Were any movies made by Hollywood about Pearl Harbor during the war? What movies were made during the war about events that precipitated the war?

As will probably be obvious, I want to know how soon is “too soon.”

You thought the Mini was a small car? Behold, the nanocar. Sounds a little too small for me, but it should get great mileage:

The nano-car’s molecular motor contains a pair of bonded carbon molecules that rotate in one direction if illuminated by a specific wavelength of light. After fixing the molecular engine to the car’s chassis and shining a light on it, Tour’s team confirmed that the engine was running by using nuclear magnetic resonance to monitor the position of the hydrogen atoms within it…

…Tour estimates that the car could travel two nanometres per minute but says his team has yet to find a way to watch their molecular automobile in action. “We think the car would drive along, but we wouldn’t be able to see it and I don’t think people would believe us,” he says.

You don’t say…

Even if they can get them working, I’ll bet they still can’t find a parking space in Manhattan.

Here are the top ten, according to Tech Republic. And the year is still young.

I remember reading about this technique, using inkjet technology for constructing artificial organs, a few years ago. It’s starting to pay off:

Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. “After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner,” says Forgacs.

The future may be here sooner than we think. And it makes things like Larry Niven’s concern about people harvesting corpsickles for body parts seem pretty silly.

This could have huge implications for almost any viral-borne disease (including avian flu):

Aethlon Medical, a small San Diego biotech company, is developing a portable de-vice that removes viruses from blood. Known as the Hemopurifier, it filters not only smallpox but numerous other viruses, including Marburg and Ebola.

The Hemopurifier resembles a shrunken dialysis cartridge, the rolling-pin-size de-vice that purifies the blood of patients whose kidneys have failed. Both use a filter to remove toxins from blood. But unlike traditional dialysis, the Hemo-purifier also includes plant-derived antibodies, such as cyanovirin, that bind to a variety of viruses and eliminates them from the bloodstream. The plant solution can be modified to weed out even genetically engineered germs.

…in the lab:

They took a bladder biopsy from each patient and isolated muscle cells and special bladder cells called urothelial cells, which they grew in the lab.

The cells were then placed onto a specially designed bladder-shaped scaffold and left to grow for seven to eight weeks.

The researchers surgically attached the engineered bladder to the patient’s own bladder and followed progress for up to five years.

They’re working on hearts as well. This sort of thing seems inevitable to me, and it’s exciting that it seems to be coming along very quickly, because I (curiously, like everyone I know) am not getting any younger.

Check out the latest generation in computer graphics. It’s getting very, very (almost frighteningly) close to photorealistic.

[Via The Speculist]

I don’t have much time to post today, because we have relatives visiting and went down to the Everglades, but I thought that this new electronic innovation was interesting. I’m going to order a bunch.

As Paul Hsieh says, you don’t necessarily have to be autistic to find this device useful:

A device that can pick up on people’s emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.

Or maybe cluelessness on this front is one of the defining characteristics of autism.

More trouble for Airbus.

As a Boeing stockholder, I’m happy, but I’m not thrilled with so little competition in the world air transport industry. It would be nice to see some non-subsidized companies in this business, but the barriers to entry are acrophobically high.