mathoda.com

As most people know, when you touch something, you leave fingerprints behind. Those fingerprints are composed of sweat found in pores on the ridges of the surface of your finger. For a long time people have examined the shape of those fingerprints. But what about examining the chemical composition of that sweat?

Apparently researchers can now use gold nanoparticles to analyze the components of fingerprint sweat (http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn11887).

So basically forensic science can figure out what substances you have been consuming from your fingerprints. Police may use this to narrow their list of suspects to the smoker, coffee drinker or drug addict. Or competitive athletes may find themselves barred from a sporting event after their fingerprint is analyzed.

The true power of this technology would be for the lid of your talking cookie jar. “No Mr. Anderson, you may not open me, because you have already eaten enough.”

Of course this can all be foiled with gloves.

An interesting project has begun to catalog every known species, Wikipedia style. That is, each species gets its own web page, with photos, video and sound recordings, and locator maps when possible, and is subject to the same public editing process practices on Wikipedia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/08/AR2007050801803.html?nav=rss_education

I wonder if someone will eventually add the DNA sequence of each species…

Update, 5/9/07: A video showing what the encyclopedia of life will look like can be found here: http://www.eol.org/home.html

Since heart attacks are the number one cause of death in the USA, reading this article on heart attack therapies could be quite important.

http://www.slate.com/id/2165826/fr/rss/