The topics:

• Stephen enjoyed the beautiful weather in Louisiana with his family this weekend.

  Phil and Michael talked about the changing of the Aspen trees. This is the weekend the Aspen leaves change in the Rockies above Denver.

  

  Trees grouped together like this are probably all one organism. They share a root structure.

• Stephen ran over his laptop with his car. Amazingly the computer portion is still operational, just the monitor is hosed.

  It reminded Phil of the time he drove his car into his garage with his roof-mounted bike rack still attached.

  ---

  But on to the "Better All the Time" topics...

• Stem Cells From Skin Cells.

  Last November we learned that adult skin cells could be converted to pluripotent stem cells. There was a problem though. The process used a virus that inserted its genes into the new stem cells - obviously not usable theapeutically.

  A new technique has already been developed. The new vector no longer inserts its DNA in the resulting stem cell. This is wonderful news. It could be the dawn of a new era of personalized medicine.

  Phil and Stephen took a moment to tell some old war stories about the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cells. Pro life guys had attacked Phil about embryonic stem cells saying that there will never be a way to make pluripotent stem cells except by destroying embryos and doing so was evil and Phil's enthusiasm for the possibilities of stem cell research makes him a monster. Godwin's Law was demonstrated quickly.

  Meanwhile Stephen was attacked from the other direction. Stephen predicted that one day pluripotent stem cells could be obtained from adult cells - and when that happened the controversy would be dead. The response to Stephen - we need embryonic stem cell research now and any news that weakens that position shouldn't be published... you sir, are anti-science.

  Phil and Stephen think that the fact they were attacked from both sides for saying essentially the same thing means that they were probably right all along.

• The guys had some laughs at the expense of anyone who would buy the "I Am Rich" screen saver for the iPhone:
  

  You can find the joke that Stephen couldn't say on air here.

• Breaking News! About an hour-and-a-half prior to the show SpaceX put the Falcon 1 into orbit.

  "SpaceX confirms Falcon 1 has reached orbit, making the first privately-developed all-liquid fuel rocket to achieve this feat. So it is sweet success at last for the rocket after three earlier setbacks."

• The Chinese got into orbit and performed a space walk. This makes them only the third nation to accomplish this feat.

• Another "Long Shot Future." The Chinese think that they can get the Emdrive operational. Most mainstream scientists say its an impossible reactionless drive.

  Its a freakin' huge longshot comparable with Blacklight Fusion Power.

• Here's a post on the World's Largest Dumptruck. Check out the comments at that link for some of the controversy over which truck is largest. Stephen is looking forward to Gundam Mechas.

  And here's the reason why you wouldn't want the driver of one of these monsters mad at you.

• Commenter OKDavidRay suggested another good news story - the adoption of cell phones in developing countries. In some places laying phone lines is prohibitively expensive. Cell towers are much cheaper.

• Stephen brought up another good news story. Chryster's secret electric vehicle program. Check out this video:

• The guys dealt with a story that challenges the "Better all the Time" meme:

  "How China Created a new Slave Empire Africa"

  The guys expressed a view that though bad things like slavery continues to happen, the practice is becoming rare. So rare that its shocking when we hear about it.

• Matt Duing pointed us to this story:

  New way to control protein activity could lead to cancer therapies

  Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a way to quickly and reversibly fine-tune the activity of individual proteins in cells and living mammals, providing a powerful new laboratory tool for identifying - more precisely than ever before - the functions of different proteins.

  The new technique also could help to speed the development of therapies in which cancer-fighting proteins are selectively delivered to tumors.

• 12-year-old William Yuan has made a revolutionary improvement in 3D solar cells.

• The Japanese are giving serious attention to the idea of a space elevator.

  The plan calls for the use of carbon nanotubes attached to a fixed platform in orbit and extending to a base station on Earth. These would need to be about four times as strong as existing nanotubes but the strength of such materials has increased a hundredfold in the past five years.

  Stephen remember an old article on the subject he read as a kid back in 1979:

  From an old article by Charles Sheffield, "How to Build a Beanstalk". It gives this table on materials and their support lengths: Tensile Strength Density Support length Material (kg/sq.cm.) (g/cc) (kilometers)

  carbon steel 7,000 7.8 9
  manganese steel 16,000 7.8 21
  drawn tungsten 35,000 19.3 18
  drawn steel wire 42,000 7.8 54
  iron whisker 126,000 7.8 161
  silicon whisker (SiC) 210,000 3.2 660
  graphite whisker 210,000 2.0 1,050
  *fictionite 2,000,000 2.0 10,000

  It appears we are getting closer and closer to having fictionite.

• Next week we are celebrating one year of weekly programming on BlogTalkRadio. Make sure to join us!
  

Our front bumper is a sample of Marginal Prophets' "The Difficult Song."

Our exit music this week is from James Casto. The song is "Courageous."

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