Words I never expected to type into Google: "sex gen cuddle rug".

Raising the stakes on a two-year-old intellectual property controversy in Second Life, a popular seller of online adult novelties filed a federal copyright- and trademark-infringement lawsuit against Linden Lab this week. The suit claims that Linden looks the other way, while virtual residents rip off the SexGen product line, which includes specially programmed beds, rugs, sofas and even a coffin that enable consenting avatars to engage in virtual sex acts.

Attorneys for Eros LLC founder Kevin Alderman wrote: "Those merchants who sell cheap, imitation knockoffs bearing the SexGen mark harm Eros by causing further confusion among consumers when the products they purchased do not function in the ways they expect SexGen products to function."

For its part, Linden Lab makes money by charging a modest membership fee, running a currency exchange between Linden bucks and real U.S. dollars, and selling and taxing virtual real estate -- all of which is tainted by profits from the pirated material, the lawsuit claims.

Extreme steel 'Velcro' takes a 35-tonne load

A square metre of the new fastener, called Metaklett, is capable of supporting 35 tonnes at temperatures up to 800 °C, claim Josef Mair and colleagues at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. And just like everyday Velcro it can be opened up without specialised tools and used again.

Conventional hook-and-loop fasteners are used for everything from bandages to cable boots in aircraft and securing prosthetic limbs. Mair thinks his spring-steel fastener is tough enough to be used for building facades or car assembly. "A car parked in direct sunlight can reach temperatures of 80 °C, and temperatures of several hundred °C can arise around the exhaust manifold," he says, but Metaklett should be able to shrug off such extremes.

The fastening is made from perforated steel strips 0.2 millimetres thick, one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and the other sporting jagged spikes.

Metaklett can support maximum weight when pulled on in the plane of the strips, and a square metre can hold a perpendicular load of 7 tonnes, says Mair.

Mice Levitated in Lab

Scientists working on behalf of NASA built a device to simulate variable levels of gravity. It consists of a superconducting magnet that generates a field powerful enough to levitate the water inside living animals, with a space inside warm enough at room temperature and large enough at 2.6 inches wide for tiny creatures to float comfortably in during experiments.

The researchers first levitated a young mouse, just three-week-old and weighing 10 grams. It appeared agitated and disoriented, seemingly trying to hold on to something.

"It actually kicked around and started to spin, and without friction, it could spin faster and faster, and we think that made it even more disoriented," said researcher Yuanming Liu, a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. They decided to mildly sedate the next mouse they levitated, which seemed content with floating.

I wonder if this would actually feel like freefall? I guess it would, since all of your tissues would be being lifted simultaneously, including in the fluid and hairs inside your semicircular canals.

Evolution's third replicator

We humans have let loose something extraordinary on our planet - a third replicator - the consequences of which are unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

The first replicator was the gene - the basis of biological evolution. The second was memes - the basis of cultural evolution. I believe that what we are now seeing, in a vast technological explosion, is the birth of a third evolutionary process. We are Earth's Pandoran species, yet we are blissfully oblivious to what we have let out of the box.

This might sound apocalyptic, but it is how the world looks when we realise that Darwin's principle of evolution by natural selection need not apply just to biology. Given some kind of copying machinery that makes lots of slightly different copies of the same information, and given that only a few of those copies survive to be copied again, an evolutionary process must occur and design will appear out of destruction.

Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky

The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.

The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, has now called for it to be upgraded. The US air force, whose radar technology the ADS is based on, is increasing its annual funding of the system from $2 million to $10 million.

Previously.

Better Vision, With an Implanted Telescope

In a brief outpatient procedure, a corneal specialist implants the mini-telescope in one eye in place of its natural lens. The telescope magnifies images on the retina, extending them so they fall on healthy cells outside the damaged macula, said Allen W. Hill, chief executive of VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies in Saratoga, Calif., the implant's maker.

The telescope is implanted in one eye for jobs like reading and facial recognition. The other eye, unaltered, is used for peripheral vision during other activities like walking.

Now pregnant women could have the chance to hold a life-size model of their unborn baby.

I didn't know ultrasounds gave you volumetric data. Neat.