Hubble Repair....?

Astronauts will install two new instruments and repair two inactive ones in five six-and-a-half-hour spacewalks during the Hubble Space Telescope’s final servicing mission. Afterward, it should be able to study galaxies even farther away and in three different spectra: near-ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared. NASA expects at least another five years of stunning images from the Hubble.

Nature's Grossest Creatures on world

A good dose of nature can still soothe the psyche of the modern human, but sometimes nature, red in tooth and claw, can also just gross you out. Wasps turn helpless caterpillars into a 24x7 buffet for young ones, mama mantis snacks on the head of its former lover, and a frog gives new meaning to oral fixation when nurturing the kiddies.
Go ahead and judge. These creatures don't care whether they win marks for beauty by human standards -- anything goes when survival and reproduction are at stake. They compete to not win any Darwin Awards.
Perhaps it's time for us humans to reassess our thinking, rather than let an aesthetic sense blind us to natural forms and functions that work well. Maggots writhing in a wound can disgust, sure, but saving a limb without risking an attack by antibiotic-resistant bacteria? That's beautiful.

Microvision's Pocket Projector Shines

We finally got a look at the SHOW, Microvisions almost-ready-for-prime-time laser projector. We certainly like the size—alittle bigger than an iPod in current form, and planned to be about iPod-sizedwhen other companies brand it and sell it around the end of the year. But the video quality left us a little disappointed. Color is fantastic, thanks to the lasers. (More impressive than the white LEDs Isuspect are in 3Ms projector.) But forthe same reason, the detail was a bit lacking, due to a phenomenon calledspeckle. When a laser hits a screen, some of the light bounces straight back,into the oncoming beam, causing interference. The effect made it look like the SHOW was projecting onto burlap instead of onto a smooth tablecloth, wall, orscreen. Although they promise the final versionwill look better.
The folks from Microvision say that 9 out of 10 people theyshowed it to didnt even notice the speckle. That seems hard to believe. Buteven with the speckles, the ability to shine big-screen images anywhere you gois awfully appealing.