Major advances have been made recently in various once-stagnant scientific fields, throughout all of civilized New Eden. While the full impact of these advances has yet to be measured, their effects, for good and ill, are already being felt at various levels of society.

Over the following days, we will present a brief overview of the current state of affairs. It must be noted that the brevity of this reportage is due partly to how new these advances are - The Scope always strives to be first  - and partly because of the cloud of secrecy that overhangs them. There has been an intensification of high-level interest in the great factional wars, and it is believed, though not yet proven, that these scientific advances are due at least in part to the efforts of those political forces. It will not come as any surprise to our readers that all questions related, if even tangentially, to these forces and their effects on the war efforts are met with muted silence.

It must also be noted that the various entities responsible for these advances have remained extremely reticent to comment on any part of the process. This applies not only to those directly involved - scientists known to be working on related projects, educational and research institutions whose charters explicitly involve the fields in question, and so on - but also those believed to be indirectly involved, including the members and commanding officers of any scouting or expeditionary forces whose missions clearly have brought back more than anyone expected. Even when questioned about a tangential matter - such as rumors of a drug (reputedly codenamed "Inferno") whose functions have supposedly had a direct effect on the status of recent scientific advancements - there is near-total silence.

Nonetheless, we believe we have uncovered more than enough information to present a fair and balanced look at both sides of these new technological advancements. Their upsides, as our readers might expect from any new advancement in science, are numerous and apply to both the lowest rungs of earthbound societies and the upper echelons of capsuleerdom. Their downsides, however, are equally notable, not merely for the direct effect they have on certain parts of human society, animals and the environment in New Eden, but also for the damage they may be doing to progress in other fields - xenobiology, archaelogy, history and various social sciences.