Marvin Moriarty / USFWS

The white fungus growing on the snout of this little brown bat in Vermont's Greely Mine is the telltale sign of the bat-killing white-nose syndrome.

The hit movie "Contagion" focuses on a fictional killer outbreak that spreads from bats to humans, but a real-life killer is taking the reverse route.

The Hollywood outbreak is based on a real pathogen, the Nipah virus, which originates in bats and can be passed through pigs to humans. The so-called paramyxovirus has been implicated in more than a dozen outbreaks in South Asia. The filmmakers behind "Contagion" merely turned up the dials on the bug's virulence to produce the plot's pandemic.

The real pandemic is afflicting bats, not humans. Biologists are seeing evidence that humans are behind the spread of Geomyces destructans, a fungus that's linked to the bat-killing disease known as white-nose syndrome. In some areas of the northeastern United States, white-nose syndrome is wiping out 90 to 100 percent of the brown-bat population.

Scientific sleuths have traced the disease to the batty equivalent of "Patient Zero": a cave in upstate New York where bats with white noses were first noticed in 2006. When bats started dying, the connection to the white nose led to a determination that Geomyces destructans was playing a role.

"Scientists in Europe said, 'We have bats that are exhibiting similar symptoms, but we're not having the same problem with mortality,'" said Ann Froschauer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who focuses on white-nose syndrome. "One of the leading hypotheses is that recreational cavers potentially brought the fungus from Europe and carried it here."

The suspicion is that fungal spores survived the trip and took root in the New York cave, where the cold and damp conditions were well-suited for the fungus. The effect on bats in the Northeast was eerily similar to the "Contagion" virus' effect on Hollywood actors.

"Once this fungus made its way into our caves in the U.S., it was the 'perfect storm,'" Froschauer explained. "The environmental conditions were right for the fungus to start growing, and bats here don't have any immunity."

The bats were more vulnerable because they were hit by G. destructans while they were hibernating, when their immune reactions were suppressed. And even if one batch of bats is wiped out, the fungus can remain in the caves, waiting for the next wave of bats to move in and spread the disease.

USFWS

This map tracks outbreaks of white-nose syndrome since 2006.

So far, biologists have found signs of white-nose syndrome in 17 states and four Canadian provinces. An international task force, led by the Fish and Wildlife Service and including representatives from more than 100 agencies and organizations, is trying to figure out what to do about the problem, Froschauer said. Among the potential options: holding bats in captivity over the winter to keep them away from the fungus, closing caves to human visitors, developing antifungal treatments, and even cryopreservation of bat sperm and eggs to allow for in vitro reproduction.

Wouldn't the world be better off without bats? Although you might not know it from their Hollywood image, bats do way more good than harm. No joke: A study published in the April 1 issue of the journal Science pointed out that bats are "voracious predators" of insects that include many crop and forest pests. Without bats, North America's economy would suffer agricultural losses amounting to more than $3.7 billion a year, the researchers said. Some have called them the "unsung heroes of organic farming."

Froschauer sees "Contagion" as an opportunity to do some consciousness-raising about the fate of a species that doesn't usually get much sympathy.

"Historically, they've always gotten a bad rap, and especially at this time of year, when we're often dealing with rabies reports," she told me. "In popular culture, they've always had this negative image."

Ali Khan, an assistant surgeon general who leads the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agrees that bats are classic bad guys.

"They make the best bogeymen, no doubt about it," he joked. "Better than Freddy Krueger."

Nipah virus and rabies aren't the only pathogens linked to bats, Khan pointed out. Researchers believe that fruit bats are the natural reservoir for the Ebola and Marburg viruses, which cause deadly hemorrhagic fevers in humans. Bats are also thought to be a natural host for viruses similar to the one that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

But bats aren't the only suspect when it comes to species-jumping diseases. The list also include pigs and birds (implicated in 2009's global outbreak of H1N1 swine flu) as well as monkeys (implicated in the long-running HIV epidemic), mice (linked to hantavirus) and rats (linked to the Black Death in the Middle Ages).

Khan told me that "Contagion" has stirred up a lot of interest among the press and the public in the question, "Could this really happen?"

"Not only 'could this really happen,' but it routinely happens," he answered, "not just to the magnitude seen in the movie — except perhaps during the 1918 flu pandemic or the Black Death."

Like Froschauer, Khan sees "Contagion" as a teachable moment for epidemiologists — and now that he's seen the movie, he gives it a big thumbs-up. "They did as good a job as you could expect for Hollywood," he said.

That shouldn't be surprising when you consider that the film's actors visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta to chat with Khan and other experts. "When Kate Winslet said, 'This is what an R-naught is,' I thought, 'I taught her that!'" Khan said.

Khan realizes that Hollywood requires villains as well as heroes to tell a good story, but he nevertheless wanted to clear up a couple of things about the way the movie portrayed epidemiologists doing their jobs:

• "In the movie, the Department of Homeland Security comes off as the bogeyman, at least in the early part of the movie. In our operation, there's excellent collaboration with Homeland Security and particularly with FEMA."
• "It seems like there's just a handful of people who solve this whole mystery, and that definitely isn't true to form. There are hundreds of people involved in this operation. We don't send Kate Winslet all by herself to deal with a global pandemic."

Then Khan had a darker thought. "Maybe that's the future situation, if there are continued CDC [budget] cuts," he said. "There will be no one available to go out and deal with pandemics."

Now that would be a scary movie.

More about 'Contagion,' bats and public health:

• 'Contagion' leaves CDC's real scientists eager for details
• 'Contagion' billboards painted with creepy microbes 
• Keep on top of infectious diseases with msnbc.com
• More on white-nose syndrome from msnbc.com

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds. 

USDA

When humans first started to farm, we became shorter and less healthy. The effect didn't last forever, especially in the developed world following the industrialization of food systems, the researchers say. Shown here are wheat fields in eastern Washington.

People got shorter and sicker everywhere in the world when they started to farm, according to a recent study that suggests the transition to an agricultural lifestyle came at a biological cost.

The transition occurred at different times in different places around the world beginning about 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land spanning modern day Egypt to the border between Iraq and Iran.

As people gave up the diverse diet of foraged foods and settled on eating a few staple food crops they "experienced nutritional deficiencies and had a harder time adapting to stress," Amanda Mummert, an anthropology graduate student at Emory University, said in a news release.

Compounding the problem, growth in population density spurred by agricultural settlements led to an increase in unsanitary conditions ripe for spreading infectious diseases and the transmission of novel viruses from livestock to humans, she added.

Eventually, this trend reversed itself and average heights for most populations began to increase. This is most evident in the 75 years or so since the industrialization of agriculture in the developed world.

The finding is based on a review of skeletal data on populations from various corners of the world, including China, Southeast Asia, and North and South America. Mummert and colleagues looked at skeletal height as well as dental cavities, bone density, and other indicators of health.

"Culturally, we’re agricultural chauvinists. We tend to think that producing food is always beneficial, but the picture is much more complex than that," Emory anthropologist George Armelagos, co-author of the review, said in the statement.

The findings support a theory he proposed in the 1984 book, "Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture," which showed a decline in health and rising nutritional diseases as humans shifted from foraging to agriculture. 

So, if the transition to agriculture was bad for our health, why did we do it? 

The geneticist Spencer Wells argues in his 2010 book, "Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization,"  that the transition was driven by a cold snap between 12,700 and 11,500 years ago called the Younger Dryas. 

In the Near East, the cold spell was also a dry spell, which was bad news for hunter-gatherers there who had settled some of the world's first villages and subsisted on easily foraged fields of wheat and barley. 

The arid climate meant the grains clung to moist niches in the hills, not the valleys where the hunter-gatherers settled. The commute to the hills to forage grains was unsustainable. So someone — most likely a woman since they did most of the gathering — Wells argues, had the brilliant idea to plant grains closer to home. 

"Her first efforts must have been rewarded with admiration from the entire village," he writes. "Virtually overnight, humans had gone from being controlled by their food supply to controlling it." 

More on agriculture, health, and evolution:

• Humans still evolving as our brains shrink 
• Cow milk closely mimics that of human breast 
• Prehistoric feasting hall found 
• How climate change kills society 

NASA file

The development of a "Star Trek" tricorder-style medical device, similar to this NASA mockup, may be worth a $10 million prize.

