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The team at Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Lab (CCSL) are building a 3D food printer, as part of the bigger Fab@home project, which they hope one day will be as commonplace as the microwave oven or blender.

Just pop the raw food “inks” in the top, load the recipe – or ‘FabApp’ – and the machine would do the rest.

“FabApps would allow you to tweak your foods taste, texture and other properties,” says Dr Jeffrey Ian Lipton, who leads the project.

“Maybe you really love biscuits, but want them extra flaky. You would change the slider and the recipe and the instructions would adjust accordingly.”

The goal is to blow the lid off cooking as we know it and change the future of food production.

“We have a big energy problem and we have to think big,” said Prof Sossina Haile, at the California Institute of Technology, who led the research.

Haile estimates that a rooftop reactor could produce about three gallons of fuel a day. She thinks transport fuels would be the first application of the reactor, if it goes on to commercial use. But she said an equally important use for the renewable fuels would be to store solar energy so it is available at times of peak demand, and overnight. She says the first improvements that will be made to the existing reactor will be to improve the insulation to help stop heat loss, a simple move that she expects to treble the current efficiency.

The key component is made from the metal cerium, which is almost as abundant as copper, unlike other rare and expensive metals frequently used as catalysts, such as platinum. Therefore, said Haile, availability would not limit the use of the device. “There is nothing cost prohibitive in our set-up,” she said. “And there is plenty of cerium for this technology to make a major contribution to global gasoline supplies.”

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The device, reported in the journal Science, uses a standard parabolic mirror to focus the sun’s rays into a reaction chamber where the cerium oxide catalyst breaks down water and carbon dioxide. It does this because heating cerium oxide drives oxygen atoms out of its crystal lattice. When cooled the lattice strips oxygen from surrounding chemicals, including water and CO2 in the reactor. That produces hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which can be converted to a liquid fuel.

The prospect of a prosecution, and a public trial, threatens to expose some of the C.I.A.’s deepest secrets if defense lawyers try to protect their clients by revealing how they operated on the agency’s behalf. It could also tarnish what the Bush administration once hailed as a resounding victory in breaking up the nuclear arms network by laying bare how much of it remained intact.

“It’s like a puzzle,” Andreas Müller, the Swiss magistrate, said at a news conference in Bern on Thursday. “If you put the puzzle together you get the whole picture.”

The three men — Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco — helped run the atomic smuggling ring of A. Q. Khan, an architect of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, officials in several countries have said. In return for millions of dollars, according to former Bush administration officials, the Tinners secretly worked for the C.I.A. as well, not only providing information about the Khan network’s manufacturing and sales efforts, which stretched from Iran to Libya to North Korea, but also helping the agency introduce flaws into the equipment sent to some of those countries.

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Mr. Müller, the Swiss magistrate, investigated the Tinner case for nearly two years. He said Thursday that his 174-page report recommended that the three men face charges for “supporting the development of atomic weapons” in violation of Swiss law.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board said in a letter to the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement that having the companies involved hands-on in the forensic analysis that began more than a month ago undermines the investigation’s credibility.

An employee of Transocean — the owner of the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf — has been removed as a consultant for the Norwegian firm conducting the testing, but the ocean energy bureau says that otherwise the companies have provided their expertise appropriately. The board claims conflicts still exist.

The board, like the companies and other parties involved, has been granted limited access to the testing, but it says its representatives have been shut out of tests that have included multiple representatives of Transocean and Cameron International, which made the blowout preventer.

The board wants the testing stopped and for it not to resume until Transocean and Cameron officials are removed from any hands-on role in the examination.

It also wants the firm leading the testing, Det Norske Veritas, terminated or at least supervised by a neutral third party. It’s also demanding photo and video evidence of work conducted while its representatives were shut out of testing.

“Given the well-publicized history of improper relationships between the former Minerals Management Service and members of the oil industry, one would have expected that extraordinary care would be taken to conduct the BOP testing above reproach,” safety board chairperson Rafael Moure-Eraso said in the letter. “One would have expected an independent, second set of eyes like the CSB to be welcomed. Regrettably this has not been the case.”

The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.

He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.

Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff’s deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.

At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot’s gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A follow-up letter from the sheriff’s department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.

The YouTube videos, posted Nov. 28, show what the pilot calls the irony of flight crews being forced to go through TSA screening while ground crew who service the aircraft are able to access secure areas simply by swiping a card.

“As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce. It’s only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here,” the pilot narrates.

Video shot in the cockpit shows a medieval-looking rescue ax available on the flight deck after the pilots have gone through the metal detectors. “I would say a two-foot crash ax looks a lot more formidable than a box cutter,” the pilot remarked.