I show the "Hydrogen Hopes" episode of Alan Alda's Scientific American Fronteirs (PBS) every year in my high school Chemistry class. Mr. Ovshinsky is a prominent figure in the program, showing off his solar cells, hydrogen storage media, and other inventions. The guy was truly remarkable and seemingly always thinking. We need more like him, people who are thinking of ways to improve the world (not just make money).

Anybody else think it's funny that in this case, a vacuum tube is a step up from a transistor?

Actually, the Mayan reference is in the original article along with the links that kdawson appropriated for the article summary. Note to editor: a quote is not the only thing due credit. How about giving credit to Wired for the links too?

There is a mechanism for this kind of inheritance and it is part of a growing field called epigenetics. Whether genes are present are not as important as how they are expressed. Are they switched on or off? Experiments show that gene expression can be altered by environment and that epigentic information can be passed down to the next generation. There was a great Nova episode about it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html

I'm not sure if this is the exact mechanism involved in this study, but it is a possibility.