Odyssey Magazine - Science Scoops

He lives in a cave, floats in midair, and you can walk right through him! No, we’re not talking about a ghost. We’re describing the world’s first anatomically correct virtual human, named “CAVEman” by his creators. His “CAVE” (CAVE -- Automatic Virtual Environment) is a cube-shaped virtual reality room. Three of the walls and the floor project a model of a human body in four dimensions, including time. Put on your electronic shutter glasses, grab a “wand” (a special kind of joystick that works a lot like a computer mouse) and you’re ready to meet CAVEman.

What do you do with a virtual human? Christoph Sensen and his colleagues at the University of Calgary in Canada designed CAVEman as a tool for studying disease -- it’s like an anatomy textbook come to life. You can walk around or through the whole body, or zoom in using the wand until a single blood vessel seems as thick as your arm.

Remember those four dimensions? CAVEman doesn’t just sit there; his body changes over time. Researchers can feed the CAVEman computer programmed genetic data, or input information about a particular chemical into the program and watch how the chemical would interact with bodily systems in real life. Eventually, this kind of simulation could help test new drugs before researchers try them on animals or people. CAVEman could also provide great training for surgeons or other medical students who need plenty of hands-on experience.

The CAVEman project was completed in May 2007. Maybe in the distant future, we’ll each have our DNA mapped to a virtual body floating in a “cave” somewhere. Whenever you get sick, doctors could test drugs or procedures on the virtual-you first! Now for your ideas! How else could a four-dimensional computer model of the human body help science? What problems might it make easier to solve?

Email your response to odysseymagazine@caruspub.com or write to: VIRTUAL BODY, ODYSSEY, 30 Grove Street, Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458.

Anatomically – Relating to the structure of a human or animal body

Simulation - A representation or model of a physical system for use in experimental testing

Your parents probably stare in awe at your MP3 player, but when you have kids, you may have a whole new music format to wonder about. You might find yourself asking, “Is that song you’re listening to really the original artists’ voice, or a clever computer imitation?”

Mark Bocko and his team at the University of Rochester in New York managed to reproduce a 20-second clarinet solo in a file a thousand times smaller than a regular MP3. How did they do it? Simple. They taught a computer how to play the clarinet! The idea is this: The sound that comes out of a musical instrument follows the laws of physics. If you can measure every factor that affects that sound, a computer program can make a sound identical to a real clarinet.

The researchers created computer models based on the physics of the clarinet and the clarinet player! That’s a lot of measurements. They modeled everything from the backpressure in the mouthpiece for all the different fingerings, to the way the player’s lips moved! Once the virtual instrument and player were ready, Bocko’s program “listened” to a real clarinet solo, and figured out which actions were necessary to create the right sounds. The program made its own “sheet music” of clarinet and clarinet player physics. When this file is fed back into the program, you hear a song that sounds a lot like the original. It’s not perfect yet, but “maybe the future of music recording lies in reproducing performers, not recording them,” says Bocko.

One clarinet is a long way from a whole band, or even a single human voice -- the human vocal tract is very complex -- but this kind of computer simulation may be the only way to make the smallest possible music file. MP3s and CDs contain records of sound that update (move ahead sequentially) thousands of times per second. All of these updates contain every single bit of information about the sound, and happen even when a player is holding a single note. Bocko’s file contains only the directions needed to reproduce sounds in real time. The virtual instrument and player in his computer program do the rest.

This is some amazing technology, but it certainly won’t replace real instruments or regular recordings any time soon. So don’t hope for a computer program to practice your trumpet for you!

Can you hear the difference? Go to www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3136 and listen to both the real and virtual clarinet. Which do you like better? Have a friend or family member listen, but don’t tell them which is which. Can they guess?

Email the results of your experiment to odysseymagazine@caruspub.com or write to: CLEAR AS A CLARINET, ODYSSEY, 30 Grove Street, Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458.

Chinook can beat you at checkers. Even if you’re a genius and don’t make a single bad move, the game will end in a tie. If you don’t believe it, go to http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play/ and play against Chinook yourself.

Chinook took a long time to perfect its game. In 1990, the computer program entered the checkers World Championship and lost to Marion Tinsley in a grueling 39 games. Dr. Tinsley won four, lost two, and all the rest were tied. Chinook won the championship in 1994, becoming the first computer program to ever win a human world championship of any kind. Now, losing would be impossible. Chinook knows every possible move.

The way a computer plays a game like checkers is very different from how you play. Chinook has a library of opening moves played by human grandmasters, a database that traces backwards from possible endings, and an algorithm that looks ahead a few turns at all possible outcomes of each move. This kind of brute force attack on the game is also how IBM’s computer chess champion, Deep Blue, beat human grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997. Chess, however, is much more complicated than checkers.

If you think 500 billion billion checkers positions is a lot for even a computer to know, try (if you can) to imagine the square of that number -- that’s how many positions a computer would have to analyze to solve the game of chess! “Given the effort required to solve checkers, chess will remain unsolved for a long time,” Schaeffer said in the journal Science, where he and his colleagues published their proof.

Algorithm -- A logical, step-by-step procedure used for solving a mathematical problem

Wow -- 238 miles! That’s the distance from Washington D.C. to New York City. It’s also the world record for the longest-distance, point-to-point wireless link set on April 29, 2007, in Venezuela.

The Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes (EsLaRed), or Networking School of Latin America, identified the path between two mountain peaks, Platillón and El Águila. “It is not easy to find places that will allow for experiments at great distances, due to the curvature of the earth,” Ermanno Pietrosemoli, president of EsLaRed, told the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in an interview.

Wireless connections require line of sight, which is why you often lose cell phone reception in hilly places. If your phone can’t “see” a tower, your voice won’t transmit. Wireless Internet connections work the same way. Satellites provide constant line of sight to almost anywhere on Earth, but cost as much as $3,000 per megabit per second! That’s fine for huge corporations, but completely out of the question for most developing countries.

Luckily, Eric Brewer and his team, Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER) from the University of California at Berkeley, developed a wireless system and provided the equipment for the experiment. TIER focuses on connectivity solutions for rural areas. Their system costs only about $800 for a pair of small computers with directional antennas, and operating costs are low as well. Your usual wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) transmitter sends its signal in all directions. The new record-setting system focuses the signal to a specific point, allowing much longer distances as long as the transmitter and receiver are correctly aligned.

Unfortunately, most places don’t have convenient mountains that will allow 238-mile links. Typically, Berkeley’s system links locations about 30 to 60 miles apart. But even these distances are “milestones” in a world where wireless usually only works at about 200 feet!

If you had a genie in a bottle and three wishes, how would you change the Internet? Don’t you think it would be nice to have better security? Fewer pop-ups? Worldwide wireless? Virtual reality? Well, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided funding for a different kind of genie, called the Global Environment for Network Innovations (or GENI) project. In an NSF press release, project director Chip Elliot says, “GENI will give scientists a clean slate on which to imagine a completely new Internet that will likely be materially different from that of today.”

This project is just getting started, so don’t expect your Internet wishes to come true for quite some time.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Internet, however, is that no one sat down and created it. The net is the result of thousands of human minds making small changes over a period of time. Is it really a good idea to start all over? What might be lost in the transformation? What could be gained? Let us know what you think, and what you would work on if you were a researcher at GENI. Write to Internet Ideas ODYSSEY, 30 Grove Street, Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458.

Imagine if you could take a computer chip and rig it up so that it could store simple information in live neurons. That, for researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence, would be the Holy Grail.

As reported in Physical Review Letters, Itay Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University in Israel have shown that it’s possible to store information in a network of neurons in a Petri dish. The biggest challenge facing the researchers was to successfully store new information inside certain cells so that they would fire without destroying their old firing patterns.

After watching the natural flow of neural transmitters, the researchers targeted specific points in the network and injected them with a chemical at three separate times. Each injection represented a simple memory. They then left the neuron system alone, but monitored the firing patterns, which revealed that the three memory patterns persisted, without interfering with each other, for more than 40 hours.

Many researchers believe that complex patterns of neuronal firing are “maps for memory,” which the brain uses when storing information. If so, then these researchers succeeded in creating the first chemically operated neuro-memory chip. Future research could help neurologists understand how our brains learn and store information.

How much time do you spend at the computer screen playing video games? Do you think you’ve become more aggressive over the years? How about your grades at school. Do you feel you’ve been able to concentrate enough to get good grades? Or are your grades falling? Are you spending less and less time with your friends and more time behind the computer playing games?

