Very misleading original article full of misguided complaints. Controls on the export of native plants or other biological specimen have been in place for hundreds of years, and with much harsher penalties.

The members of the expedition have a, admittedly tedious, path to get permits. Just play by the rules.

When John Rolfe smuggled tobacco from Trinidad to Virginia in 1611, establishing its tobacco farming industry, there was a mandatory death sentence for seed smugglers imposed by the Spanish colonialists.

but passenger aircraft have very standard motorized windscreen wipers, really low tech...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIasu8TdhA&hd=1

For maximum effect, apply JP-8 and scorching hot exhausts simultaneously!

His password is open source and everybody is entitled to read it, modify it, or to sell it as text source if he can find a buyer, as long as the copyright notice remains attached!

The reported method requires that specially coated nanoparticles are first injected though the bone. That is just drilling a smaller hole.

That guy is a rich retired lawyer, not an archeologist or historian. See his profile at

http://www.explorers.org/index.php/about/explorers_club_president

There are zero indications in the linked article that they plan to include any professionals on their expedition, and in his portrait there is no record that he has ever teamed up with such on previous endeavors. Looting or just damaging a tomb of this importance by amateurs, should it be found, would be an enormous cultural loss. A painstaking archeological dig would probably take 20 years and proceed with extreme caution. These guys do not look like they have the patience - to me they certainly look like they would prefer instant gratification and fame by brandishing a few choice artefacts from the tomb if they can find it.

triple DNA helixes are also known, just to expand your horizon beyond what is simplified in highschool textbooks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-stranded_DNA

They are now starting the astronaut selection program for a trip in 10 years, but there is no indication whatever that they are concerned about the much more fundamental task of designing a transport ship?!?! Really, really suspicious. What are the prospects supposed to train on/for ?

"People in thirty seven countries have purchased our merchandise, demonstrating their support for Mars One"

OK, I understand. Presumably the foundation managers are well paid. That is no problem even for a non-profit.

Software is about the only remotely tech-centric field where you have a small chance of success as a college dropout founder even without prior certified qualification, and then only in submarkets which do not cater to other high-tech or regulated fields.

You may become a lucky millionaire with a blockbuster iPad app for the unwashed masses - if you somehow hit the customer taste better than your 1000 competitors, and cash in before you spend your money on the next 10 unsuccessful projects - , but you will never get a foot into, for the average start-up company, much more reliably profitable fields like machinery design and control software, simulation and research data processing tools, or even seemingly boring stuff like custom database-related software which needs to adhere to strict regulations - which is about anything from bookkeeping to medical data processing.

And do not even dream about starting your biotech company directly out of high-school.

This smells fishy. Certainly, there are no laws of nature violated... carbon dioxide can be hydrogenated to hydrocarbons, alcohols, etc., that is well-known technology ...but why would anybody trying to build a commercial company presumably trying to earn money at some stage go to the expense (both financially and energy-wise) to isolate carbon dioxide from air (0.04%), when it is readly available for example from the exhaust of tradional power plants and other fuel-burning processes (>22%, up to 100% with 'clean coal' tech), or, if you want to go fully biological, from fermentation operations (100%). That does not make any economic sense at all.

Also, the point about the lack additives is strange. Original refinery fuel is almost pure hydrocarbons and minor oxidation products, too - the additives are not a side product of the distillation process from oil. The addititives are added (immediately before filling the delivery trucks) because they improve the burn characteristics, lubrication, waste product accumulation - which are needed for synfuel in the same fashion.

The article makes no mention of thriving competitors with similar business models which have already been in business for several years.

A post about such a topic omitting any reference to, for example, DeepDyve (www.deepdyve.com) can only be classified as advertisement.

Note that there has been *zero* human testing yet, not even phase 1 tests on healthy human subjects. From among the compounds that make it to that stage, maybe one in 50 or 100 (!) really makes it to market.

Aminopyridines (the class this new compound is from) have known pharmaceutical uses - and some compounds of this class have severe side effects, such as causing epileptic seizures that are difficult to reproduce in animals. .And its pretty reactive amino group is a general red flag.

But of course I wish the researchers luck with their tests.

This is non-news. Cures which work in cell cultures are a dime a dozen. This is at least six years from going to market, and has >95% chance to fail as an actual drug.

The real progress are the recently introduced, FDA-approved treatments by Vertex, Merck (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/23/us-vertex-idUSTRE74M3I320110523) and soon Gilead (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-bristolmyers-hepatitis-idUSBRE83I0T920120419). These are really fantastic advances in the treatment of that disease.

will be filed simultaneously (*) in Europe, Japan, and increasingly in BRIC countries to protect world-wide market potential.

So what is to be gained if the US text is kept secret, but the essentially identical application is in the open in three dozen other countries?

(*) especially after the recent changes in the US patent system to use the same principles as the rest of the world

Japanese researchers have recently created a system which identifies drivers by recognizing their asses in the driver's seat:

http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/tnks/Nni20111213D13JSN01.htm