Though OS X Lion only released last July, less than one year ago, Apple has announced the next upgrade to their operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, obviously taking a cue from Leopard’s jump to Snow Leopard. This iteration of Apple’s desktop operating system will be more like its mobile operating system, iOS, than ever, with the inclusion of some new features, as well as iCloud being bandied about the operating system like never before.

Apple has been around since the very dawn of the Silicon Valley, and has always been a forerunner in unique design. With such a pedigree, wouldn’t it be nice to view the company’s entire design history in one quick, 39 second rundown? Well, thanks to Rob Beschizza, now you can. Though the images fly by at breakneck speed, I didn’t notice any major oversights. For the truly brave, you can see all of the computers made by NeXt, Steve Jobs’ other computer company, after the break.

Yesterday, Skype announced that it is acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. Though the terms of the deal were not made public, AllThingsD reports that Skype will pay in the ballpark of 85 million bucks for GroupMe, a company that was founded only around one year ago in 2010. GroupMe allows users to create phone groups with other people and send text messages throughout the group, so the acquisition makes sense for Skype, a service that has been recently focused on video-based services, but with the acquisition of GroupMe, can now shore up its text-based services.

We commonly think of methane as being nothing more than a convenient fule source, recent extraction issues not withstanding. To chemists, however, methane is held in high regard for its potential for constructing complex biological compounds. Since it consists of single carbon atom with four hydrogen, it is the simplest of hydrocarbons and a useful starting point from which to build. Unfortunately, methane is reluctant to react because those hydrogen-carbon bonds are so strong. Scientists have managed to make methane more reactive by breaking one of those bonds, but doing so has traditionally requires high heat and dangerous acids.

This was the case until Pedro Perez at Spain’s University of Huelva presented his team’s research, which made methane react without acid and at a mere 40º C. Perez’s approached mixed the methane with super-critical carbon dioxide. In the super-critical form, the CO2 is neither gas nor liqud, and mixed will with the other chemicals in the reaction. With the addition of a silver-based catalyst the reaction proceeded and was successful.

Perez’s work hods a two-fold benefit. First, using methane in reactions could lead to the improved manufacture of any carbon-based substance, like drugs and plastics. It also could better use existing methane, which is a greenhouse gas often claimed to be more dangerous than CO2. Using Perez’s process, methane could be remade and do more good than it would floating around in the atmosphere.

(via New Scientist)

Your initial question might be something along the lines of why anyone would want horrible little worms producing the butt-threads of horrible eight-legged hell beasts. The answer is simple: Industry. Threads of spider silk have long been known to have amazing, properties, as Gizmag relates:

It has a tensile strength similar to that of high-grade steel while only being one-fifth as dense, it can stretch up to 1.4 times its relaxed length without breaking, and it can maintain those properties down to a temperature of -40C (-40F).

In large enough quantities, the silk of spiders could be used to repair human ligaments and produce bulletproof vests. Spiders are, however, harder to work with than their cousins the silkworms. For one thing, spiders have a tendency to eat each other in captivity, and are generally difficult to manage in large numbers. Hence, the need to create silkworms that carry the silk-making genetics of spiders.

Two companies, Sigma Life Science and Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, began their work by inserting random spider genes into the silkworms. They claim that through this method they’ve produced threads far stronger than silkworm silk, though not yet as strong as true spider silk. Bolstered by their success, the companies plan to continue their work with more targeted genetic modifications, hoping to get pure spider silk.

The idea behind the genetically modified silkworms isn’t all that new. Goats with spider genes produced milk that contained high concentrations of silk proteins, which could in turn be crafted into super-strong materials. If Spidersilkworms are too horrific a concept, than perhaps Spidergoat will rest a little easier on your mind.

(via Gizmag, Wikipedia)