SCIENCE Top Story: Engineering
Bacteria to Harvest Light - [Technology Review] Commonly used lab bacteria
called E. coli can be converted into light-harvesting organisms in a single genetic
step, according to new research from MIT. The genetic enhancement allows microorganisms
that normally derive their cellular energy from sugars to switch to a diet of
sunlight. These findings could ultimately be used to genetically engineer bacteria
that can more efficiently produce biofuels, drugs, and other chemicals. 
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TECHNOLOGY Top Story: Interactive
Store Mirror Allows Online Participants to Tell You How You Look - [International
Herald Tribune] A new mirror, introduced to Nanette Lepore fashion ware by IconNicholson,
an interactive design firm in New York, takes the concept of shopping in tandem
one step further by streaming real-time video to the Internet and inviting shoppers
to actively involve off-site friends to join the process.
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BUSINESS Top Story: How
Green is My Purchase? - [International Herald Tribune] Just as food products
are labeled with calorie and nutritional information, consumer products are beginning
to bear details about their environmental impact, like the amount of greenhouse
gases produced in making, transporting and selling them.
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SOCIETY Top Story: Brave
Old World - How the Elderly are Seizing America - [Guardian] A social phenomenon
is sweeping America as its population becomes more and more dominated by the elderly.
A quiet retirement is not for them. Internet dating website Match.com says its
most lucrative demographic is the over-50s. It is clearly no longer about a home
in Florida, pottering around the garden and a pension plan. It is now a story
of new jobs, increased political power and a devil-may-care attitude to living
life however one sees fit. They are redefining what it means to grow old in America.
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GLOBAL POLITICS Top Story:
MIT
Sponsoring Contest to Solve Israeli-Palestinian Conflict - [Daily Comet] The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is trying to mobilize the world's brainpower
to solve one of its most intractable problems: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
MIT officials are inviting individuals or teams from any country to participate
in its "Just Jerusalem" competition. The contest aims to find a way
to make Jerusalem "just, peaceful and sustainable" by 2050 so that Palestinians
and Israelis can live side by side in a city both consider their capital.
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ENVIRONMENT Top Story: U.S.
Developing System to Track Global Warming Gas - [Reuters] The United States
is developing a system to track atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, which could help scientists project future climate change, a government
researcher said. The CarbonTracker monitors carbon dioxide levels throughout North
America to create an Internet-based map.
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THE FUTURE Top Story: The
Sky is Falling, Really - [International Herald Tribune] People have been aware
for some time now that there is a slim but real possibility — about 1 in
45,000 — that an 850-foot-long asteroid called Apophis could strike Earth
with catastrophic consequences on April 13, 2036. What few probably realize is
that there are thousands of other space objects that could hit us in the next
century that could cause severe damage, if not total destruction.
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