A real-life diagnostic device that does something akin to what the tricorder did on "Star Trek" just might earn its developers $10 million prize. And yes, the proposed competition is actually being called the Tricorder X Prize. It's just one more example of life imitating "Trek." In the words of Mr. Spock: Fascinating!

The objective of the project, currently being explored by the X Prize Foundation and Qualcomm, is not just to create one more cool gadget for "Trek" fans ... although the idea of a hand-held, automated medical diagnostic device is pretty cool. The objective is to extend the reach of health information and services to billions more people in the world.

"We believe this is a fundamental step in helping people become true 'health consumers' who can have as much say in assessing and accessing health care as they would any other service or product," Don Jones, vice president of wireless health strategy and market development at Qualcomm Labs, said in this week's announcement about the project. "Qualcomm believes the value of this X Prize is also in changing the cost structure and focus of health care. By having consumers take the initial actions to obtain health assessment data, the use and the quality of physicians' time is improved."

The competition is modeled on earlier incentive programs such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private-sector spaceflight, or the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize for super-efficient road vehicles. The basic idea is to encourage the development of mobile devices that can diagnose patients at least as well as a panel of board-certified physicians.

"The goal obviously is to drive a lot of innovation toward this narrow goal of easy-to-use, low-cost, minimally invasive, rapid, portable and scalable diagnosis," Jones told me during a follow-up interview.

Over the next few months, Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation will be working together to flesh out the rules and requirements for the Tricorder X Prize. Jones emphasized that this is just the "design phase" for the venture. Qualcomm isn't yet committed to putting up any prize money, but it does have "the option of funding part or all of the prize," he said.

If the design phase is successful, the competition would begin in early 2012.

So what's in it for Qualcomm, a company that focuses on wireless network technology? "Qualcomm has a wireless health effort, we've had it for some time, and we believe there is a real interest to tie together the world of sensors and the world of informatics," Jones told me. "We're very interested in connecting more items to the cellular-powered Internet, and this is a category of items. Perhaps many categories of items will come out of this."

There are already a goodly number of mobile medical devices out there, including some pretty fancy hand-held ultrasound imagers. Three years ago, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated a portable medical scanner that could be hooked up to a mobile phone to create a tricorder-like diagnostic system. But Jones said he thought the device that won the Tricorder X Prize would have to hit a higher level of sophistication — in effect, telling users on the spot whether they should go see a professional.

The tricorder might have to check not only ultrasound readings, but heart rate, respiration, perspiration, salivation and other health indicators. "It's fairly clear that a prizewinner is going to have to figure out how to integrate multiple sensing technologies, using multiple databases," Jones said.

Can one device do it all ... and make those cool "Star Trek" noises as well? Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and stay tuned for future episodes.

More about 'Trek' medical tech:

• Ex-astronaut aims to build tricorders 
• Researchers use phones to detect cancers
• Health-oriented smartphone apps draw caution
• The doctor will see you now ... on the space shuttle

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds. 

Rothamsted Research

Disrupting a mosquito's sense of smell can ward off a bug bite.

Researchers say that they’ve found a new class of chemicals that can drive away mosquitoes by disrupting their odor-sensing system — and the first chemical in that class seems to be thousands of times more effective than DEET.

The compound, called VUAA1, was identified thanks to the kind of high-throughput screening process that is more typically used for drug discovery, said Vanderbilt University professor Laurence Zwiebel, a member of the research team. Zwiebel and his colleagues published their findings online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This compound is really a first-in-class molecule to do this action," Zwiebel told me today.

A mosquito's olfactory system relies on a variety of receptors spread out on the bug's antennae — known odorant receptors, or ORs. The receptors are tuned to respond to different types of odors, including the smell of sweat and blood, and they activate switches called OR co-receptors (Orcos) to tell the mosquito's brain which scent is being picked up.

Researchers screened almost 120,000 small-molecule compounds to check their effects on human embryonic kidney cells that were genetically engineered to include the OR-Orco complexes.  "It was totally a shotgun approach," Zwiebel said. "Throw the kitchen sink at it and see what happens."

The scientists were surprised to find that VUAA1 consistently activated the odor-sensing complexes, even though it's not actually considered an odorant. "It wasn't something we set out to find. It was an anomaly in our tests," another member of the Vanderbilt team, graduate student David Rinker, said in a news release.

