Poetry-generating electronic fridge magnets are on their way to your kitchen. The brainchild of researchers in Scotland and Sweden, each magnet has an LCD that displays a word selected at random from a 200-word vocabulary. The magnets communicate with their neighbours to make allegedly poetic phrases, such as 鈥渢he slimy frogs ruffled intelligently鈥�. Sounds like Vogon poetry to us.
Short-sightedness is caused by elongation of the eye鈥檚 outermost tissue, the sclera. Now scientists at Caltech in Pasadena have found a way to boost the sclera鈥檚 strength sufficiently to prevent this happening. They inject a polymer into the tissue and activate it with light or ultrasound, making compounds in the sclera form strengthening cross-links with the material (US patent application 2005/0271590).