Although there’s no scientific proof . . . yet . . . a leading council of the American Medical Association (AMA) wants to have excessive video-game playing officially classified as a formal psychiatric addiction -- to raise awareness and enable sufferers to get insurance coverage for treatment.

While the AMA admits that more research is needed, a recent report prepared for a its annual policy meeting strongly encouraged that video-game addiction be included in a widely used diagnostic manual of psychiatric illnesses. The AMA fears that overuse of video games and online games could become a problem in the future for children and adults. In June 2007 Houston Chronicle report on the issue, AMA’s president, Ronald Davis, says “While more study is needed on the addictive potential of video games, the AMA remains concerned about the behavioral, health and societal effects of video game and Internet overuse.”

Delegates voted to have the AMA encourage more research on the issue, including seeking studies on what amount of video-game playing and other “screen time” is appropriate for children. The AMA's report says that up to 90 percent of American youngsters play video games and that up to 15 percent of them — more than 5 million kids — might be addicted.

According to research by the Pew Internet Project, one third of US teenagers have been victims of cyber-bullying -- with girls were more likely than boys to be targets.

Who are the most vulnerable? Teens who share their identities online! Of the teenagers questioned, some 32 percent had a private e-mail, IM or text messaging forwarded or posted where others could see it, been the victim of an aggressive email, IM or text message -- one in which they had a rumor spread about them online or had an embarrassing photograph posted online without permission.

The survey found that 39 percent of social network users had been cyber-bullied in some way, compared to 22 percent of online teens who do not use social networks.

As more and more young people join social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, so they are opening themselves and their personal information up to more people. How do you prevent becoming a victim? It advised youngsters not to give out personal contact details or post photographs of themselves online.

Maybe you’ve seen them on children’s TV -- those alien-looking furballs with a small screen in their tummies that can show TV pictures. Well that idea may not be too far off in the future -- not the creatures but the wearable tummy TV sets.

You see, Sony Corp. of Japan has just created a razor-thin, TV monitor that’s so flexible it can bend like paper in your hand while showing full-color video! The new 2.5-inch monitor measures 0.3 millimeters, or 0.01 inch, thick. While the technology exists, Tatsuo Mori, an engineering and computer-science professor at Nagoya University, said some things still need to be “ironed out,” -- like finding a way to make the screen larger, ensuring durability, and cutting costs.

The new display is a kind of “electronic paper” technology that combines an organic thin film transistor (required to make flexible displays) with an organic electroluminescent display, which delivers decent color images and is well suited for video.

What are some future application? Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa said it could it could get wrapped around a lamppost, or a person's wrist. And, like a teletubbie, be worn as clothing.” It could even be pasted like wallpaper! Talk about tuning in!

One of the greatest dangers to astronauts orbiting the earth are solar radiation storms -- swarms of electrons, protons and heavy ions accelerated to high speed by explosions on the Sun. Those of us with two feet planted on the ground are not at risk, because Earth’s atmosphere protects us. Not so in space. But Arik Posner, a member of the research staff of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, has found a way to give astronauts an hour’s warning before these storms hit. That’s plenty of time for these brave men and woman to take shelter!

The key to the predictions is electrons. ”Electrons are always detected ahead of the more dangerous ions,” says Posner. That’s because, the electrons, being lighter and faster than the other particles, race out ahead. In a way, they are the town criers warning us that “the ions are coming!

Now Posner has shown how a special instrument aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) -- which counts particles coming from the Sun and measures their energies -- scientists can anticipate charging ions. He tested his theory by analyzing the satellite data from four major solar storms in 2003. The data predicted all four storms and gave advance warnings ranging from 7 to 74 minutes."

Although the predictions are not perfect, Posner believes he can improve on the method. In fact, planners at the Johnson Space Center plan to use Posner’s method in their design of future lunar missions. The fact is, even though it has some kinks, the method is still more than 20 percent more reliable than current methods.

It’s almost here. The ride you’ve been waiting for -- suborbital flight! As reported in Popular Science, New Mexico–based Virgin Galactic -- a company that plans to fly 500 passengers a year to an altitude of over 60 miles -- has unveiled a mockup of the interior of its SpaceShipTwo (SS2) suborbital tourist vehicle.

SS2’s fully pressurized cabin can accommodate six passengers and two pilots. It is also spacious enough for passengers to unbuckle their seatbelts and float around weightless for about five minutes before returning to Earth. And if they’re worried about those buffeting G-forces as the vehicle rockets higher, they shouldn’t be. This “bird’s” cabin has seats that automatically recline to orient the passengers’ bodies to best absorb the G-forces.

Will they be able to see Earth? You bet! The cabin is equipped with 15 windows (including several on the floor and ceiling -- in case they’re floating) with vistas spanning some 1,000 miles in all directions.

So when might you expect to fly? Well, Virgin Galactic’s vehicle designer and his team plan to complete a prototype late next year, and they expect to have a first flight sometime in 2009, though some critics say that this is a bit optimistic.

If not, don’t worry, Virgin Galactic expects to offer lotteries and other means of getting cash-flow-challenged people on board -- and that includes a reality-TV game show that is now under development!

The Martian rover Opportunity has been on the run since January 2004. That’s rare; no one expected the little rolling robot to last so long. Now a high-resolution camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has given us another first: a never-before-seen bird’s-eye view of Opportunity. The image shows the rover at the rim of Victoria Crater -- an impact crater about half a mile in diameter near the equator of Mars. The image was captured by the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on October 3, 2006. What’s amazing is that the orbiter was 185.6 miles above Opportunity when it snapped the shot! At that distance. the image scale is 12 inches per pixel, so objects about 35 inches across are resolved. The image was taken at 3:30 p.m. local Mars time, and the Sun was about 30 degrees above the horizon.

When viewed the shot is viewed at the highest resolution, you can see Opportunity’s wheel tracks in the soil behind it, and the rover’s shadow, including the shadow of the camera mast!

More than 550 million years ago, thousands of microscopic animal embryos drifted into sea water laced with sulfur compounds. These sulfides killed the animals, but they also helped to preserve them as fossils. Discovered in South China in 1998, these rare fossils show exquisite detail -- specifically, various stages of successive cell division.

Now, Whitey Hagadorn of Amherst College (MA) and a team of 15 scientists from five countries have used new computer-processed X-ray images to study 162 of the most well-preserved specimens. As reported in the journal Science, the researchers digitally extracted individual cells from the embryos and then looked inside the cells. What they found were some kidney-shaped objects, which could be nuclei or other subcellular structures. They also found what appear to be cells caught in the processes of dividing. “It is amazing that such delicate biological structures can be preserved in such an ancient deposit,” says team member Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech.

If the cell division process in these samples is real, it shows that primitive embryos had already evolved the style of cell division used by modern embryos. But two key features present in modern embryos are absent in these specimens, leading the researchers to conclude that the embryos came from animals more primitive than any living today. “All the available evidence,” Xiao says, “suggests that they represent relatively simple forms, akin to sponge ancestors.”

These amazing fossils are providing us with a unique insight into primitive life from over half a billion years ago!

Swarms of intelligent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may soon be helping the military in dangerous missions. UAVs already serve the military as “eyes in the sky” for battalion commanders planning maneuvers. But these hand-launched vehicles typically require a team of trained operators on the ground to help individual crafts perform short-term missions. Now researchers at MIT (Cambridge, MA) and Boeing Corporation (Seattle, WA) are testing an intelligent airborne fleet that requires little human supervision.

In a recent MIT news release, Jonathan How of MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Department says that UAV swarms will not only be intelligent (for instance, they can anticipate when they need refueling) but also be self-sufficient (they can refuel themselves at an automatic docking station). Right now, the test swarms consist of five miniature helicopters, each with four whirling blades instead of one. Each UAV is a little smaller than a sea gull, is inexpensive, and can be easily repaired or replaced.

What’s most attractive about the new vehicles is that a single operator can use a PC to command the entire system or to fly multiple UAVs simultaneously. In fact, it’s a total “hands-off” experience; the swarms are fully autonomous, meaning that software pilots the vehicle from takeoff to landing.

A fleet of UAVs could one day help the U.S. military and security agencies in difficult, often dangerous, missions such as round-the-clock surveillance, search-and-rescue operations, sniper detection, convoy protection, and border patrol. Such missions depend on “keeping vehicles in the air. The focus of this project is on persistence,” says How. Persistence requires self-sufficiency. “You don’t want 40 people on the ground operating 10 vehicles. The ultimate goal is to avoid a flight operator altogether,” he says.

Speaking of cutting-edge research going on at MIT, get this: Alan Epstein (Aeronautics and Astronautics Department) and his colleagues are working on putting a tiny, gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The result will be a microelectromechanical (MEM) device that can live 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight.

The micro-engine is made of six silicon wafers, piled up like pancakes and bonded together. Each wafer is a single crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned, so it is extremely strong. To achieve the necessary components, the wafers are individually prepared, using an advanced etching process to eat away selected material. When the wafers are piled up, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed features and functions.

The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of high-strength micro-fabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines! A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.

“So, all the parts work. We’re now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench,” Epstein says, admitting that it might take some time for that to happen. But once the engine is working, the new device could be used to power laptops, cell phones, radios, and other electronic devices. “Big gas-turbine engines can power a city,” Epstein says, but a little one could ‘power’ a person."

When viewed the shot is viewed at the highest resolution, you can see Opportunity’s wheel tracks in the soil behind it, and the rover’s shadow, including the shadow of the camera mast!

It’s not what you think. This spacecraft, called Genesis I, is an inflatable one!

Last July, Bigelow Aerospace -- a commercial venture with offices throughout the United States -- successfully launched a 10-foot-long, 8-foot-wide, inflatable spacecraft into Earth orbit! This test craft (filled with air) is only about one-third the length of the dream craft that the company envisions -- one that will perform as a future habitable space station. In fact, if you can pay, you will be able to stay at this Earth-orbiting lab (as long as you’re healthy).

Genesis I was launched last July 12 from a site in Yasny, Russia. It achieved orbit flawlessly at an altitude of 342 miles, and its solar panels deployed. “At this point in time, the vehicle is happy and healthy,” said company founder Robert T. Bigelow last summer. He also noted that the temperature inside the craft was a comfortable 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

Genesis I is expected to remain in orbit for two to five years before it loses momentum and burns up in the atmosphere. But there’s more hot air to rise. The company plans to send 10 inflatable test craft into orbit before it launches its space station in 2012. To keep track of developments, go to www.bigelowaerospace.com. Fantasy?

Mirrors that can provide a glimpse into the future are a popular theme in stories and folklore. But now a high-tech global consulting firm called Accenture (www.accenture.com) is developing a high-tech mirror that really will let a gazer see into the future. The product’s purpose is to help people lead healthier lives.

Technically, the “future mirror” isn’t really a mirror. It’s a large LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitor that’s linked to a computer. Web cameras in the system take your picture, then display it (like a reflection) on the screen. More cameras and sensors around your house monitor your daily habits. For example, the system might log how many hours you exercise on your home treadmill -- or sit watching TV. It might track what foods you take from the refrigerator (yogurt -- or super-rich ice cream) and how much sleep you get each night. Other lifestyle habits (if an adult smokes, drinks too much, etc.) are also recorded. The system then computes the long-term health effects of a person’s lifestyle. (For example, dermatologists know that smoking reduces blood flow, a condition that can cause premature wrinkling of the skin, while exercise keeps you trim and improves circulation.)

Now for the magic. Using appearance-progression software, the system morphs the original picture taken by the Web camera and forecasts how your good (and bad) habits will modify your appearance in five or 10 years. For example, the mirror might bulk up your face if you’re likely to gain weight, or show wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Or, it might change the your complexion (adding blotches, etc).

“Technology can be quite persuasive,” Accenture laboratory director Martin Illsey recently told New Scientist magazine. In fact, an emerging science called captology actually studies how computers can help people modify their behaviors.

A prototype of Accenture’s “future mirror” also is being tested as a tool to help patients imagine more positive body images. For example, overweight patients might be encouraged to stick to their diets if they could see a sneak peak of how much better they would look when slimmer.

Of course, there could be a downside. In Harry Potter, Harry and his friends became obsessed with seeing their future selves. Could a real “future mirror” create vain, self-centered people? Could it make them focus too much on their appearance instead of on more important qualities? Do even ordinary mirrors sometimes do that in today’s image-conscious culture?

You decide. Write to us with your “reflections” on the future mirror. Will it make a positive impact on people’s lives or not? Send your response to “Reflections,” ODYSSEY, 30 Grove St., Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458. We’ll publish some of your responses in a future issue.

Hold an activated cell phone up to your ear and guess what happens? Well, if it’s the kind that emits electromagnetic fields known as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), part of your brain’s cortex -- the one nearest to the phone -- gets excited.

Is that good? No one knows. Not even Italian physician Paolo Rossini of Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Milan. Rossini and his colleagues used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS, to check brain function while people used GMS 900 cell phones. Their study, published in the Annals of Neurology, revealed that the motor cortex became excited in 12 out of 15 young male volunteers who used the phone for 45 minutes. “Became excited” means that magnetic stimulation from the cell phone caused a muscle in that part of the brain to twitch for up to an hour after hang-up.

While the results do not suggest that using a cell phone is bad for the normal brain, they do put up a warning flag for people with conditions such as epilepsy, which is linked to brain-cell excitability. Now, here’s something with a familiar ring to it: Further studies are needed to determine what, if any, ill effects cell phones have on their users.

Flash! This just in from Science News! According to a letter published in the British Medical Journal, you should not use your cell phone during a thunderstorm! The journal tells us that a 15-year-old girl was badly injured while doing so.

“It is well known that wearing or carrying metallic objects can increase the likelihood of injury,” explains lightning researcher Paul Taylor of the British Meteorological Office. “I would treat a mobile phone as yet another piece of metal, like coins and rings, that people tend to carry on their persons!”

The situation could get worse if you’re not only in the possession of a cell phone but have it next to your ear. Normally, if lightning strikes nearby, the high resistance of the skin conducts the lightning over the body in what’s called a “flashover.” The cell phone, however, can disrupt the flashover. The result: electrocution!

So what are cell-phone-user you supposed to do if during a lightning storm your skin tingles and you hair stands on end (which means that you’re likely to be struck)? Ditch the phone, remove any jewelry, get rid of any change in your purse or pockets, remove any metallic buttons. . .and, oh, yes: Pray!

Imagine a solar-powered blimp that could carry a telescope high above Earth’s surface -- one that could deliver crisp, wide views of the universe that would rival those taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

One is the cost. Compared to the HST, which cost U.S. taxpayers $1.5 billion to build, the blimp-design telescope will cost about $10 million. Then there’s the science. Larry Petro, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, which manages the HST, told New Scientist magazine that blimp-based telescopes could image larger swaths of sky than HST and many other large, Earth-based telescopes. Fensen adds that because these telescopes would have a clear view of the entire sky each night, they might also be used to discover asteroids and other objects that could be on a collision course with Earth.

NASA has one design on the table -- the Ultra Long Duration Balloon, which could carry a telescope aloft for 100 days at a time. One concern of this design, however, is that the telescope would be tethered to a cable; if the cable sways, the resolving power of the telescope will be limited.

Another team, from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in San Antonio, TX, is flying ahead with a 148-foot-long blimp called HiSentinel. The balloon already made a flight to an altitude of 14 miles in November 2005. If two of these blimps can be lashed together, Fensen says, they’d be able to support a telescope with a 12-inch mirror. But developers at SWRI are reaching for the stars; they’re now designing larger blimps that could carry even larger telescopes to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Time will tell if they will work, but scientists continue to float these ideas!

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t dread sitting in the dentist chair listening to that high-pitched whizzzzzzz of the drill? Argh. Just the thought of it can make your teeth ache. Well, if there’s any comfort in this new note, it’s this: We’ve got it good compared to the way it was 9,000 years ago!

No kidding! Researchers have found that dental drilling dates back 9,000 years! As reported in the journal Nature, primitive dentists drilled nearly perfect holes into live but undoubtedly unhappy patients between 7000 and 5500 B.C.

This excruciating painful news comes from a graveyard in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, where French anthropologist Roberto Macchiarelli (University of Poitiers) and his colleagues found at least nine skulls, with 11 holes drilled into hard-to-reach molars. The finding pushes back the start of dentistry by 4,000 years!

How were the drill holes made? Well, Macchiarelli, who found flint drill heads on-site, figures that the primitive dentists used a small bow to drive the flint drill tips into a patient’s tooth. In at least one instance, the ancient dentist managed to drill a hole in the inside back part of a tooth, boring out toward the front of the mouth. The good news is that the holes could have been made in less than a minute.

Still, it had to hurt! Indeed, the researchers believe that while the drills are a testament to prehistoric man’s ingenuity, it is also a statement about his ability to withstand and inflict excruciating pain. So, the next time you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair and the drilling seems to be going on forever, try telling the dentist that primitive man would have finished the job in less than a minute!

Flash! This also just in from Science News! According to a letter published the British Medical Journal, you should not use your cell phone during a thunderstorm! The letter tells us that a 15-year-old girl was badly injured while doing so.

“It is well known that wearing or carrying metallic objects can increase the likelihood of injury,” explained Lightning researcher Paul Taylor of the British Meteorological Office. “I would treat a mobile phone as yet another piece of metal that people tend to carry on their persons like coins and rings!”

The situation could get worse if the you’re not only in the possession of a cell phone but have it next to your ear. Normally, if lightning strikes nearby, the high resistance of the skin conducts the lightning over the body in what’s called a “flashover.” The cell phone, however, can disrupt the flashover. The result: Electrocution!

So what’s a cell phone user to do if during a lightning storm your skin tingles and you hair stands on end (which means you’re likely to be struck): Ditch the phone, remove any jewelry, get rid of any change in your purse or pockets, and remove any metallic buttons. . . . and, oh, yes, Pray!

A child-size robot that can recognize about 10,000 words and work as a house sitter went on sale in Japan last September.

Created by Mitsubishi-Heavy Industries, Ltd., in Japan, the "Wakamaru" robot stands 3.3 feet tall and weighs 66 pounds. Wondering about that name? "Wakamaru" was originally a name given to boys of a samurai (professional warrior) class before they were old enough to have adult names. The robot can recognize the faces of up to 10 people and talk to them. Its owner's schedule can be programmed into Wakamaru, enabling the robot to give a wake-up call and remind its owner of the day's events.

When linked to mobile phones, it also can monitor conditions at home, warning of a burglary or health and safety concerns or notifying its owner that someone at home is injured or ill. The robot contains an integrated cell phone that is programmed to call emergency dispatchers automatically if a problem occurs with a patient. An embedded Web camera lets doctors and family members keep an eye on the patient at all times. Speech-recognition software and a built-in dictionary provide the robot with speech capability. Wakamaru can be programmed to remind patients to take their medication and even to call a doctor when it appears that someone is in distress.

According to Mitsubishi-Heavy, this is the first time a robot with communications ability for home use has been sold. Mitsubishi-Heavy began taking orders for Wakamaru on September 16, 2005. The selling price? About $14,300.

What does a robot with that price tag promise? According to the publicity department of Mitsubishi-Heavy, Wakamaru will be an ideal helper for elderly people, the disabled, or others wishing to maintain an independent lifestyle. "This is the opening of an era in which human beings and robots can coexist," a company spokesperson says.

Hmmm. So what do you think about this robot companion? Can humans learn to depend on a robot? Send your thoughts to "High-Tech Friend?," ODYSSEY, 30 Grove St., Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458.

Beware the Sound Police!

Shoot a gun in Rochester, NY, and the police might arrive sooner than you think. Thanks to the ShotSpotter Location System, the Rochester Police Department can now rapidly pinpoint the location of gunshots in the city and respond more quickly.

The new technology, patented and produced by ShotSpotter, Inc., of Mountain View, CA, uses remote sensors mounted on city buildings to listen for gunshots. The system requires about eight to 12 sensors per square mile. When a gun is fired, the ShotSpotter triangulates (finds the location of an unknown point by forming a triangle with the unknown point and two known points as vertices) the noise, pinpoints the location to within a few feet, and then alerts 911.

Rochester is the sixth area in the United States to use this sound technology. ShotSpotter is also being used in Charleston, SC; Chicago, IL; Franklin County, OH; Glendale, AZ; and Redwood, CA. Rochester police chief Robert Duffy notes that in his city, most murders are the result of gunfire. He's hoping that ShotSpotter will help police reduce violent deaths.

Although the ShotSpotter won't solve every shooting crime, Duffy believes that it will improve an officer's chance of making an arrest. By arriving more quickly at shooting scenes, police will have more witnesses to interview and more physical evidence to collect.

How accurate is ShotSpotter? It once traced the sound of 12 shots fired in Charleston, SC, to two guns fired by a driver and a passenger in a vehicle traveling at 9 miles per hour!

I-Robots!

Can a machine reproduce itself?

Yes!

Hod Lipson and his colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, have built the first scalable robot that has, in turn, built an exact copy of itself. Sounds like science fiction, but it’s not.

Lipson and his team built their self-replicating device using small (4-inch) mechanical building blocks that can attach themselves to one another using electromagnets. Each block contains a microprocessor and an identical set of “surprisingly simple” instructions. The instructions tell the blocks how to swivel, depending on their position and orientation. For example, three or four blocks piled on top of each other to form a tower can create an identical tower by swiveling around like a crane to pick up other nearby blocks and pile them on top of each other in an identical fashion.

By studying the process and precision of this self-replicating machine, scientists may be inspired to use such devices to explore other planets or some hostile environments on Earth. “Self-replication,” Lipton says, “is the ultimate form of repair. Robotic systems on Mars or at the bottom of the ocean could repair themselves using a mechanism like this.”

Lara Croft: Wound Raider

If you expect to become a surgeon someday, you’d better pay attention in science class -- and also play plenty of video games. Gee, zapping space aliens on Nintendo seems more like goofing off than training for a science career. Yet according to a joint study conducted by researchers at New York’s Beth Israel Hospital and the National Institute on Media, surgeons who play video games (at least three hours per week) made 37 percent fewer mistakes when performing laparoscopic surgeries. Plus, they performed the surgery 27 percent faster.

Why? One key is the way surgery itself is changing. Laparoscopies (delicate surgical procedures performed through tiny incisions) require the surgeon to manipulate long tools, which work a lot like joysticks. Meanwhile, they watch the operation on a computer screen. Doesn’t that sound like you and your friends, playing Xbox? Wow -- the quick reflexes, decision-making skills, and excellent hand-eye coordination you need to win at Dungeon Siege, Battlefield, and other top games might also help you to become a cardiac surgeon!

“We’ve coined a term for it,” reports robotics surgery expert Dr. Wiles Nifong in an article for the Houston Chronicle. “We call it ‘video dexterity.’” Dr. Nifong believes that the skill starts early. To prove it, he’s been teaching classes of computer- and video-savvy 12-year-olds how to tie intricate surgical knots -- a challenge to most medical students. Yet the kids, who’ve grown up with lightning fingers thanks to playing with video keypads like GameBoy, can often tie these complex knots remarkably quickly.

The link between gaming and surgery is so strong that leading gaming developers, including Sony, are now creating super-realistic game-based simulators to help train tomorrow's surgeons. A new computer technology called haptics will even give the surgical instruments used in these simulators perfect feedback. Players will feel the difference between bone, skin, and other tissues, as they perform cybersurgeries that mimic the real thing. Let’s hope that tomorrow’s operating room won’t be called PlayStation 15!

I-Robots!

Can a machine reproduce itself?

Yes!

Hod Lipson and his colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, have built the first scalable robot that has, in turn, built an exact copy of itself. Sounds like science fiction, but it's not.

Lipson and his team built their self-replicating device using small (4-inch) mechanical building blocks that can attach themselves to one another using electromagnets. Each block contains a microprocessor and an identical set of "surprisingly simple" instructions. The instructions tell the blocks how to swivel, depending on their position and orientation. For example, three or four blocks piled on top of each other to form a tower can create an identical tower by swiveling around like a crane to pick up other nearby blocks and pile them on top of each other in an identical fashion.

By studying the process and precision of this self-replicating machine, scientists may be inspired to use such devices to explore other planets or some hostile environments on Earth. "Self-replication," Lipton says, "is the ultimate form of repair. Robotic systems on Mars or at the bottom of the ocean could repair themselves using a mechanism like this."

Dirty Money!

You've heard that you can't squeeze blood from a stone. But what about oxygen?

Well, NASA scientists believe you can. In fact, they're so positive that it can be done that they've challenged inventors to create a device to squeeze out oxygen from simulated moon dirt. The winner, if there is one, will receive $250,000 for being the first to pull out at least 5 kilograms of breathable oxygen from volcanic ash simulating lunar dirt!

About 30 tams have expressed an interest in the Moon Regolith Oxygen challenge (MoonROx). The device cannot weigh more than 25 kilograms and the challenge ends on 1 June 2008.

