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A new type of nuclear reactor could make it possible for us to travel to Mars in as little as two weeks.

Yigal Ronen, professor of nuclear engineering at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, believes that a little-known isotope called americium-242m (Am-242m) could power future robotic or human spacecraft more efficiently than chemical or nuclear propulsion sources.

Am-242m can sustain nuclear fission even when it is formed into thin sheets less than a micron (millionth of a meter) thick. The fission it produces makes it possible to heat materials such as hydrogen, which can be used as a propellant. The thinness of the sheets would make it easy to take along plenty of fuel for a round trip.
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Catalytic converters are supposed to clean up car exhaust and prevent air pollution, but new research shows that they are polluting the atmosphere instead. Italian and French researchers have found dangerous heavy metals from converters far away from their sources, in remote regions of Greenland.

“The fact that we found the metals in Greenland means that it’s a global problem. It’s not just close to the cities or the highways,” says Carlo Barbante, a chemist at the University of Venice.

“The have broken new ground,” says Seth Dunn, of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington environmental group. “The implications could be very significant in terms of human health.”
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We’ve read about it in science fiction, but now it’s true: a scientist has patented a machine that delivers an orgasm to a woman at the push of a button. Stuart Meloy, a surgeon in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, got the idea for the device while performing a routine pain relief operation on a woman’s spine. “We implant electrodes into the spine and use electrical pulses to modify the pain signals passing along the nerves,” he explains. The patient remains conscious during the operation, to help the surgeon find the best position for the electrodes.

Meloy’s breakthrough came when he failed to hit the spot he was aiming for, causing the woman to exclaim, “You’re going to have to teach my husband to do that!”
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Scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey have discovered that your cellphone reveals your vital signs, even when you don’t answer it. Victor and Olga Boric-Lubecke noticed that some of the microwaves transmitted by the cellphone’s antenna bounce back to the phone from the chest, heart and lungsof the person using it, indicating their pulse and breathing rates.

Bell Labs plans to modify their cellphones by adding a circuit that will detect these subtle signals. The phone would send this information on to a base station. “We’re talking about very low-frequency signals,” say the researchers. “They’re easy to separate from a voice.”
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