The future, it just keeps happening really.

Imagine if you will, that you have been in a horrific accident. You have had to have a limb removed, say your arm. The realm of prosthetics has advanced in leaps and bounds over the last few years. Work is being done on limbs that can tie directly into the patients nervous system, 3d printing is being used to mould custom facings and powered limbs are sensitive enough now to allow people to use them to pick up delicate objects with confidence.

Todays science story of the day is actually two stories about the power of the humble bacterium

Bacteria makes diesel

A team of British researchers has taken the humble E.Coli bacteria (strains of which we all carry around inside us) and spliced in dna from a number of sources to create a new strain that converts sugars and yeast extract into a diesel analog that is structurally the same as that which comes out of the pump.

Okay, it's a bit of a cheat, but I've been watching the stream of awesome photos from Commander Chris Hadfield as he serves out his tour on the International Space Station.

I've included a couple below, but for more you cannot go past his twitter stream or facebook feed

A collaboration between Oregon University and Harvard University has collated the available temperature record studies for the past 11,300 years (just after the end of the last major ice age).

In doing so, they've confirmed that the last two hundred years has seen a rise in temperature faster than anything seen previously. While we haven't hit the highest temperature point yet (this was seen in the first couple of thousand years after the glaciers withdrew), the study has confirmed the IPCC prediction that post 2100 the earth will be hotter than at any point in the current era.