Okay, this is a bit freaky for me: Rings of bone grown for couples:

Couples who want to share more than vows are getting the opportunity to share their bone too in a "bio jewellery" research project.

Using bioglass, a special bioactive ceramic which mimics the structure of bone material, researchers are growing rings made out of the couples' bone.

Five couples are having the rings made. They will be grown from bone cells taken from their jawbone.

The project in London aims to ignite public debate about bioengineering.

I can see how it would ignite public debate. On the otherhand, it does have potential to add to the efforts to grow bone for medical reasons:

Eventually the technique, which is an emerging one, could be used to grow large bits of bone for people with cancer or who need bone replacements.

Several research teams around the world are experimenting with different methods to grow bone.

Scientists have transformed stem cells from adult human bone marrow into nerve cells by transplanting them into damaged chicken embryos.

Another group of researchers are developing an inkjet printer that can create "made to measure" skin and bones to treat people with severe burns or disfigurements.

But bone growing research is still at early stages, and bone which can sustain and survive with its own blood vessel structures, for instance, is some way off.

Deep Impact is almost to it's destination, Comet Tempel 1.

"It's a bullet trying to hit a second bullet with a third bullet, in the right place at the right time, watching the first two bullets and gathering the scientific data from that impact," he told a news briefing in Washington on Thursday.

It should be interesting.

I was going to add: "So who chose the name 'Deep Impact' for this spacecraft anyway? It sounds more like the title of a movie starring Bruce Willis." And then I read:

The mission is named after the 1998 Hollywood film in which an astronaut attempts to stop a comet hitting the Earth.

Oh. Okay, so it was Robert Duvall and not Bruce Willis....

Interesting article from USA Today (Via Yahoo! News) on a topic near and dear to my heart - diversity. Immigration causes age, race split.

Immigration is creating a generational divide between old, white America and a young America of many races, annual Census population figures out Thursday show.

The influx of newcomers, driven largely by Hispanics, is taking the country far beyond the traditional red-state/blue-state split between Republicans and Democrats that has preoccupied the nation in recent years. It is forming sharp age and race divisions: The old are mostly white, and the young are increasingly Hispanic, Asian and other minorities.

"(Age) 40 is a monumental dividing line," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The generation gap puts pressure on communities that must juggle rising elderly populations and swelling school enrollments. [...]

Three of five Americans under 40 are white, but four of five above 40 are white.

Marketers recognize the shift.

"Beer ads, for example, are targeted at younger people and are more ethnic," says Paul Kelly, president of Silvermine Consulting Group in Westport, Conn., which works with consumer products companies. "Ads with party scenes are very diverse."

Retailers also are dealing with another demographic shift: A growing multicultural population.

Marriages across racial and ethnic lines jumped 65% in the 1990s and make up one in 15 marriages in the USA, up from one in 23 in 1990, Frey says.

"Everyone realizes that we're a nation of diversity now, and they want to celebrate it," says Allison Cohen, president of PeopleTalk, a market research company in Wenham, Mass. "Americans have come to see diversity in their workplace, in who their friends are."

There's a related article: Diversity tints new kind of generation gap

Generational differences highlighted in Census Bureau population estimates released today add complexity to everything from politics to marketing. Even segments of society that once seemed homogeneous are far more difficult to define today.

[...]

The distinctions may be even more blurred for younger generations who are exposed not only to diversity, but also to multiracial couples and their children.

"Beginning with Generation X (people in their 20s to early 40s) and all the generations that follow, multicultural is normal," says Ann Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing, a New York consulting firm. "They are not being born in a world that is all white bread. Their friends are all races, sexual preferences. They walk the walk of a nation that is a melting pot like we haven't seen before."

[...]

Among white Americans, the highest percentage of foreign-born are 65 and older, Passel says. They were part of the last big immigration wave of the early 20th century.

The contrast prompts debate among demographers and policy analysts about how well the nation is adjusting to its growing diversity.

"On one level, we're getting used to our new skin ethnically," says Gregory Rodriguez, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington. Clashes still occur but "they're not ethnic battles, they're generational battles."

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