Robot researcher Zou Renti, of the Xi'an Supermen Sculpture Institution, and his clone were recently hanging out at the 2006 China Robot Expo in Beijing. His robot likeness has a skin of silica gel that supposedly moves with lifelike movements.

Which is which?

Monkey Problems? Bring in Kong.
New Delhi has an unusual urban woe — marauding monkeys. Its solution: bring in even bigger monkeys.

Hungry Rhesus macaques roam the streets and even the subway, leap through treetops outside grand government buildings and scale fences of companies and private homes in search of open windows and tempting food, according to TIME. Even Delhi's police headquarters has been raided by a monkey gang.

So to deal with the challenging problem, Delhi has launched "a monkey arms race." In fact, companies and city officials have begun employing langurs — large, black-faced apes — to protect buildings and scare off the smaller rhesus monkeys. "With their sharp teeth and long, muscular tail that can swot an errant ape from a couple of feet away, langurs are scary to humans — not just a smaller rhesus monkey," TIME reports.

Scientists Create Heaviest Element Ever Made
On Monday, researchers from Russia and the U.S. announced that they have created a new super-heavy element, atomic number 118, The Associated Press reports.

Scientists said they smashed together calcium with the manmade element Californium to make an atom with 118 protons in its nucleus. Although the new element lasted for only one millisecond, it was the heaviest element ever made and the first manmade inert gas — the atomic family that includes helium, neon and radon.

If confirmed, the still-unnamed element would be placed beneath radon on the periodic table of elements, according to Ken Moody of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California.

Meanwhile…

Biologists Fight Bacteria with Grammar
According to another AP report this week, biologists may have found a promising new way to fight nasty bacteria — simply by using grammar rules alongside test tubes.

According to AP:

Studying a potent type of bacteria-fighters found in nature, called antimicrobial peptides, biologists found that they seemed to follow rules of order and placement that are similar to simple grammar laws. Using those new grammar-like rules for how these antimicrobial peptides work, scientists created 40 new artificial bacteria-fighters.

Nearly half of those new germ-fighters vanquished a variety of bacteria and two of them beat anthrax, according to a paper in Thursday's journal Nature.

Using grammar as their guide, scientists could easily produce tens of thousands of new bacteria-fighters and test them for use as future drugs, said study lead author Gregory Stephanopoulos, a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For those of you who dig physics…and find yourself with simply too much free time on your hands: physics games.

Researchers of Carnegie Mellon University have managed to teach a computer to recognize and transform 2D images into 3D. Some call it revolutionary, others say boring. You decide:

Andy Griffith for Sheriff
A Platteville, Wisconsin man has legally changed his name to Andy Griffith, the actor who famously portrayed TV's fictional sheriff of Mayberry. He hopes the move will get him elected in the Nov. 7 election for sheriff.

Griffith is now the legal name of the former William Fenrick, a 42-year-old co-owner of a local music store. He filed the paperwork in May to change his name, the goal being to focus attention to a sheriff's race that otherwise gets little.

(Note: the character that the actor Andy Griffith played on the '60s TV show "The Andy Griffith Show" was, in fact, called Andy Taylor. Optimus Prime was already taken, by a U.S. Army Ohio National Guard firefighter.)

Here's your 15 minutes, sir.

Reuters headline:

Russia probes reports Spanish king shot drunk bear

Sometimes the headline is enough.

Superhero Suit Brainstormed on the Mountain
Five years ago, 39-year-old engineer and snowboarder Richard Palmer figured there had to be a better way to avoid bruising during a tumble than the restrictive, uncomfortable and often ineffective gear available, reports BusinessWeek.

Palmer's company, d3o Lab, invented a flexible foam material that hardens into a protective shell on impact. According to the manufacturer, the lightweight bendable d3o material is produced by combining a viscous fluid with a polymer.

Today the shear-thickening (a term that refers to a fluid's viscosity) material is used in a range of sports equipment and apparel ranging from soccer goalkeeper gloves to skateboarding shoes. The U.S. and Canadian Olympic slalom ski teams used d3o-enhanced Spyder racing suits in the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Yet potential applications range from protective gear for the military, police and firefighters to safety seats for cars that protect against high-force impact to soundproofing. As such, the upstart is attracting the attention of players such as NASA and Boeing. The company is currently in discussions with the U.S. Army to develop a protective suit to soften the impact for troops when they hit the ground to dodge bullets.

Rubens Tube Experiment
Here some guy takes a PVC pipe and pokes hundreds of holes in the top. Then he pours gas into it and sets fire to it. As he plays different sounds in the room, the flames move to the sound being played.

Cheers.