and I may have a solution.

It seems that they often do have solutions—while the young, modern InfoLadies were initially regarded as something of a "scandal," they're now welcomed enthusiastically by individuals looking to check their blood pressure or increase the yield of their crops. One man, hoping to find work in technology, used an InfoLady's netbook to get a crash course on Microsoft Office. Before the InfoLadies arrived, he said, "I had only seen computers in books."

Chameleon-Magic!

GPS Signals Will Improve Thanks To Massive $8bn Overhaul

Despite fears last year that the US Air Force wouldn't be able to afford many more GPS satellites, a massive $8bn upgrade is being planned for overhauling the satellites, replacing each of the 24 satellites over the next decade.

The Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo will be working on the upgrade (said to be three years behind schedule), with 24 going "upstairs" and six being kept back in case of damage. The new satellites will be targeting outages, and will triple the signals available for commercial use—meaning that accessing Google Maps on our phones, using Sat-Navs in our cars, or even withdrawing money from ATMs will be faster and more accurate than before.