Nicks News Snippets

 Scientists in California are working on a bio-engineered plant based version that they hope will be even better. Muufri's web page says Our solution is to make real milk from the bottom up. It's a fairly simple mixture: six key proteins for structure and function, eight key fatty acids for flavor and richness. In different ratios, these components give us cow's milk, goat's milk, or even buffalo milk – all suitable to become countless products, from toppings to cheeses to desserts. At Muufri they believe that they add value to milk by adding or taking away items of milk that or not needed or  adding thing that our needed. Question? is this really Milk then. Read more Muufri    Gizmag

  Heart transplants are usually carried out with hearts from people who are brain dead. Their  circulatory system is still working and blood is still flowing through the heart and receiving oxygen.     A patient in Australia two months ago received a  donor heart that was technically dead, no blood flowing through it. The heart was placed in a new machine (  "heart-in-a-box" .) that revived it by keeping it warm and placing vital fluids inside it. This procedure could make up to 30 percent more hearts available for transplanted and has been welcomed by the  British Heart Foundation . Source  BBC     http://www.transmedics.com

If you fail to control Japanese Knotweed you could be fined up to £20,000 and a criminal record for Anti social behavior after the Home Office changed the rules and specifically named the plant. The new rules are targeted at rural areas and allow neighbors to report next door for not controlling the plant. The cost of eradicating  the plant in Britain has been estimated at over 1 Billion Pounds. Read more at Plymouth Herald   http://www.telegraph.co.uk      Daily Mail

Image Kone A new elevator made from carbon fibre has been developed to take you even higher in one go. Conventional lifts where limited to 500 meters due to the weight of the lift gear. Now new lift gear made from carbon  fibre will take you up to 1 Kilometre without stopping. The lift developed by  Kone’s is also more energy efficient due to being lighter. Read the full story at   The NewScientist

The orbit of asteroid 1998 QE2. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech I though this worthy of a mention due to the growing number of near earth misses. The number may be going up due to our ability to detect them but it is worrying all the same. An Asteroid nearly 2 miles across flew passed the earth this week at a safe? distance of 3,600,00 miles. This is not the nearest miss but it is the largest asteroid to miss us. The asteroid is thought to be from the deep space. More can be found on this story here BBC   Sky News   Universe Today   NASA

For all you Vampires out there!     The  Independent report the trials in Scotland of Synthetic blood on humans . the blood is made from stem cells taken from volunteers. the  Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine  has been given a licence to manufacture the blood on a industrial scale. Full story at  The independent

      I recently changed my mobile phone provider and decided that I would like to keep on using my old HTC as opposed to the Blackberry curve that came with the contract. As per usual I took my HTC into town to get it unblocked, I have done this with a couple of phones in the passed so anticipate no problems.   Twenty minutes later I had an unblocked phone great, quickly swapped SIMs to make sure it worked yes but no internet. A text quickly arrived asking me to contact O2 to enable WAP  and G3 etc  so swapped the SIMS back until I got home. Called O2 who said the would swap the internet over from Blackberry to normal and send me a text with instructions if it did not come on and would not take effect until the following morning.   Next morning no Internet contacted O2 they said it had been switched but as the phone was not supported by them  they could do no more.    It was then down to myse...