"The use of resources on other worlds is a key element of the Vision for Space Exploration," says Craig Steidle, NASA's associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate. The Vision for Space Exploration is NASA's plan to fly to the Moon and on to Mars. Extracting oxygen from the dirt would make a lunar base more self-sufficient and less reliant on oxygen deliveries from Earth. Sponberg says that, ideally, NASA would send an oxygen generator to the Moon well ahead of astronauts, so they would have a supply of freshly made oxygen when they arrive.

ET: Phone Home!

If intelligent beings live elsewhere in the universe, how long will it take before we know they are "out there"? Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, CA, says within two decades.

He bases that best guesstimate on advances in computer processing power and radiotelescope technology, which, he says, will ensure detection -- if they're out there.

Shostak estimates that the number of alien radio transmissions in our galaxy could number between 10,000 and one million. Finding ETs, however, will not be easy. It will require observing and inspecting radio emissions from most of the galaxy's 100 billion stars. But it will take only a generation to analyze radio emissions from enough stars to find the first alien civilization. You shouldn't sit by your phone waiting, though, for any long-distance calls. As Shostak says, there are still uncertainties in his prediction.

Islands in the Sun

Talk about extreme engineering!

The largest artificial offshore islands in the world will soon be finished in Dubai, the industrial capital of the United Arab Emirates. The two islands, which will be shaped like palm trees, will not be natural. They will be built three miles offshore from 4.2 billion cubic feet of dredged sand and 50 million tons of rock!

Called Palm Island No. 1 and Palm Island No. 2, these islands in the sunny desert landscape will have "trunks" five miles long and be topped by 17 sandy fronds up to 330 feet long. This impressive engineering project will cost $3.5 billion and include a mind-boggling collection of villas, hotels, marinas, and shopping complexes. Everything will be connected by high-speed monorail.

Don't think it'll happen? Think again! The first island was completed in 2003 after two years of work. The Palm Island Project is scheduled for completion in 2006.

But wait, there's more! When Palm Island No. 2 is completed, an even bigger project is about to begin -- a chain of 250 islands, called the World, laid out to mimic Earth land masses. According to Popular Science magazine, the island chain will "span 5 miles, and require 200 million cubic feet of sand and 30 million tons of rock."

Rock-Climbing Robot

You a rock climber? Yes? Then of course you're athletic and brave – but how about antiquated?

Wait! Antiquated?

Yes, antiquated. Your services may no longer be required -- thanks to Lemur, the spiderlike robotic mountaineer. One day Lemur, not humans, will be doing everything from saving earthquake victims to climbing cliffs on Mars.

This is not a lot of wishful thinking on the part of scientists. In fact, Lemur has already followed a human climber up an irregular surface without any guidance from a controller.

Lemur is the brainchild of engineers at Stanford University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), both in California. It is a fully autonomous rock climber with a round body, four spidery legs, and an uncanny human gait. Lemur climbs by using a claw at the end of each of its limbs to hook into a foothold. After Lemur moves one of its limbs to a new foothold, it simultaneously repositions its other three to maintain balance. This requires complex, on-the-fly calculations from its onboard computer. To see Lemur move, visit http://sun-valley.stanford.edu/~tbretl/ and click on one of the movies.

Lemur's technology could take planetary exploration to another level. Tim Bretl (Stanford University), the lead engineer on the project, reports in a recent issue of New Scientist that "scientists would really like robots on Mars to be able to access the sides of cliffs to look at the geology. This could be a way to get there."

Move Over, R2-D2 and C-3PO. . .Meet ASIMO!

by Anne Renaud

What would you do with your very own personal robot? Program it to clean your room, take out the garbage, mow the lawn? Then you may want to say hello to ASIMO, one of the world's most advanced humanoid robots! Its name stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility.

Since 1986, Honda engineers in Japan have been developing a completely independent two-legged walking robot to help people in the home. Standing four feet tall, ASIMO's user-friendly height is ideal for assisting people who are bedridden or confined to a wheelchair. Among its many talents, ASIMO can walk backward, forward, and sideways; turn corners; walk up and down stairs; open and close doors; shake hands; work light switches; and move and carry light objects.

ASIMO's eyes are actually cameras that capture visual information, allowing it to detect the movements of objects, assess distance and direction, recognize people, and address them by name. ASIMO also has sound-recognition capabilities that enable it to recognize its own name, as well as look at the person who is speaking and then respond.

Weighing in at 115 pounds, ASIMO's body is made of a strong but lightweight metal, called magnesium alloy, and covered with plastic panels. ASIMO is powered by a 40-volt battery -- located in its midsection to help maintain balance -- that can operate for 30 minutes at a time. Its walking speed is approximately 1 mile per hour.

According to Honda engineers, though, it may take some time before you can welcome ASIMO into your home. So, you'd better get cracking on those chores.

People "Flip" Over Segway

The Segway scooter, an innovative "human transport system" that was supposed to change the world, was recently recalled at the request of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Segway L.L.C. Turns out that the two-wheeled scooter, which uses gyroscopes -- a device consisting of a spinning mass, typically a disk or wheel, mounted on a base so that it can turn freely in one or more directions and thus maintain its orientation regardless of movement of the base -- to keep upright, sometimes flips its rider off when the batteries get low.

That's right, the once-touted-as-"untippable" transporters can suddenly brake when their batteries get low. Apparently, this is most likely to happen when a rider suddenly speeds up, tries to drive over a bump or up an incline, or continues to ride after receiving a low-battery alert. With too little "juice" to remain upright, the Segway can suddenly stop, giving its rider free flying lessons. So far, three Segway owners have experienced "flight," one of whom suffered head injuries upon landing.

After Segway representatives told the CPSC about the problem, the consumer organization decided to recall the 6,000 scooters sold to date. The solution was simple. Segway installed free new software on all its models that will warn riders when the scooter's battery is low. (Of course, riders must heed the warning!) Newly built scooters already contain the upgraded software. So, by the time you read this scoop, Segways may already be segueing back into consumers' hearts.

Get Your Motor Running!

Quick! What's just 500 nanometers wide (that's 300 times narrower than a human hair), runs on electricity, and is totally synthetic?

If you guessed the nanomotor, you're right! Alex Zettl (University of California, Berkeley) and his colleagues created the tiny device by first attaching a multiwalled carbon nanotube to a silicon wafer and then attaching the motor's "blade" (a gold square, measuring about 200 nanometers wide) to the tube. Next, the team carefully carved away parts of the wafer so that the square blade could rotate without hitting the surrounding walls.

How did the motor run? Simply by having an electric current applied to different parts of the wafer. By varying the voltage supplied, the scientists could control how the metal plate moved. They were able to make a movie of the turning blade by taking a series of still images with a scanning electron microscope. You can see the movie at www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/23_motor.shtml.

Speaking to a Scientific American reporter, Zettl boasted that "it's the smallest synthetic motor that's ever been made!" But he does admit that Mother Nature has them beat! "There are biological motors," he says, "that are equal to this or slightly smaller in size -- but we are catching up." For billions of years molecular motors have been accomplishing life's essential tasks at the atomic level. They are found in the membranes of mitochondria, the microscopic bodies in the cells of nearly all living organisms, as well as in chloroplasts of plant cells, where food is converted to usable energy.

Stuck on Gecko Tape

Hanging around your school's hallways may never be the same.

That's right, Andre Geim and colleagues at the UK's Manchester University have come up with a new material covered with nanoscopic hairs that mimic those found on geckos' feet. Covering a person's hand with the material, Geim says, could allow them to walk up sheer surfaces and across ceilings. It would also be enough to let them stick to the ceiling -- if you just wanted to "hang" around! The tape could be detached from a surface simply by slowly peeling it away from one side.

Microscopic view of Gecko-tape

(Courtesy Andre Geim / Manchester University)

As announced in our September 1998 "Life in Motion" issue, researchers have discovered the secret behind the gecko's uncanny ability to climb even the most slippery of surfaces with ease and hang from glass using a single toe. It turns out that each gecko foot is covered with millions of tiny hairs -- called setae -- which collectively can produce a powerful adhesive force.

And that's the secret behind Gecko-tape -- namely 100 million synthetic setae on a piece of tape measuring a centimeter square. Each synthetic hair is made from a material called kapton and measures 2.0 microns in height and 0.2 microns in diameter -- the same as gecko hairs. The artificial setae can support a weight of one kilogram. The researchers envision many uses for this new material -- from new road-grabbing tires to robots that can climb up walls.

