Spanish Baby Engineered To Cure Brother – “When the parents discussed having a second child, they realized they might have found a cure for Andres at the same time. If Javier could be sure to be free of the disease, and also an immunological match for Andres, he would be the ideal donor for a vital bone marrow transplant to Andres. So the parents went for it…”

Vista SP2 and Windows 7 by the End of June 2009 – “The evolution of the Windows client, involving both Windows Vista (now with Service Pack 1) and Windows 7, appears to be closer than Microsoft is ready to acknowledge officially…”

ASUS may ship two-screen Windows 7 notebooks in Q1 – “Asustek, also known as ASUS — the people who make the Eee PC — plans to ship new notebooks that have touch screens on both the top (where the screen normally goes) and the bottom (where the keyboard normally goes) as early as the first quarter of next year, according to a report…”

Unveiled: The car with a gadget that guarantees every traffic light will be green when you get there – “The AA said the device – which is not yet in mass production – could be vital in meeting new European Union emissions standards. The motoring organisation added: ‘This could be an extremely useful tool for reducing CO2 and saving motorists money. However, it will need to be tested thoroughly in many real and different types of traffic conditions to ensure there are no problems with other drivers.’”

UK: Jet captain reported UFO sighting – “Thousands of documents about reported UFO sightings — ranging from calm accounts by professional pilots to unhinged rants about the extraterrestrial menace — have been released by the British Ministry of Defence…”

Thunderbirds-style military planes are go – “THE US military is planning a Thunderbirds-style space-plane designed to fly a crack squad of heavily armed marines to trouble spots anywhere in the world within two hours…”

Not so dumb animals – “Dogs, however, look like an exception to this rule. Some, such as herding sheepdogs, have been bred for tasks that seem to involve a lot of intelligence. More intriguingly, an experiment carried out in 2004 by Brian Hare, then at Harvard and now of Duke University in North Carolina, suggested that natural selection in the context of domestication had boosted dogs’ intelligence, too, by allowing them to understand human behaviour in a way that their ancestors, wolves, cannot. The latest study of the matter, however, suggests that is not the case after all, and that wolves, not dogs, are the clever ones…”

The Car that Runs on Air and Magnets – “With fuel prices rising and supplies dwindling, more and more inventors are turning their creativity towards cars that work without the need for barrels of gasoline. True, there have been a number of vehicles released that run on electricity but now designers are turning to another precious resource – air…”

Portable light in your pocket – “About the size of a credit card and powered by a small cell this mobile pocket light concept designed by Hyun Jin Yoon & Eun Hak Lee could be of great practical use when you really need a light source…”

Revamped lead-acid battery could slash cost of hybrids – HYBRID-electric vehicles (HEVs) could become cheaper thanks to a breakthrough that would allow inexpensive lead-acid batteries to replace the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries they now use. Similar battery systems could also be used to smooth out fluctuations in the power output of wind turbines…”

[See previous IR]