I’m totally down with cloning. Seriously. I’ve always said that any technology that can make copies of Tyra Banks is okay in my book. And if it can do pets, well then you’re making kids and me happy. Or, better yet, how about a test-tube Tyra Banks pet? How’s that a bad thing?

Disgraced South Korean stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk has set up a bio-technology firm specializing in cloning pet animals, a scientist close to Hwang said Wednesday.

Hwang, whose breakthrough human cloning research was later proved to be faked, recently established a new research firm in Seoul, said Park Se-pill, a Cheju National University professor and well-known stem cell scientist. Park said he spoke with Hwang a few days ago.

“He told me that he needs foreign capital to continue his research, but it’s difficult to get it unless he sets up a new research institute and becomes its head,” Park said.

…and, boomerangs behave in space exactly the same as they do in the Earth’s atmosphere. I know, kind of a letdown, eh? I blogged about this last month (which you can no longer read since our archives went down the tube when I moved everything over to Wordpress), and I’ve been wondering ever since what came of it. See for yourself.

Now I want to know what’s going on with the origami paper spaceship.

Scientists at several Japanese universities have discovered an application for menstrual blood, namely harvesting cells which could potentially repair heart damage. Which is ironic, seeing how my wife’s menstrual blood will no doubt be a factor in whatever stress-related heart disease I’ve got coming down the pike.

The initial findings of the study released last week in the journal Stem Cells online. The study suggests that stem cells can be used to repair damaged tissue because they have the potential to become any cell in the body.

For the study, the lead author Dr Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University School of Medicine, in Tokyo, and colleagues gathered the precursor cells, called mesenchymal cells (MMCs), from menstrual blood donated by nine women volunteers and cultivated them for about a month.

About three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats, about 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously and eventually formed sheet-like heart muscle tissue.