1) BrainI found an article "Brain Research Gets Wise" by Jeremy Labrecque in Discover Mag's July/Aug 09 edition that says "Areas of the brain responsible for emotions, such as the ventromdeial prefrontal cortex, play a role as well. A recent study...found that damage to this area made people less susceptible to guilt and could lead to poorer social decision making. Another area, the anterior cingulate cortex, detects conflicts and makes decisions...activity in this part of the brain predicts how we balance short-and long-term rewards.

It sounds like if you enhance the conflict resolution area while damaging the emotional center where guilt is involved, and you can have a pretty focused, efficient army.

Another article said that neural pathways affect moods, and when these are damaged mood disorders like depression, ptsd, etc develop. Combine this with...

DNA Robots!
DNA robots can be programmed to perform rudimentary tasks at this point, but in science fiction, all I need is the kernel. So, DNA robots can be used to fix neural pathways to prevent and repair anyone with a mood disorder, and I could take it even farther to implanting in uteruses so that at conception these robots can begin fixing any chromosomal abnormalities. These leads to...

Super Brains!!! FMR-1 gene
This gene is not really understood besides being involved in creating a protein that leads to mental development. Fragile X Syndrome is mental retardation caused by an improper mutation of the FMR-1 gene. So, I could have them develop Super Brains to be stripped of emotions and placed in a lab where they perform commands from Versar.

Fuel from plantsI also thought of a lure to this planet could be the discovery of a plant that produces fuel efficient enough for space and air travel to be more common than other forms of travel. What kind of plant, how much would have to be grown, and how?

super fast tissue repair I took this quote from Technology Review : Milan Stojanovic, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University who developed the walker. "It enables us to think about adding further complexity: more than one molecule interacting and more complicated commands on the surface. What we hope to do eventually is to be able to [use nanobots to] repair tissues."

This is really incredibly interesting, Tim. These are the sorts of things that go thorough my head when I read anything about science. "What if...."

About the plants -- how much of another universe is going into this?

Thanks Lady E!

What do you mean by your question about how much...? Do you mean how similar will this be to our planet?

Upon further brainstorming, I'm calling the plant "camil" and it grows only in the center of Ixia, which is a lot like Australia, except it is closer to the equator. The plant is harvested right before monsoon season, so it has been drying out in the sun for half a year. Somehow this gives it a unique ability to burn more efficiently than any other fuel yet discovered.

Is this plausible? I have some artistic freedom in just saying that these conditions make it unique fuel, but would heavy water followed by intense dryness and heat produce something that burns efficiently enough for fuel? Dry sticks burn better than wet ones, dead better than live, so does that transfer to this idea?

Also, what if the camil becomes vastly more efficient when grown in the soil of their moon (Solus)? My main character could have discovered a moon rock and incorporated it's elements into a small section of his field. They may have to build greenhouses on Solus, though a moon could have gravity right? I saw a Stargate epidsode that had them on a moon which looked just like earth, though that may not be accurate enough some fifteen years later.

Thank you for commenting on this topic! Timotheus and I have agreed that this thread is ready to be locked and archived.

Thanks again!