"If a compound like VUAA1 can activate every mosquito odorant receptor at once, then it could overwhelm the insect's sense of smell, creating a repellent effect akin to stepping onto an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume, except this would be far worse for the mosquito," said Patrick Jones, a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt who is the study's first author. 

Zwiebel said that he and his colleagues compared the effectiveness of VUAA1 with that of the widely used DEET insect repellant by measuring how much of each compound it took to repel larval mosquitoes in a petri dish. "The more you use, the more the mosquito moves, as if it's trying to get out of Dodge," he explained. A tiny amount of VUAA1 had the same repellent effect as a concentration of DEET that was tens of thousands of times stronger, Zwiebel said.

However, Zwiebel stressed that VUAA1 isn't yet ready for prime time. "The commercialization of this compound has hardly begun," he said. The chemical still has to be fine-tuned and checked for toxicity, and it's possible that other chemicals in the same class will turn out to be more effective or safer. Vanderbilt University says it has filed for a patent on this class of chemicals and is talking with potential corporate licensees about commercialization, with special focus on the development of products to reduce the spread of malaria in the developing world.

Zwiebel noted that VUAA1 has been found to activate the odor-sensing complexes of flies, moths and ants as well. "Basically, every insect that has an olfactory system has this Orco ion channel," he told me. "We have an expectation that every insect will be affected by this molecule. Now, that's both good and bad."

It's good, because the new class of chemicals may yield new ways to drive away other types of nuisance insects and agricultural pests. But it'd be bad if they also drove away beneficial bugs such as bees and butterflies.

"We've all read 'Silent Spring,'" Zwiebel said. "We don't want to have the same DDT story."

More about mosquitoes:

• Scientists tweak mosquito genes to fight malaria
• A malaria mosquito is quickly becoming two species
• Scientists find natural mosquito repellent
• Researchers studying better insect repellents
• U.N.: Efforts on track to halt malaria deaths

In addition to Jones, Rinker and Zwiebel, authors of "Functional Agonism of Insect Odorant Receptor Ion Channels" include Gregory M. Pask. VUAA1 stands for Vanderbilt University Allosteric Agonist 1. The research was supported by the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, funded by the Foundation for the NIH through a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images

Todd Kuiken, director of the Center for Bionic Medicine and director of amputee services at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, explains the technology behind the bionic arm being used by Glen Lehman, a retired Army sergeant who received targeted muscle reinnervation surgery after he lost his arm in Iraq,

It's been nine years since the Center for Bionic Medicine installed its first nerve-controlled prosthetic limb — and during that time, bionic arms have become stronger ... faster ... better. They may not yet match the fictional body parts sported by Steve Austin in "The Six-Million Dollar Man," but they're giving scores of amputees the opportunity to lead a more normal life.

Take Glen Lehman, for example: Lehman, a retired Army sergeant who lost his right arm three years ago in a grenade attack in Iraq, showed off his bionic arm this week in Washington during sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lehman twisted and closed a lifelike hand, at the end of a prosthetic arm that took commands from the nerves once leading to his real hand.

Glen Lehman takes a look at his bionic hand.

A video released at the AAAS meeting shows Lehman holding a food tray, grabbing a bag of snacks and handing a drink bottle with the bionic arm, with movements that are close to natural.

"My arm is pretty much in tune with my thoughts," he told reporters Thursday.

That represents a big advance over old-style prosthetic limbs — even over the first bionic arm, which was given to double-amputee patient Jesse Sullivan in 2002. The key innovation was pioneered back then by Todd Kuiken, director of the Center for Bionic Medicine and director of amputee services at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Kuiken calls his technique "targeted muscle reinnervation," or TMR. The procedure involves taking the nerves that once led to the missing limb and rerouting them to intact muscles on what's left of the arm. The flexing of those muscles, in turn, sets off actuators that reproduce the movements of the elbow and hand.

"Muscle becomes the biological amplifier," Kuiken explained.

CBM / RIC

Glen Lehman's bionic arm is hooked up to electrical leads that are implanted in his intact upper-arm muscles. Nerves that once went to his amputated arm have been re-routed to go to those particular muscles.

