If you watched the Super Bowl this past weekend from the Northeast Ohio region, you may recall seeing an intriguing commercial by the University of Akron which featured contact lens for diabetics that will change color with blood sugar levels. Researchers at U of A have been working on the diabetic lens since 2003, but they won't be ready for human use for at least three years.

The lens are currently in the prototype phase and are not approved for human use. The model in the advertisement did not actually wear the lens, and the images shown were simulated.

At best, it will be at least three years before such a lens could be made available commercially. As it is dependent upon clearing various funding and regulatory hurdles, the wait could end up being longer.

Jun Hu, an associate professor of chemistry at Akron, has been working on the sugar-sensing chemical that is key to the lens since 2003. He and his lab discovered a molecule known as a probe that binds well to sugars. In order to make it visible, they combined the probe with a dye. So, when sugar concentrations increase, the sugar binds to the probe, knocking loose the dye which will then be seen as a color change. When the sugar normalizes, the probe molecule picks the dye back up.

Those who give into racism and prejudice might simply be dumb, according to the results of a new study that is sure to stir up some controversy.

The study found that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. Lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario, said that these findings point to a vicious cycle.

The study also found that low intelligence adults tend to gravitate towards socially conservative ideologies, and those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.

Hodson said:

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood."

Hodson said that earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, so studying intelligence seemed to be a logical next step.

Today, the Earth will have a close encounter with an astroid the size of a city block. But don't worry, it's only "close" in relation to the size of the universe; it will still be about 201,700 miles away from the planet we call home.

NASA insists that the astroid will miss the Earth. The space agency has been tracking the astroid, along with thousands of other "Near-Earth Objects", since it was first spotted six years ago. It's path is well-known.

Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said:

"We're extremely confident, 100 percent confident, that this is not a threat. But it is an opportunity."

The 2005 YU55 astroid is a C-type astroid, which means it is rich in carbon-based molecules. It is hypothesized that billions of years ago when the solar system was new and full of debris, astroids similar to it likely crashed into the young Earth routinely, carrying with them organic, carbon-based materials, which makes life possible. Scientists would like to probe the astroid's chemical makeup, even if its only remotely.

Colored contact lens have been an acceptable option for those who want to change their eye color to something that they were not born with. However, they work best on those with lighter eye colors and those born with brown eyes hoping to go blue don't have as much luck with them. Now, a California doctor claims to have discovered a way to permanently change brown colored eyes to blue using a new technique involving a laser.

Dr. Gregg Homer's new "Lumineyes" treatment works by removing the brown pigment, or melanin, from the top layer of the iris. The blue color thus emerges gradually over the following two or three weeks. The entire process takes just 20 seconds, he says.

Dr. Homer of Stroma Medical in California, is convinced that the procedure, which he developed over the course of 10 years, is safe. It is, however, irreversible as the brown tissue is not able to regenerate. Limited human testing has been conducted, but Stroma Medical is seeking additional funds to complete clinical trials.

Once rare, peanut allergies have been on the rise in recent years. Now, there may hope for suffers of both peanut and egg allergies, as scientists have been successful in curing the allergies in mice. The technique has not yet been tested out on humans, but there is hope that it may work.

Researchers have uncovered a way to "turn off" allergic reactions to peanuts and other foods by tricking the immune system.

In a written statement, Dr. Paul J. Bryce, assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said:

"We think we've found a way to safely and rapidly turn off the allergic response to food allergies."

During experiments on mice specially bred to have a condition that mimics severe food allergies, scientists attached peanut proteins to blood cells known as leukocytes and reintroduced them into the mice's bodies. Then, the mice were allowed to eat a peanut extract and researchers observed that there were no allergic reactions.

Bryce said:

"Their immune system saw the peanut protein as perfectly normal because it was already presented on the white blood cells. Without the treatment, these animals would have gone into anaphylactic shock."

Astronomers claim to have spotted an exotic planet that appears to be made of diamond circling around a tiny star. The newly discovered planet is far denser than any known so far and is made of largely carbon. Scientists have calculated that the carbon must be crystalline, which would mean that a large part of the planet is diamond.

Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne said:

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun."

The plane is 4,000 light years away from the Earth, and is likely the remnants of a formerly massive star that lost its outer layers to the pulsar star it orbits. Pulsar stars are small, dead neutron stars less than 12.4 miles in diameter that spin hundreds of times per second and emit beams of radiation.

Last week a reindeer herder discovered the remains of a baby woolly mammoth in Russia's Arctic. This discovery has caused excitement in the scientific community, especially as the herder said that the carcass was "perfectly preserved" by the permafrost that surrounded it.

The baby woolly mammoth was discovered in the same remote region where Lyuba, another woolly mammoth calf, was found four years ago. A team of experts that will be handling the the new discovery are planning to fly to the regional capital of Salekhard, where the remains will be stored in a cooler to prevent them from decomposing.

Scientists say that giant woolly mammoths, which grew up to ten feet tall and weighted up to eight tons, have been extinct since the earth's last Ice Age, which is believed to have occurred 1.8 million to 11,500 years ago.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory has issued an eruption advisory for the 5,767-foot-tall Cleveland Volcano, which is located on the unihabited island of Chuginandak in the Aleutian chain.

The advisory follows the detection of "thermal anomalies" on satellite images. The measurements indicate that Cleveland Volcano, located 950 miles southwest of Anchorage, could erupt at any moment, spewing ash clouds up to 20,000 feet (3.7 miles) above sea level. The observatory also warns that this could happen with little further warning.

Airlines around the world have begun to prepare for potential travel chaos, as the Cleveland Volcano lies directly below the commercial airline flight path between North America and Asia. A major eruption could thus severely disrupt international travel. Airlines have not yet changed their flight patterns due to Cleveland's heat emissions.

The last time Cleveland Volcano erupted was in 2001, when it pushed ash more than 5 miles into their air and spewed lava from its summit crater. In the following years, several smaller eruptions have occurred.

According to some preliminary data, the atmosphere above the epicenter of Japan's March 11 earthquake underwent some very unusual changes in the days leading up to the disaster. While the research hasn't yet been published in an academic journal or been reviewed by other scientists, it may offer an interesting possibility for earthquake prediction.

Research Dimitar Ouzounov, a professor of earth sciences at Chapman University in California, emphasizes, however, that the day scientists are able to forecast earthquakes is still "far away."

Looking to the sky to predict earthquakes is nothing new. The theory, which is known as "Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism" theorizes that prior to an earthquake, the stressed fault releases more gases, especially the colorless, odorless radon gas. Once this gas is in the upper-atmosphere ionosphere, the radon gas strips air molecules of their electrons, splitting them into negatively charged particles and positively charged particles. The charged particles, which are known as ions, attract condensed water in a process that releases heat. Scientists can detect this heat in the form of infrared radiation.

Using satellite data, Ouzounov looked at what the atmosphere was doing in the days leading up to the devastating Japanese earthquake. He found that electrons in the ionosphere and infrared radiation increased in the days leading up to the earthquake.

Scientists say that they have discovered a planet 20 light years way that would be the first outside of our solar system to be deemed habitable. The exoplanet Gliese 581d has conditions which could support Earth-like life, including potentially watery oceans and rainfall.

If the inhabitants of Earth were ever actually able to reach this distant plant, however, they would find a much different world than what they know. The sky is likely to be a murky red, instead of Earth's brilliant blue, and gravity is twice what is on Earth, which would double the weight of anyone standing on the planet's surface. The planet's carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere would also not be breathable by humans.

Scientists themselves were surprised by the discovery as Gliese 581d had previously been ruled out as a habitable planet candidate. New computer models capable of simulating extraterrestrial climates has shown that assumption to be wrong, and confirmed that Gliese 581d could support life.

Researchers believe that this finding could lead the way to additional discoveries of places that could support life outside of our solar system.

Dr Robin Wordsworth, a member of the French team from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, said: