SINGAPOREANS are divided over the idea of allowing scientists to mix the genetic material of animals and humans, according the latest findings of an ongoing public consultation. (Straits Times)

Researchers have introduced the world to Gordon, the first robot that operates on real brain tissue, according to a news release from University of Reading in the UK yesterday (August 13). (The Scientist)

Most of the positive doping tests in Beijing — and the IOC president estimates there will be as many as 40 — will likely be for steroids and the blood-boosting hormone erythropoietin, known as EPO.

But the future of doping could get a lot more complicated. Here are some of the most promising — or threatening, if you’re the World Anti-Doping Agency — candidates for the next Olympics. (Wired)

Doctors might soon be able to regrow injured muscles, tendons and bones without invasive surgery, simply by injecting a person’s own stem cells into the site of an injury. Veterinarians are already doing it with injured horses, and research into human applications is well under way. (Wired)

A report on three heart transplants involving babies is focusing attention on a touchy issue in the organ donation field: When and how can someone be declared dead? (AP)

Top doctors who run one of the most influential U.S. medical journals are giving the U.S. Supreme Court some unsolicited legal advice about a major case. (USA Today)

A clinical trial of a stem-cell procedure for urinary incontinence by urologists at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria, was full of serious procedural and ethical problems, finds a report by the government’s Agency for Health and Food Safety. (Nature)