So far, more than 50 amputees have been outfitted with TMR-enabled bionic arms, including more than dozen combat veterans like Lehman. Several surgeons have been trained in the procedure. Lehman's arm surgery was performed by Martin Baechler, a surgeon at Walter Reed Medical Center. The technique could spread wider in the years ahead: This week marked the launch of the first-ever training video for TMR, developed by Kuiken and Gregory Dumanian of Northwestern University's Department of Plastic Surgery.

Kuiken and his colleagues have a couple of tricks they're planning to add to bionic arms — including restoring skin sensation of the missing arm (which involves sensory nerves implanted into tissue) and providing touch feedback for artificial hands (which involves wiring up the hands with sensors that send impulses back into the nerves).

For now, the technique has been used only in arms, and not in legs. "That's an area we've just started to look at," Kuiken told reporters. He explained that the challenge for artificial legs is different from what it is for hands: There are fewer parts that have to be controlled, but those parts have to be controlled very, very well. If there's just one wrong step out of 1,000 that leads to a fall, "that's a problem," Kuiken said.

Other researchers gave a status report on their progress in developing thought-controlled tools for people with disabilities. Here's a sampling:

• Researchers at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne are developing brain-computer interfaces that rely on a "thinking cap" — a skullcap outfitted with electrodes that take in electroencephalogram readings and feed them to a computer program. The software uses statistical analysis to translate the typically low-resolution EEG signals into more precise commands. Such a system lets subjects drive a wheelchair or a camera-equipped robot using their thoughts alone, as shown in the video below. Studies have shown that, with training, the effort isn't overly taxing. "People can truly use brain interfaces 24 hours a day, seven days a week," research team leader Jose del R. Millan said.

• A Pentagon-funded project is developing a direct brain-to-bionic control system that involves tiny arrays of electrodes implanted on the surface of the brain. The electrodes read activity from individual neurons, producing signals that can control a robotic limb. So far, the procedure has been tested only in monkeys, but tests with humans are expected to begin late this year. "Our animal studies have shown that we can interpret the messages the brain sends to make a simple robotic arm reach for an object and turn a mechanical wrist," Andrew Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the Pitt School of Medicine, said in a news release. "The next step is to see not only if we can make these techniques work for people, but also if we can make the movements more complex."

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

Using a game controller to interact with real-world objects is definitely spooky. You push around a glorified pencil to "feel" the contours of a hand resting on a faraway table. And if that faraway hand moves, you'll feel an unseen force push back. It's as if an occult hand were taking control of the magic pencil from yards or miles away.

The push of a ghostly hand, vs. the virtual sense of touch ... it's not easy for me to say which aspect of the University of Washington's Kinect-based robo-control system is spookier. But it's easy for Fredrik Ryden to say which aspect is more useful.

"We want to give robotic surgeons a sense of touch," the visiting graduate student from Sweden told me.

The point of Ryden's contraption is not merely to manipulate objects over far distances. Heck, even a monkey can use a thought-controlled robotic arm to pick up distant objects, and surgeons have been operating remote-controlled robotic scalpels for years. But it takes a more sophisticated kind of robot to give those surgeons tactile feedback about how deep they're cutting, and create a virtual force field to keep their scalpels from straying.

The fact that Ryden's robo-touch system could demonstrate that capability after just a weekend's worth of work, using a $150 motion-sensing game device, adds to the experiment's geek appeal.

"I realized what I was doing was really cool, but it was easy — so I was surprised that nobody else had done it," Ryden said.

Now that the feat has been publicized on YouTube, in the blogosphere and beyond, it seems as if everyone is trying to do it, said Howard Jay Chizeck, an engineering professor who's co-director of the University of Washington's Biorobotics Laboratory. "The sense I have is that we're just a little bit ahead of whoever is right behind us," he joked.

How it works
Microsoft (which is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture) sells the Kinect system as a "controller-less" controller for its XBox video game console. Players can interact with their games by gesturing, punching, jumping or even dancing in front of an infrared laser projector and a set of infrared depth sensors. Kinect's software analyzes the patterns of scattered infrared light to create a 3-D "cloud" of data points that reflect the players' changing positions in real time.

It didn't take long for computer geeks to hack into the Kinect system for a wide spectrum of unanticipated applications, ranging from "Air Guitar Hero" and a virtual-reality piano to extreme body jiggling and other risque pursuits. On the serious side, an outfit called Virtopsy has programmed Kinect to serve as a touch-free interface for medical imagery in operating-room environments. And then there's the Biorobotics Laboratory's hack.

Under the direction of UW's Blake Hannaford, the lab has been working for years to develop better robotic surgeons for military as well as civilian use. Surgical robots are already widely used for delicate operations such as prostate removal, but medical experts in the military (and at NASA) would love to have robots that can do a wide range of surgical operations by remote control, from hundreds of miles away.

So the Biorobotics Lab was challenged to come up with a system that could provide real-time feedback to the surgeons at the robot's controls — including a way to warn the surgeons if they were getting too close to a vital artery or some other danger zone.

Think of it as a 21st-century, virtual-reality "Operation" game with real-world consequences. Bzzzzt!

"Essentially, you're projecting a sense of touch through an image," Chizeck explained. "We'd like to have images of things generate 'force fields' around things you don't want to touch."

When the Kinect system came out in November, Ryden saw it as the perfect platform for such a device. His software translates the cloud of data points into a virtual 3-D surface. When the magic pencil (actually, a software-controlled stylus at the end of a robotic arm) "hits" the virtual surface, it moves no farther — just as if it were hitting the real surface of a faraway hand. The same thing can happen if your stylus strays up to the edge of the force field. (Though actually, if you press hard enough, you can push the stylus through the force field. It feels as if you're poking a pin through a piece of virtual cardboard.)

What it's for
The robo-touch system is currently being fine-tuned as part of the Biorobotics Lab's long-running project on surgical robotics. The beauty part is that buying Kinect systems doesn't strain the lab's hardware budget, Chizeck said. "It's 150 bucks for a system that would cost maybe $100,000 or $150,000 to reproduce," he said.

That doesn't mean low-cost Kinects will be showing up in operating rooms. The low-cost devices don't have anywhere near the resolution that the actual robo-touch device would require. Eventually, super-sensitive touch feedback systems will be built from the ground up and put through clinical trials, as part of a long and potentially expensive development process.

"You're talking at least a decade," Chizeck said. "I think in Fredrik's lifetime, it's a sure bet, but it's really hard to predict." (Fredrik Ryden is 22 years old.)

Hannaford told me that surgical robotics may turn out to be the "killer app" for the field of haptics, which focuses on methods for translating virtual-reality shapes into a real-world sense of touch. (Maybe "killer app" isn't the best phrase to use when talking about medical procedures, but you get the point.)

Chizeck had a slightly different take: "I'll make a bet with Blake," he said. "I think there'll be a game application using haptics before there's a patient operated on."

He said robo-touch technology could also be used to create more dexterous bomb-disposal robots and deep-sea autonomous vehicles. But there's one obvious application that no one in the lab was willing to discuss: the use of haptics for long-distance, virtual-reality sex.

"I'll let you think of your own apps," Chizeck said.

More on gaming and virtual reality:

• Virtual haven set up for combat vets
• 'Star Wars' holograms nearly a reality
• Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron'
• Kinect hacks unleash your inner superhero

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

One of the best things about virtual reality is that it isn't real — and the Pentagon is taking advantage of that fact by offering a virtual realm that can take combat vets and their loved ones through the whole cycle of post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD and depression are thought to affect 10 to 30 percent of the U.S. military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, depending on how you define the disorder. For some vets, the trauma left behind from combat experiences can lead to alcohol abuse, aggressive behavior, family problems or even suicide.

Typically, therapists help PTSD sufferers get through the experience by having them relive and talk through stressful experiences in a safe environment. That's where virtual reality can make a difference: For several years now, therapists have been using online worlds such as Second Life to simulate the stresses in a therapeutic context. Studies have shown that such simulations can lead to a clinically significant lessening of PTSD symptoms. Some researchers are even using simulations to identify potential PTSD sufferers —and deal with their problems — even before the warfighters are sent into combat.

Therapists only wish that vets would take greater advantage of the treatment tools at hand.

"Far too many of our warriors come home and, despite difficulties they are having, are not going to come and see a psychologist, a social worker, a psychiatrist," clinical psychologist Greg Reger said this week in a news release announcing the establishment of the Pentagon's virtual world for vets.

