Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Civilians get better GPS
President Clinton directed the Defense Department to stop degrading signals from 24 Global Positioning System satellites, allowing civilians to receive the same location-pinpointing accuracy long available to the U.S. military.
- Tech
Engineering Top 20
Airplanes, telephones, refrigerators, and spacecraft are among the life-changing technological accomplishments highlighted at the National Academy of Engineering’s Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century Web site. A variety of illustrations, a brief history, and a timeline of important landmarks accompany each entry. Go to: http://www.greatachievements.org/
- Tech
Solar Surgery: Sunlight acts like laser
By channeling sunlight down a fiber optic cable, scientists have produced laserlike beams that can burn tumors off major organs.
- Tech
DNA embrace might drive micromachines
DNA interactions that bend tiny diving boards, or cantilevers, may open the door to powering micromachines by means of molecular reactions.
- Tech
Beads and glue defeat forgers
Researchers have devised a cheap, translucent material that, when embedded in credit cards and other items, would endow the items with unique identifiers that are almost impossible to tamper with or copy.
- Tech
Ribbon to the Stars
Advances in one of the tiniest of technologies—carbon nanotubes—is bringing the concept of a space elevator closer to reality.
- Tech
Cool Contraptions
The J. Paul Getty Museum’s intriguing online exhibition, “Devices of Wonder,” features optical devices, robots, thinking machines, and other fanciful contrivances of yesteryear. Check out a variety of ingenious contraptions for projecting images, playing music, revealing secrets, and more. Go to: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html
- Tech
Microdevice weds electronics, light fibers
By altering the chemical structures of dyelike molecules called chromophores, researchers have created tiny, low-voltage devices for converting electronic signals into light waves.
- Tech
Coal: The cool fuel for future jets
To power faster supersonic jets, scientists are developing coal-derived fuels that can absorb heat without breaking down at high temperatures.
- Tech
Liquid Logic: Tiny plumbing networks concoct and compute
By incorporating thousands of simple valves into microscopic networks of rubbery pipes and chambers, scientists have created fluid-manipulating microchips of unprecedented power.
- Tech
Ear to Traffic
Listen to the sounds of Web site activity, as massaged by statistician Mark Hansen of Lucent Technologies and translated into musical tones by audio artist Ben Rubin of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Intriguing audio samples offer hints of how aural cues might complement visualization techniques in data mining. Requires a Web browser with RealPlayer […]
- Tech
Coming soon: Knavish electromagnetic acts
Scientists have created a device with bizarre electromagnetic properties—but so far, only at microwave frequencies.