Alas, Geim admits that the way Gecko-tape must be created at the moment does not lend itself easily to mass production. But -- stick around -- the day we can walk on walls is nearing!

Cloning Hoax?

You probably heard it first on the local news. And if you did, you probably didn't know whether to laugh or act surprised. The news? A research company claimed to have cloned a human.

"That's not so surprising," you say.

Here's the forehead-wrinkling part: Clonaid, the research company in question, has close ties to the Raelians -- a religious sect founded by Claude Vorilhon, a Frenchman and former race car driver who believes that green, French-speaking aliens created humankind through cloning 25,000 years ago. (Hmmm. How this story ever became news is the real question!)

Anyway, on December 27, 2002, Clonaid announced the birth of the world's first human clone the previous day. The clone, a baby girl, was not-too-imaginatively called "Eve." (Too bad Clonaid didn't announce that the birth had been on December 24th, because then they could have called the clone. . .er, never mind.)

But when the scientific community asked for proof of the claim (such as DNA testing), Clonaid officials failed to deliver. British fertility expert Robert Winston told Britain's Observer newspaper, "There is no credibility to this story whatsoever. It is just a big con."

Clonaid's announcement did, however, renew the question of the ethics of cloning. A variety of animals -- including sheep, monkeys, cattle, and mice -- have been cloned with mixed success (see next story). Some have displayed defects later in life, and scientists fear that the same could happen with cloned humans. The question is, Should humans clone humans?

Good-bye, Dolly. . .

Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal (a sheep), was born on July 5, 1996, at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland. She died on February 14, 2003, of progressive lung disease.

For six and a half years, Dolly was the focus of world attention. Her birth had been heralded as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the decade. But it had also prompted a long-running argument over the ethics of cloning. Hundreds of mammals have been cloned since Dolly. But as the first, Dolly symbolized different hopes and fears to different people.

One question on many minds was how long Dolly would live. Now we know, and the answer is rekindling an intense debate over the health and life expectancy of cloned animals.

The fact is that Dolly was not old -- by sheep standards -- when she died. Dr. Harry Griffin of the Roslin Institute said, "Sheep can live to 11 or 12 years of age, and lung infections are common in older sheep." What's more, as early as January 2002, Dolly suffered from a mysterious form of premature arthritis. She also showed signs of premature aging at the genetic level.

Dolly was not the first cloned sheep, though, to die prematurely. On February 2, 2003, Australia's first cloned sheep died unexpectedly at the age of two years and 10 months. The cause of that death is unknown, because the carcass was decomposing and had to be quickly cremated.

Connie Cepko, a biologist and professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, called Dolly "both a curiosity and a very serious warning. This whole thing serves as a stark reminder that, though you can make the animal, you can't make a disease-free animal," she said. Following an autopsy, Dolly was donated to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she was stuffed and put on display.

Diamonds Are for Terror

It's scary, this new biotech world we live in -- especially because terrorists claim to have biological weapons. But our ability to detect the presence of dangerous biological agents has just gotten better -- thanks to the help of a new diamond film developed by Robert J. Hamers and Lloyd Smith, chemists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Because diamond films can be deposited on silicon, the stuff of which computer chips and other microelectronic devices are made, they provide a bridge between the world of miniature electronics and biology, a winning platform for biosensing.

The beauty of this film is that it can be placed in inexpensive, compact sensors, which can then be used to constantly "sniff" the environment for the slightest trace of biological weapons. Coupled with modern electronics -- created by Dan van der Weide, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering -- the new sensors could also sound alarms or call for help.

The sensors would be about the size of a postage stamp, Hamers says, and could be sprinkled in public places -- such as airports and subways -- where large numbers of people gather. They could act, he says, like a "bio cell phone, where they just sit in place and sniff, and when they detect something of interest, send a signal" to alert security or sound an alarm. Although the biosensors still need some additional engineering, Hamers says, "the hardest part appears to be over." When completed, the sensors will be able to detect biological agents such as anthrax, smallpox, and other molecules that can potentially be used as biological weapons or agents of terror.

Wanted: A Bunch of Lightweights!

If you want some head-over-heels excitement, look no more. Consider what the Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) has to offer. Starting this year, the newly formed U.S. firm has begun offering plane rides that simulate the microgravity of space travel.

Aboard a Boeing 727 airplane specially modified to fly special parabolic maneuvers -- like a roller coaster ride in the air -- those inside the plane are treated to astronaut-like, free-floating fun.

ZERO-G plans to offer a variety of public packages. "We want to come to a city near you and take the parabolas to the person," says Byron Lichtenberg, president of ZERO-G and a former shuttle astronaut.

"We are hoping to allow young adults 15 and older to participate in the parabolic astronaut training flights," adds Peter Diamandis, chairman of ZERO-G. "I wish I could have participated in a ZERO-G flight when I was 15! It would have been amazing. and I can't wait to share this with teenagers. I'm hoping that some folks will invent new types of weightless ZERO-G sports and discover new, fun things to do in weightlessness."

Hmmm. . . .Imagine having 25 times more "hang time" than the best basketball player does. Think about outperforming the best Olympic gold medallist in gymnastics down here on Earth.

For many years, NASA has safely used its KC-135 aircraft to train astronauts and prepare experiments for space flight. What ZERO-G now wants to do is bring the unique environment of weightlessness to everyone in a safe and affordable fashion.

"During the course of my astronaut training, I flew over 2,000 parabolas, and I know how much fun it is to be weightless," notes Lichtenberg. "It's awesome. Pure and total freedom!"

How much will it cost? Well, that's still up in the air. But it is likely to cost about $5,500 to make 10 to 15 parabolas.

Check out the Zero Gravity Corporation Web site at www.zerogcorp.com/index.html.

Move Over, Godzilla!

Speaking of electrifying news, anyone who has ever watched a Godzilla movie probably has noticed that the monster likes to body-slam power lines all across Japan. Well, if Godzilla wants to sneak up on, say, Tokyo in the near future, it might have to contend with "Guard Dragon."

Yup, that's right. Japanese electronic specialists at SANYO and robotic specialists at Tmsuk (pronounced "temzack") have just unveiled the latest in security technology. Meet Banryu -- a four-legged robot fashioned after an ancient reptile with a futuristic twist. This tiny guard robot measures one meter long, 80 centimeters high, and 70 centimeters wide. It weighs 40 kilograms and can move 15 meters per minute, which is more than fast enough for it to travel in the confined, cluttered spaces around your house that it was designed to patrol.

The guard dragon can "confidently" walk over 10-centimeter gaps or climb a 15-centimeter-high step using sensors located on its legs. Owners will be able to switch the Banryu robot into any of three operating modes: (1) a "remote control" mode that allows users to send commands and receive information via mobile phone; (2) a "caretaking" mode, in which the robot patrols the house and reports back if it senses someone walking close by; and (3) a "pet" mode, in which Banryu acts like a pet dog, obeying commands such as "Sit!" or "Paw!"

The robot also has an innovative "odor sensor," which can sense smoke and alert its owners to a smoldering fire -- via a howl or a mobile phone text message.

How much is that "Guard Dragon" in the window? The initial batch of 50 (available this year) sell for about $16,400 each. By October, though, another Japanese firm (Fujitsu) plans to unveil a similar home robot -- a vacuum-cleaner-size robot called "Maron-1"; it'll sell for about $1,625. Will the price of Maron-1 sweep Guard Dragon under the carpet? Time will tell.

"Beam Me Up, Scotty!"

It's true! It's happened! It's amazing! Scientists at the Australian National University have successfully "teleported" a laser beam encoded with data! That's right. Australian physicist Ping Koy Lam and his 12-member team were able to completely break apart a data-filled light beam into billions of photons. Then, after making some measurements of the destroyed beam, they were able to fully reconstruct an exact replica of the destroyed beam a meter (more than a yard) away!

But don't get your hopes too high -- yet -- that this fantastic development will lead to human teleportation. Right now, Lam's teleport system will be used in a new generation of super-fast computers. But Lam says that he believes the process, called "quantum teleportation" (which takes but a nanosecond, or one billionth of one second), will soon be used for teleporting matter. In fact, he predicts that someone will probably be able to teleport an atom or a group of atoms in the next three to five years! Teleporting a living person, however, would likely be virtually impossible, Lam says. "In theory, there is nothing stopping us, but the complexity of the problem is so huge that no one is thinking seriously about it at the moment."

