[IN THE NEWS] Talking Mice?!

Talking mice? Well, maybe not today, but a team of German scientists, studing the evolution of speech and language, have created transgenic mice with the gene associated with human speech. [ScienceDirect.com]

IO9.com wrote: [link]

The researchers wanted to shed light on how humans developed our language capabilities, including the intricate thought and muscle coordination which allowed us as a species to develop complex language. One gene responsible for that development is the FOXP2 gene. Its absence leads to speech disorders, and its presence is an important component of human speech. Humans and Neanderthals are known to have a specific variation on the FOXP2 gene, though versions of it appear in other mammals and birds.

So while these experiments may not result in NIMH rodents, who knows what might happen if these mice are left to continue their line with the mutation?

[IN THE NEWS] Anti-Metal Virus (Bacteria)

I read an article today that got me thinking again about the Anti-Metal Virus Erick wrote about in Mutants Down Under Sourcebook back in '88:

LINK: Science Daily Article / io9 Article

Researchers are trying to find ways to use metal-extracting bacteria in a preemptive move to prevent struggles over natural resources.

In nature these deep sea bacteria extract metals from the sea water to form manganese or cobalt nodules and crust; the result of a process known as biomineralization. Scientists hope to harness this ability to mine the ocean floor for these and other precious elements.

It's not that far of a step to imagine that this process couldn't be perverted into some weaponized viral strain to produce the AMV that was mentioned in Mutant's Down Under. Does this send a shiver up anyone else's spine?

* * *

The first argument people inevitably make is the virus vs. bacteria argument, A virus can't affect metal! My response is that the AMV virus may not be a virus in the conventional sense. Alternatively, it may have just been given that name by some military or government entity because they like the sound of it and didn't care for the difference between virus and bacteria.

Maybe Anti-Metal Virus is actually a nano-virus. A swarm of nanomachines could concevably do what the the AMV is reportedly able to do, "metal artifacts immediately stop working and eventually rust into a useless blob." Perhaps, once the AMV comes into contact with a metal surface, the nanomacines penetrate the metal surface and start replecating (causing a localized EM field that paralizes any electronics and causes an accelerates the oxidizing process which first gums up the works and then eventally turns the oject into a "useless blob".

You could also just look at it from the ficticious (bends/ignores-the-laws-of-nature) perspective and take it as some futuristic/alien virus that actually can exist in a world populated by intelligent anthropomorphic mutant animals...

Your choice.