The world was created in Second Life by the National Center for Telehealth and Technology, also known as T2. Reger, who is acting chief of the center's innovative technology applications division, said the T2 Virtual PTSD Experience can help tech-savvy warfighters and their families learn more about PTSD in the comfort of their own homes.

Second Life gives users the opportunity to create virtual-reality avatars, and then send those avatars walking (or flying) through computer-graphic environments that are similar to real-world locales. On T2's turf, for example, avatars can visit a welcome center anonymously and learn more about the psychological difficulties associated with combat deployment.

T2Health.org

A virtual experience on an Afghan street helps vets and loved ones understand the causes of post-traumatic stress disorder.

"The cornerstone of the experience is when they leave that area and go into an area that teaches about the causes of post-traumatic stress disorcer," Reger said. "They enter a space where they get into a Humvee and are taken through a computer-generated simulation that includes [intense fighting on an Afghan street and] an explosion."

While this is happening, the virtual visitors receive audio instruction that puts the stressful experiences in perspective. There's even a simulation that's set in a Stateside shopping mall — because many PTSD sufferers say they feel heightened anxiety when they're in a mall or other public gathering place.

The T2 experience isn't just about stress, however. The virtual environment also offers relaxation zones, guided meditations and forums where real-life vets can talk about their experiences using the computer-generated interface. "Second Life provides the opportunity to interact with anyone who is in that space," Reger said. "Any warrior who goes in there will be able to talk with whoever is in that space."

T2Health.org

A Second Life simulation shows a relaxation exercise in progress at a virtual resort.

The center's aim isn't to keep stressed-out vets bottled up in cyberspace. Rather, the goal is to provide an virtual avenue that leads to a healthier life in the real world. "We created an environment that lets people learn by doing, rather than reading text and watching videos on two-dimensional websites," said Kevin Holloway, the psychologist who led T2's virtual-world develoment. "They can learn something new each time they visit."

Click on the links below to learn more about T2:

• A Web guide to the T2 Virtual PTSD Experience
• SLurl link to T2 PTSD Education in Second Life
• News Tribune: Virtual world helps soldiers explore PTSD
• KOMO News: Virtual world helps soldiers battling PTSD

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle). Boyle has also written a book about Pluto as well as the past and present search for planets. To learn more, click your way to the website for "The Case for Pluto."

AP/Sam Ogden via The Whitehead Institute

This photo shows a mouse composed, in part, of cells that were reprogrammed to a stem cell-like state. New research has used these type of cells to create offspring from two fathers.

Reproductive scientists have used stem cell technology to create mice from two dads. The breakthrough could be a boon to efforts to save endangered species -- and the procedure could make it possible for same-sex couples to have their own genetic children.

The scientists, led by Richard Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, describe the process in a study posted Wednesday in the journal Biology of Reproduction. Here's how it works:

Cells from a male mouse fetus were manipulated to produce an induced pluripotent stem cell line. These iPS cells are ordinary cells that have been reprogrammed to take on a state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell, which can develop into virtually any kind of tissue in the body.

About 1 percent of the iPS cell colonies spontaneously lost their Y chromosome, turning them into "XO" cells. These cells were injected into embryos from donor female mice, and transplanted into surrogate mothers.

The mommy mice gave birth to babies carrying one X chromosome from the original male mouse. Once these mice matured, the females were mated with normal male mice. Some of their offspring had genetic contributions from both fathers.

The study authors say their technique could be applied to animal breeding efforts, so that two males with desirable traits could be crossed without mixing in traits from females. "It is also possible that one male could produce both oocytes (eggs) and sperm for self-fertilization to generate male and female progeny," the team writes. This could help save an endangered species that no longer had females to mate with, for example.

In the future, scientists may be able to create human eggs from male iPS cells in vitro, allowing them to eliminate the need for the intermediate offspring, though a surrogate mother would still be needed to carry the two-father pregnancy to term.

With a variation of the technique, "it may also be possible to generate sperm from a female donor and produce viable male and female progeny with two mothers," the researchers write.

The research joins a long list of stem cell breakthroughs with mouse models. Check out the stories below to learn what else researchers have done with mice.

• Whole mice created from skin cells
• Stem cells reverse defects in mice embryos
• Sex differences found in stem cells
• Mice born without a dad's DNA
• Paralyzed mice given stem cells walk again

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).