Hardly a shock

It looks like the HIV virus has now begun to develop a drug-resistance. Considering how it’s been attacked so aggresively in the last ten years, it’s not exactly a surprise. Viruses (virii?) mutate, they develop resistance to the treatments, and develop themselves. It’s a survival situation – if it’s being killed off, it’ll evolve so that the main source of mortality becomes less effective.

TB’s done it, Staphylococcus has done it, HIV is doing it. The human race never seems to learn that Mother Nature is far more powerful – the more we fight, the more she makes us work for it.

Fling me to the moon

via SlashDot, there’s a piece about using a ‘slingshot’ to catch spacecraft and hurl them up to higher altitudes, or even give them a boost on interplanetary flight. It’s not a new idea, more a re-birth of one that’s been around for a while. But in connection with all the other spaceflight stuff going on at the moment ( tourist seats on Soyuz spacecraft, the X Prize, and many others ) it looks like we could be coming up to a new decade of space exploration.

Flexible computing

Over at New Scientist, there’s an interesting piece on the future of PDA-style computers – when they’re too small to be typed on, how do we use them?

The answer may be in making them slightly flexible, so that gently bending them makes them work. Of course, you then couldn’t keep them in your trouser pocket, or anywhere else where flexing is part of the natural movement. All the same, it’s an interesting concept.