Biologist Dr. Craig Venter, whose team of scientists deciphered the human genome about eight years ago, announced that he has now replicated a bacterium’s genetic structure entirely from laboratory chemicals. That in an effort to create the world’s first living artificial organism.

Venter and his team were able to assemble the synthetic genetic structure by combining the chemicals found in amino acids, the building blocks of DNA. Construction…[more]

An asteroid estimated to be between 500 and 2,000 feet long will make a close pass by the Earth on Tuesday of next week.

Scientists assure the world that there is no chance of impact.

The asteroid, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to pass within 334,000 miles of Earth, or about 1.4 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

Officials at…[more]

The University of Missouri is collaborating with De Montfort University, in Leicester, England to develop what is referred to as “fuzzy logic” technology.

Fuzzy logic attempts to replicate human decision making by applying mathematics to vague information in order to produce reliable conclusions. This is a technique that has been used in other applications, but the teams from Missouri and England plan to focus on how fuzzy logic…[more]

Graduate students in the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory at the University of Missouri-Rolla are using an ordinary household appliance to develop and test a technology that could do extraordinary things.

Under the direction of Dr. Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the RTPIS Lab at UMR, a group of Ph.D. students have programmed small, robotic vacuum cleaners called…[more]

Two teams of students from Ozarks colleges and universities are participating in the 2007-2008 NASA University Student Launch Initiative. Both the University of Missouri – Rolla and Harding University (Searcy, Arkansas) are among the field of eleven schools with teams in the event.

The NASA initiative, which is hosted by the organization’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is designed to give students hands-on, practical experience in…[more]

When the alert goes out that a virus has invaded the body, cells that have yet to be attacked prepare by “armoring” themselves for combat, attaching specific antiviral molecules to many of their own proteins to help resist the invader.

These antiviral molecules aren’t literally armor — the virus won’t physically beat on them. But scientists believe adding these molecules to cellular proteins, like putting on armor, changes…[more]

It’s been either voice mail or text – until now.

Alltel Corp. along with SpinVox, a British company, has developed technology that lets wireless phone customers to read their voicemail messages as text messages.

“It’ll appeal to a broad customer base ... people who are in meetings quite regularly…[more]

In community settings, there’s always at least one person or perhaps a group of individuals who are most highly respected. Prison systems are no different; one’s social status results from interpersonal dynamics. To better understand social structure in California prison communities, Brian Colwell, a researcher at the University of Missouri, recently examined peer relationships among inmates. [more]

A shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Canada has caused medical testing delays for thousands of patients in the United States because of a shortage of technetium-99m, a radioactive substance used in medical scans for cancer, heart disease, and bone and kidney illnesses.

Technetium-99m is produced from the decay of the radioisotope molybdenum-99. The Ontario reactor that produces molybdenum-99 for MDS Nordion has been shutdown since…[more]

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A University of Arkansas researcher and a team of international scientists have taken cores from the sediments of a Canadian Arctic lake and found an interglacial record indicating two ice-free periods that could pre-date the Holocene Epoch.

Sonja Hausmann, assistant professor of geosciences in the J. William Fulbright…[more]