Free Republic

YOU might think Norman Packard is playing God. Or you might see him as the ultimate entrepreneur. As founder and CEO of Venice-based company ProtoLife, Packard is one of the leaders of an ambitious project that has in its sights the lofty goal of life itself. His team is attempting what no one else has done before: to create a new form of living being from non-living chemicals in the lab. Breathing the spark of life into inanimate matter was once regarded as a divine prerogative. But now several serious and well-funded research groups are working hard on doing it...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

-- Researchers synthesize gem-sized diamonds of natural colour and exceptional hardness using Chemical Vapour Deposition. -- WITH U.S. GOVERNMENT DEBT now topping US$7 trillion (about US$100,000 for each family of four), and interest rates at historic lows, new life is beginning to breathe through the Canadian resource sector. One sign of this renewed vigor is a sudden surge in prospecting claims being staked throughout vast tracts of the Canadian Arctic. Over 1,500 new permits have been issued this year for Nunavut alone, compared to 190 last year. And according to the Nunavut Mining Recorder’s Office in Iqualuit, the largest number...

Ageless athlete may not be far offPenn's research into a synthetic gene has wide implications for sports.By Frank FitzpatrickInquirer Staff WriterYou know all those steroid-laced sluggers, blood-doped swimmers, and hormonally enhanced weightlifters who people worry are ruining sports?They're just minor-league fears.The real nightmare is lurking inside tiny cages in a University of Pennsylvania basement.There, genetically engineered mice and rats, some of them the equivalent of 80-year-old humans, display rippling, well-toned muscles that neither aging nor a lack of exercise can diminish.Injected only once with a synthetic gene created by researchers in Penn's physiology department, these ripped rodents are as much...