Venom is potential medicine

Question: There are plenty of venomous animal species out there, roughly 100,000 or more, from the rattlesnake to the scorpion to the platypus. Their toxins can paralyze muscles, make blood pressure plummet, or induce seizures by scrambling brain signals. Now, can you name any animal venoms possessing medicinal powers as well?

Answer: Researchers in the burgeoning field of "venomics" talk of wonder drug venoms. After all, a perfect venom toxin works with lightening speed, remains stable for a long time and strikes its mark with surgical exactitude — attributes drugmakers dream about, says Laura Sanders in "Science News."

"If you know anybody taking high blood pressure medication, odds are they take compounds called ACE inhibitors," based on a modified toxin from a Brazilian viper. Then there's a medication based on cone snail venom that alleviates types of chronic pain even better than morphine. And a sea anemone toxin has potential as a therapy for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, seeming to halt rogue immune cells that attack human body tissues. Says researcher George Miljanich, "A venom can be an 'amazing soup,' with great potential as a source of new medicine."

Question: Pilots "flying by the seat of their pants" is one thing but "flying by the seat of their (weighty) tanks" is quite another. When does this one come up?

Answer: Pilots are trained to bring in an aircraft in an emergency if an engine or other flight system fails, but what if they lose control of the steering?

Airbus has come up with a way to maneuver a plane to the nearest runway even under these extreme circumstances, says "New Scientist" magazine. The trick is to switch fuel quickly between tanks in the wing, fuselage and tail, thus shifting the center of gravity to provide rudimentary steering.

The flight management software is programmed to include emergency fuel-based steering: If the pilot needed to roll to the left, the system would pump fuel to the left wing's tank; to pitch the nose up, fuel would be pumped to the tank in the tail. And so on. Now everybody lives to fly another day.

Question: What's one of the weirder ways of using the instant-messaging service Twitter? Or is it one of the wiser ways? Think scientific experimentation.

Answer: "Remote viewing" is the alleged psychic ability to "see" distant locations as others are viewing them. The U.S. government reportedly spent millions of dollars testing if "psychic spies" could identify a distant location, leading psychologist Richard Wiseman to test this out.