Brain "Cells"

Got a cell phone next to your ear? Better put it down, at least until after you read this. British scientists have announced that cell phones may cause damage to your brain.

Cell phones have long been thought to lead to a wide range of problems, including sleep loss, headaches, and tumors. Now British biophysicist Alan Preece (Bristol Oncology Center in London) says that the obsessive use of cell phones may lead to brain cancer! Yikes! And Preece is not alone. He is one of a gaggle of scientists becoming increasingly convinced that radiation from cell phones can trigger chemical processes in the body that may be harmful.

According to a recent report in New Scientist, people who have been using cell phones for up to 10 years had a 26 percent higher risk of brain cancer than a control sample of patients.

"Without question, there is a biological threat," agrees biophysicist James Lin (University of Illinois in Chicago). "Our understanding is still evolving. We need to have a much larger database."

However, this news is still under investigation. Last year, a British government-sponsored scientific inquiry concluded that while there was no evidence of a danger to health, it would be wise to discourage children from using cell phones, because young people are more susceptible to radiation.

Driving Miss Artificial Passenger

If you've ever been worried about your mother or father taking a long drive alone - fearing they might fall asleep and get into an accident - your worries may soon be over. Meet, for lack of a better name right now "artificial passenger" or AP for short.

AP is not a blow-up doll or a cardboard cutout. It's a software program developed by IBM designed to make car trips safer. The software chats with you, chooses your music, tells you jokes - and sounds alarms when you foul up.

Some researchers have tried to develop other ways to help drivers stay awake. For instance, they've thought about using a camera to monitor your eye movements for signs of sleepiness. But IBM researchers don't believe that's necessary. All the driver needs is a pal with whom to talk.

Although this pal will be packed into the dashboard, it will know a lot about you - things programmed into its database about your interests or profession. If you think you're sleepy, just activate the program and AP will begin to ask questions, like, "Hello, Dave, it's HAL. How have you been? Who was the last girl (boy) you dated?"

Your answer is picked up by a microphone, and a voice analyzer then looks for signs of tiredness. A slow response, for instance, may be read as a sign of fatigue. AP will assume you are dozing off and wake you up in a number of ways: opening a window, sounding a buzzer, spraying you with icy water, changing radio stations, or telling you a joke: "Hello, Dave. I've opened the driver door and you're going to fall out . . . NOT!"

If you reckon there's no need for such a thing, you'll have to speak with Andrew Parks of the Driving Simulation Centre at Britain's Transport Research Laboratory in Crowthorne, Berkshire. He says that up to 30 percent of road traffic accidents are thought to be caused by drowsy drivers.

Fragrant Waste?

Traveling past a pig farm on a hot summer's day can be quite the nasal experience -- similar to standing in a closed closet filled with rotten eggs. That disgusting odor emanates from pork waste and is also the source of major complaints against factory hog farms in Iowa, our nation's top pork-producing state.

But researchers are on the verge of a major breakthrough in the elimination of hog manure odor. Biologist David Soll (University of Iowa) says that all you need to do is bombard the manure with a little ultrasound. Doing so cuts by 50 percent the buildup of hydrogen sulfide, the key "rotten-egg," odor-producing gas in hog manure. In addition to being an inexpensive and environmentally safe approach to deal with the problem, this is an approach that satisfies scientists, hog farmers, and government officials.

Using ultrasound in search of advances in biology and agriculture is not new. For years, scientists have been using these high-frequency sound waves to induce and hasten biological and chemical changes at the molecular level. Acoustic waves generated by titanium tubes vibrating 20,000 times per second penetrate the manure, breaking chemical bonds and triggering chemical reactions that alter the typical decomposition process. When you apply ultrasound to hog waste, it still looks like hog manure but "it definitely has a softer fragrance to it," says Bruce Rastetter, president of Heartland Pork Enterprises.

This spring, a panel of professional smell testers will judge the effectiveness of the technology, comparing the aroma of the treated manure with that of untreated confinement pens and lagoons. If the results are positive, production of the ultrasound systems could begin this year. We'll just have to wait and smell what happens.

Fried Clones

Get your stomachs ready, because companies in the United States are developing the technology needed to "clone" chickens on a massive scale. Once the most desirable traits of tasty birds - like the right amount of tenderness and juiciness - have been genetically engineered, tens of thousands of eggs, which will hatch into identical tasty chicken copies, could roll off the production lines every hour. The idea is to generate billions of clones to supply chicken farms.

That's right. The National Institute of Science and Technology has given Origen Therapeutics of Burlingame, CA, and Embrex, of North Carolina, $4.7 million to help fund research on this project. What the poultry industry wants is disease-resistant birds that grow faster on less food . . . and taste good. The company is trying to grow embryonic stem cells in bulk. The cells will be taken from fertilized eggs as soon as they're laid. These donor cells will then be injected into the embryos of freshly laid, fertilized recipient eggs. When hatched, the chicks won't technically be clones, because they will contain cells from both donor and recipient eggs.

Ah, but, you know, in the poultry world that doesn't matter - especially if the end product tastes good. So, who knows? Pretty soon those big buckets of fried chicken might be full of "cloned" chicken.

Honey, I Shrunk the Laboratory!

No Rick Moranis with his Hollywood stunts here. We're talking about a real nanotechnological breakthrough. Yup, Nanogen, a California-based biotechnology company, has designed a chemistry lab so small (one millimeter by one millimeter) it could fit on the face of a tiny computer chip. The mini-lab, which the Nanogen scientists call a chemistry "chip" because it's made of silicon, has two parts: 25 electrodes arranged in a row and tubes that carry fluids into and out of the mini-lab The lab is designed to extract DNA from bacteria in blood samples. Here's how it works:

First, a chemical is added to a sample of blood to reverse its electric charge (yes, blood has a charge). Next, the blood is carried into the mini-lab through one of the tubes. Once inside the lab, the electrodes turn on and release an electrical charge. This charge attracts bacteria and repels the chemically altered blood cells. Another fluid is then pumped into the lab, which washes away the blood cells and leaves the bacteria behind. Once bloody fluid is drained away, the mini-lab electrodes zap the bacteria with another jolt of electric charge, which breaks open the bacteria and releases enzymes. The enzymes then gobble up the bacteria, leaving only strands of DNA and RNA behind for analysis by Nanogen researchers.

Minicopter Acrobat

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (with some help from NASA and others) have developed a mini-helicopter with a twist, literally.

The Minicopter won't be used for casual rides but will be used to enter caves looking for terrorists, to hover inches above the ground while sweeping for land mines, to swoop into the mouth of a volcano and videotape its eruptions, to zip over a mountaintop to measure snowfall, and to do just about anything else you can imagine. Yes, Minicopter's mission is to go where no human has gone before - or where no human would want to go, or could go even if he or she wanted to!

Minicopter started off as a $1,250 minicomputer kit. It ended up being a 7.6-kilogram high-tech Erector set, overflowing with "circuitry, computer chips, miniature instrumentation, and a gas tank that suspiciously resembles a clear-plastic juice bottle." At first, the robotic bird was able to perform many aggressive, acrobatic maneuvers only with an elite pilot at the controls. Now it has an automatic pilot program so advanced that even a child can make it roll.

Indeed, the Minicopter is the first robotic helicopter capable of performing a high speed 360-degree aileron roll (a corkscrew-like maneuver accomplished with movable flaps on the copter's wings) and then continue to fly! Although the Minicopter is still being tested and tweaked, Eric Feron, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, imagines that these machines could be "as graceful and agile as birds." He also foresees a day when Minicopters will be able to fly without anyone controlling them at all!

Now for the two big questions: When will Minicopters become commercially available, and how much will one cost? No one knows just yet when the copters will begin rolling off the assembly line, but when all is said and done, Feron anticipates a price tag of several thousand dollars or less per unit. Start putting those pennies away.

News Flash from the World of Nanotechnology!

Ever try to pick up or flip over a chromosome? No? I didn't think so. As you might imagine, that would be a rather difficult feat - especially if you tried it with your fingers.

Thanks to a team of Scottish researchers under the leadership of Kishan Dholakia (St. Andrews University), microscopic particles can now be manipulated rather easily - by using laser beams like chopsticks. As reported in a recent issue of Scientific American, the idea is not new, and other researchers have been able to focus a laser beam onto an organelle - a tiny structure within a living cell - grasp the minuscule entity, and hold it in place. They have also used a "microbeam" to hold an organelle in place while using a second microbeam to conducted delicate surgery.

But no one has ever rotated a microscopic particle before - until now. To rotate, flip, or flop a microscopic particle, the researchers used two specialized laser beams that, when combined, formed a spiral pattern. Once the particle they want to rotate is locked in that spiral, the researchers can control the rotation of chromosomes, enzymes, and other tiny structures more freely and precisely.

What good is the technique? Laser beams are now standard components of such commonplace objects as compact-disc players and printers. Dholakia believes that the technique "could be used to drive motors, mixers, centrifuges, and other rotating parts in cheap, tiny, automated technologies of the future."

Read My Lips!

Ever been in a relatively quiet public setting, enjoying a bit of peace, when all of a sudden you hear a cellphone ring? Then, before you can say "Oh, no!" a loud one-way conversation shatters the silence. The situation is getting worse as cellphones become more and more popular. That means there are going to be fewer and fewer public places left on Earth where you can go and not be in the presence of a cellphone and its potentially obnoxious user. (Forgive us, teen cell phone users; you know whom we mean).

Well, thanks to researchers at Japanese cellphone maker NTT DoCoMo, silence may return to some public places - once they finish designing the world's first lip-reading cellphone! Yessssssss!

In Japan, cellphones have become such a nuisance that some public places have banned their use, or are requiring cellphone etiquette - namely that people cup their hands over their mouths as they speak softly into the phone. Alas, the new phone won't be available for about five years. But once it's here, all a user will have to do is move his or her lips with a whisper. The DoCoMo's phone will do the rest. A contact sensor by the phone's mouthpiece will pick up tiny electrical signals sent by muscles around the user's mouth, and then convert the signals into spoken words by a speech synthesizer or into text for a text message or e-mail. DoCoMo says that the phone will also help people who have lost their voice.

Robo-Family?

Who needs reality? If Japan's Sony Corporation has its vision in focus, there'll be a robo-pet in every family. The idea sprouted in 1999, when Sony introduced a robotic dog, called AIBO?, which sold out in a flash in Tokyo. And AIBO? cost $2,500 a pop! Since then, some of the world's biggest toy makers have started barking up the same tree.

In fact, if you went to the 2001 Toy Fair in New York City, you'll understand why 2001 has been called the "Year of the Robot Family." Robotic dogs, cats, birds, fish, dinosaurs, and insects dominated the fair. Are we all destined to own a robo-pet someday? Yes, says Stuart Wallock (Entertainment Robot America, Los Angeles).

"Our vision is a robot for every member of the family."

So get ready for the robo-attack. Sony is gearing up now to sell 28-cm-tall robots that look like pudgy puppies - but these puppies will have lights atop their heads and pink or purple jewels for eyes, and will be equipped with digital cameras.

It's a dog-gone world after all!

Slip-Sliding Away. . .No More?

Ever been in a car that suddenly hit a patch of ice and slid out of control? Ever feel your body jerk off-balance when you stepped on an ice-covered sidewalk? Scary, isn't it? Well, if a Michigan Tech University (MTU) researcher's got it right, he's going to melt those fears away. That's right. Russ Alger, director of the Institute of Snow Research at MTU's Keweenaw Research Center, is determined to put an end to "treacherous ice" and make winter's slipperiest surfaces safe for planes, people, and automobiles.

The solution, Alger says, is "Anti-Icing Smart Overlays," a type of limestone that looks like kitty litter. You see, the customary way to deice roads, sidewalks, and runways is to spread salt or other deicing compounds on the slippery surfaces. Although the chemicals work, they are expensive and harmful to the environment; they also can rot car bodies. Salts and other deicing compounds also wash away as the ice melts. This means that the next time it snows, the roads have to be treated again.

Those woes could be over. What Alger proposes to do is stick his special compound onto pavement with epoxy -- a heat-setting resin characterized by toughness and strong adhesion. Once in place, the compound will "soak up" road salts or other deicing chemicals like a sponge (or like kitty litter) and hold them in place for weeks! Alger doesn't expect that all highways will be treated with the special compound right away. Instead, he'd like to see some problem areas treated first, such as bridges, highway intersections, and some icy sidewalks (to prevent car accidents and pedestrian falls).

Another prime application could be airport runways. In fact, Alger is working under a contract from the Federal Aviation Administration to run tests this winter on a service road at Chicago's O'Hare airport, and on a section of a taxiway at Atlantic City Airport in New Jersey. But as Alger points out, in the end, some of the greatest benefits could be closer to home. "You could mix up a pail [of the overlay material] and put it on your front walk," he says. Voilà! No more slip-sliding away!

War Stinks

Speaking of smells, did you know that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is trying to harness the power of foul odor and use it to their advantage? Think of it. What teenage kid hasn't made a stink bomb? Is it surprising, then, that the DOD would also find nose-pinching smells an appealing weapon, especially since they would be not only effective, but harmless?!

Well, for the last four years, experimental psychologist Pam Dalton and her colleagues at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, PA, have been trying to chemically mimic some of the foulest odors in nature -- including body odor, burnt hair, vomit, feces, and, well, use your imagination.

Yes, the researchers have been making a big stink, trying to create for the DOD a globally unpleasant odor -- an odor that will be unappealing to people all around the globe. They plan to create an odor so foul that no matter who you are or where you live, your reaction to it will be the same -- namely, you'll run away screaming in disgust!

Of course, Dalton had to test the manufactured smells, which required the use of some brave noses from different countries and cultures. What she discovered first is that displeasing odors are more complex than you might think. For instance, butyric acid, a common ingredient in vomit, is also present in certain strong cheeses. While some sniffers (who were given no hints about the odor) smelled vomit, others (who were told to think of food) smelled cheese. As expected, the latter group did not find the odor as vile as the first group did.

So what is the most horrific odor on Earth? So far, Dalton and her crew believe it's the smell of "organic decomposition" -- rotting flesh and organic decay.

If stink bombs prove a success, rancid smells could be used in other situations -- say, to keep skiers on trails and off protected lands. Can you sniff out some other good uses? Send your thoughts to: Sell that Smell, ODYSSEY, 30 Grove St., Suite C, Peterborough, NH 03458.

World's Longest Suspension Bridge

It's yet to be seen, but Italy may soon begin construction on the world's largest suspension bridge. The Strait of Messina Bridge is intended to link the island of Sicily to mainland Italy. This engineering marvel will have to span 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) of deep water and sustain the shimmies and shakes of this seismically active area. In fact, the bridge is intended to be able to withstand a magnitude 7.1 earthquake with an epicenter as close as 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) away. The bridge also will be able to withstand a Category 4 hurricane (winds of 210 to 249 kph [131 to 155 mph], and wave surges generally 4 to 5.5 meters [13 to 18 feet] above normal).

A satellite image of the Strait of Messina, showing the location of the proposed bridge.
(Courtesy Stretto di Messina)

To overcome these natural obstacles, the engineers intend to make the bridge as light and aerodynamic as possible. Right now, they plan to install a unique deck that is shaped like an airplane wing. The bridge's three components -- deck, towers, and cables -- will allow wind to funnel through at strategic points. The components might be made of steel, but it's possible that a lighter material, such as carbon fiber, may be substituted.

There will be a 3.3-kilometer (2-mile) gap between the supporting towers. The current longest suspension bridge is the Akashi Bridge in Japan, which is slightly longer overall but has only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) suspended between towers. Construction is expected to begin in about two years, and the bridge could take five to 10 years to complete.

World's Tiniest Thermometer

Yup, scientists have done it. They've taken tiny cylinders of pure carbon and turned them into thermometers, each measuring just 10 micrometers long. That's one-tenth the width of a human hair, or the size of two spores kissing. Instead of filling the carbon nanotubes (less than 150 nanometers in diameter) with mercury, Yihua Gao and Yoshio Bando (National Institute for Materials Science in Ibaraki, Japan) used liquid gallium.

Like mercury, liquid gallium's behavior within the tube changes predictably with temperature. And, as with the mercury in a conventional thermometer, a minuscule meniscus (the curved upper surface of a nonturbulent liquid in a container) in the nanodevice moves up and down as the liquid gallium expands and contracts in response to temperature. The nanodevice can measure temperatures between 50 and 500 degrees Celsius. The temperatures can be read when the thermometer is viewed through a high-powered electron microscope.

The researchers say that the device "should be suitable for use in a wide variety of microenvironments." For instance, it can measure the temperature change that occurs when small groups of molecules react with one another, and can help scientists learn more about how lasers burn through materials such as skin and other body tissues.