Modern tissue engineering techniques could enable the development and production of meat grown, or ‘cultured’, in the lab. This research into in vitro meat (see figure 1 for an example) has its roots in experiments conducted by NASA, and since then, the idea has slowly trickled into the focus of other research groups (at the moment, the main hubs of activity appear to universities in the Netherlands). But even as early as 1930, Churchill has said:

Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.

Thought experiments are mental exercises, or imaginative experiments, which are often not possible to perform with current technology. They appear to be particularly popular in physics and philosophy, but are by no means limited to these two fields. There are a couple of thought experiments that employ demons. After all, an imaginary entity with awesome powers can be quite useful in a thought experiment, can’t it?

Three of the most famous thought experiments that center around a demon with amazing capabilities, are:

Descartes’ Evil Demon

Twitter and Facebook have been studied extensively and have provided some insights into the formation and maintenance of human social networks. But could this approach be adapted to gain understanding of swarming behavior in animals, say, locusts?

Editing DNA holds great promise, but like all new technologies that are still in their infancy, it’s still slow, expensive and hard to use. However, researchers are developing genome-scale editing tools that might aid in quickly and easily rewriting the genomes of living cells. Harvard-based researchers have developed a new way to edit the genome of living bacteria.

Global warming is a complex matter, with many effects interacting. This, of course, makes modeling it accurately a great challenge. Now, a new feedback mechanism has been identified. The quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. But how does this affect our world?

Recently, a research team has been looking into how higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere affect the soil and its ability to take up methane and nitrous oxide, or release these potent greenhouse gases. By gathering data from 49 experiments across the globe, the team went looking for general patterns. They found two strongly emerging patterns: