Slashdot Mirror

niktesla writes "Scientific American is carrying a story about sythetic life - genetic engineered "machines" made from DNA building blocks called "BioBricks". The goal is to produce a library of building blocks that can be assembled to give predictable results. Reminds me of the technology behind Blade Runner's replicants."

JasonFleischer points out this "interview with Leonardo Chiariglione, digital video pioneer and founder of the MPEG standards committee, is available on the public access section Scientific American's website. In the interview Chiariglione explains the motivations and hopes for his new Digital Media Project -- an attempt to integrate existing technologies to create a transparent, universal, non-proprietary system for digital rights management. Of particular interest to some /.ers may be his old article from Linux Journal that talks about the relationship between Open Source and MPEG standards."

jabex writes "Scientific American's website has an article about the overdue magnetic field flip. According to research published in the journal Nature, it could take anywhere from 2000-10000 years to complete. That's a long time without a protective magnetic field."

sproketboy writes "Psychology professor Barry Schwartz has written a book which is a must read by those wanting to get Linux on the Desktop. Dr. Schwartz examines the problem of too much choice in our society. Maybe Microsoft has it right after all? Here's a video interview with Dr. Schwartz, a review of the book from the New Yorker and more info from PBS." Of course, the choice issue applies to far more than desktop computers, but is still instructive in that area. Thanks to Stefan Hudson for a SciAm story that has more information.

js7a writes "An Australian team of astronomers has an article in the latest edition Science describing a 'Galactic Habitable Zone,' which contains about 10% of all the Milky Way's stars including the Sun. Stars within this band are likely to have rocky planets large enough to hold atmospheres, are sufficiently distant from supernovae, and have existed for at least four billion years. They haven't actually found any life or earth-like planets yet, but presumably this zone is a reasonable place to narrow such searches."

Quirk writes "Scientific American takes a look at the movie Paycheck, based on Philip K. Dick's work of the same name. In the movie ...'a crack reverse engineer helps companies steal and improve upon the technology of their rivals, then has his memory of the time he spent working for them erased.' '...the main character gets several months' worth of his memories erased by having individual neurons zapped. Is that possible?'"

belmolis writes "In the latest episode of the The Skeptical Environmentalist affair, The New York Times reports (December 23, p. F2) that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has issued a critique (five-page English summary [warning: MSWord document]) of the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty's condemnation of Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that many of the concerns of environmentalists, particularly global warming, were based on poor science. The Committee had called for Dr. Lomborg's dismissal from the Danish government agency that examines environmental regulations." (Read on below.)

"The Ministry critique holds that the Committee's procedure was unfair. It does not address the scientific issues. Lomborg's book caused outrage among many environmentalists and scientists, while right-wing organizations such as the Cato Institute have defended Lomborg. Scientific American devoted eleven pages of its January 2002 issue to a critique of Lomborg. Lomborg was only allowed to publish a one-page rebuttal, to which Scientific American replied here. When Lomborg defended himself by posting the Scientific American critique on his web site and that of Greenspirit with his commentary [PDF file] interspersed, Scientific American threatened to sue and both sites took it down. It is, however, still available at the iGreens web site."

(Slashdot ran a review of Lomborg's book early last year.)

belmolis writes "In the latest episode of the The Skeptical Environmentalist affair, The New York Times reports (December 23, p. F2) that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has issued a critique (five-page English summary [warning: MSWord document]) of the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty's condemnation of Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that many of the concerns of environmentalists, particularly global warming, were based on poor science. The Committee had called for Dr. Lomborg's dismissal from the Danish government agency that examines environmental regulations." (Read on below.)

"The Ministry critique holds that the Committee's procedure was unfair. It does not address the scientific issues. Lomborg's book caused outrage among many environmentalists and scientists, while right-wing organizations such as the Cato Institute have defended Lomborg. Scientific American devoted eleven pages of its January 2002 issue to a critique of Lomborg. Lomborg was only allowed to publish a one-page rebuttal, to which Scientific American replied here. When Lomborg defended himself by posting the Scientific American critique on his web site and that of Greenspirit with his commentary [PDF file] interspersed, Scientific American threatened to sue and both sites took it down. It is, however, still available at the iGreens web site."

(Slashdot ran a review of Lomborg's book early last year.)

belmolis writes "In the latest episode of the The Skeptical Environmentalist affair, The New York Times reports (December 23, p. F2) that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has issued a critique (five-page English summary [warning: MSWord document]) of the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty's condemnation of Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which argued that many of the concerns of environmentalists, particularly global warming, were based on poor science. The Committee had called for Dr. Lomborg's dismissal from the Danish government agency that examines environmental regulations." (Read on below.)

"The Ministry critique holds that the Committee's procedure was unfair. It does not address the scientific issues. Lomborg's book caused outrage among many environmentalists and scientists, while right-wing organizations such as the Cato Institute have defended Lomborg. Scientific American devoted eleven pages of its January 2002 issue to a critique of Lomborg. Lomborg was only allowed to publish a one-page rebuttal, to which Scientific American replied here. When Lomborg defended himself by posting the Scientific American critique on his web site and that of Greenspirit with his commentary [PDF file] interspersed, Scientific American threatened to sue and both sites took it down. It is, however, still available at the iGreens web site."

(Slashdot ran a review of Lomborg's book early last year.)

Veeru writes "As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago. Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'. The secretive Wright Brothers allowed Amos to publish the article in his own Gleanings Bee magazine instead. Because of his objective account, other experimenters may not have received the credit they deserved. I recently realized that Amos was intent on investigating the highest tech advances of the day and that the airplane was the most advanced phenomenon he could find. If Amos were alive today, what obscure technology would he be pursuing?"

Rick DeBay writes "Scientific American has come out with their Sci/Tech gift list for 2003. I think they did a good job, even the selections in the under $25 category are quite tasteful and dignified. And what Sophisticated Lady wouldn't be overjoyed at unwrapping a genuine Swarovski crystal accessory? My personal favorites fall in to those well-worn categories, 'Imprisoning Small Creatures for Amusement' and 'Getting Someone Else to Clean-Up.' The frog and shrimp farms fufill the first, and the domestically-challengeds' favorite Roomba the latter. Seriously, there is a mix of interesting gadgets, products that should never have been made, refugees from Sharper Image, and humorous geek stocking stuffers. It is unlikely that you could go wrong."

Rick DeBay writes "Scientific American has come out with their Sci/Tech gift list for 2003. I think they did a good job, even the selections in the under $25 category are quite tasteful and dignified. And what Sophisticated Lady wouldn't be overjoyed at unwrapping a genuine Swarovski crystal accessory? My personal favorites fall in to those well-worn categories, 'Imprisoning Small Creatures for Amusement' and 'Getting Someone Else to Clean-Up.' The frog and shrimp farms fufill the first, and the domestically-challengeds' favorite Roomba the latter. Seriously, there is a mix of interesting gadgets, products that should never have been made, refugees from Sharper Image, and humorous geek stocking stuffers. It is unlikely that you could go wrong."

Trillian_1138 writes "Scientific America has a brief article, only two paragraphs, sumarizing research from a recently released longevity study done on worms. The worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, have been known to live 124 days, "the equivalent of a human reaching his 500th birthday." In addition, in worms which had their insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) altere, "lived six times longer than normal worms and remained active for most of their lives." "These life-span extensions, which are the longest mean life-span extensions every produced in any organism, are particularly intriguing," the team writes, "because the insulin/IGF-1 pathway controls longevity in many species, including mammals." Humans already live significantly longer than only a century ago, in large part simply from hygiene advances. What might the effects on society be if gene therapy or other medical treatement humans lived to be 500?"

dumpster_dave writes "Scientific American is running an article, Baffling the Bots on techniques to outsmart and subvert spam bots and their chat-room cousins via CAPTCHA. You have probable seen this in the form of images containing text as gate-keepers to various on-line services. The latest evolution is using non-words and distorting the text such that even the best AI systems cannot decipher them, yet humans can not help but do so [cf., Gestalt Psychology]."

dumpster_dave writes "Scientific American is running an article, Baffling the Bots on techniques to outsmart and subvert spam bots and their chat-room cousins via CAPTCHA. You have probable seen this in the form of images containing text as gate-keepers to various on-line services. The latest evolution is using non-words and distorting the text such that even the best AI systems cannot decipher them, yet humans can not help but do so [cf., Gestalt Psychology]."

You ever thought about what a real science channel would look like? Something to counter fakers and disinformation? Maybe it can happen.

Shipud writes "An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that daily temperature ranges are smaller on weekdays than on weekends. This phenomenon is strongest in the US, but also appears in China and Japan. The researchers attribute this to human activity, although the exact mechanism is unclear. The prime suspect is aerosol / cloud interactions. Here is the more legible version from Scientific American"

briandonovan writes "World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Director Tim Berners-Lee and his compatriots would like to transform the current Web into a 'Semantic Web' where 'software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users' using 'structured collections of information and sets of inference rules.' The Resource Description Framework (RDF), designed as a language for expressing information about resources on the Web, and allied technologies are the result to date of ongoing efforts at the W3C to furnish Semantic Web proponents with the requisite tools. While it's far too early to predict whether TimBL's grand vision will be realized, RDF/XML (the XML serialization of RDF) is already in widespread use, having been incorporated into a surprising array of applications." Read on below for briandonovan's link-stuffed review of O'Reilly's Practical RDF. Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework author Shelley Powers pages 331 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Brian Donovan ISBN 0596002637 summary Great introduction to RDF, an assortment of tools and utilities for working with RDF, and some real-world applications.

RDF first hit my radar screen a couple of years ago while I was working on a barebones tool to manage my personal website. I was writing the code to generate RSS feeds ("What is RSS?") for my site and had to choose whether to support RSS 0.9x (non-RDF) or RSS 1.0 (RDF-based) or both. Long story short: I went with RSS 1.0 and was able to implement the feeds, but never got any further into RDF afterwards. I couldn't make headway through the RDF-related working drafts rapidly enough to justify the time that I was spending, there weren't any worthwhile-looking books available at the time, and the few online tutorials that I found were sorely lacking -- possibly because the specs themselves were still evolving as the RDF Core Working Group hashed out some remaining issues.

Fast forward a few years: the dust in RDF-land seems to be settling a bit (although new working drafts of all of the current RDF specs were released on September 5th, most of the changes from previous versions appear to be relatively minor) and, with the publication of Shelley Powers' Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework, there's finally a good book available on the subject.

Overview After an introductory chapter that touches on the history of RDF and some applications of RDF/XML (the preferred, W3C-blessed serialization of RDF), the book is divided into three broad sections. In the first, the reader is guided through the raft of documentation produced by the RDF Core WG, including : Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Data Model, RDF/XML Syntax Specification, RDF Model Theory (formerly Semantics), and RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema. Before moving on to Part II, where she surveys programming language support and tools available for working with RDF (with code snippets where appropriate), Powers spends a chapter developing an RDF vocabulary, "PostCon," that's used throughout the remainder of the book for demo purposes.

Chapter 7, the first in the tools-focused portion of Practical RDF is dedicated to (mostly Java-based) editors, parsers, validators, browsers, etc. for desktop use. Next, she dives into Jena, the Java RDF toolkit that began life as the labor of love of HP Labs researcher Brian McBride before being elevated to the status of a formal HP Labs project under their Semantic Web Research umbrella. Another HP Labs Semantic Web project, Damian Steer's BrownSauce, a slick little Java-based RDF browser, was introduced back in Chapter7. Means for manipulating RDF/XML in Perl (RDF::Core, part of Ginger Alliance's PerlRDF project), PHP (RAP, the RDF API for PHP), and Python (RDFLib) are addressed in Chapter 9. RDF query engines/languages are taken up next -- rdfDB QL, the query language of R.V. Guha's rdfDB (written in C); SquishQL, implemented in the Java-based Inkling query engine (built atop PostgreSQL); RDQL, used within Jena; and Sesame, a JSP/Servlet querying engine that supports both RDQL and its own query language, RQL, and can be deployed atop MySQL or PostgreSQL. Powers rounds out this part of her book with a chapter that deals briefly with the leftovers. Drive, an RDF API for C#, is briefly discussed along with RDF APIs for less fashionable programming languages : Nokia's Wilbur for CLOS, XOTcl for Tcl, and RubyRDF for Ruby. Redland, an RDF toolkit written in C with Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl wrappers, is covered at some length (about half a dozen pages) and a couple more are given over to Redfoot, a Python RDF framework consisting of RDFLib (mentioned earlier in the Perl/PHP/Python chapter), a small-footprint HTTP server (according to the changelog at redfoot.net, they're using Medusa), and a native scripting language called Hypercode that lives within CDATA blocks in RDF/XML (example).

The last third of Practical RDF is devoted to uses of RDF and begins with a chapter on the OWL Web Ontology Language, an extension to RDF that's designed to supply more constraints for RDF vocabularies than can be provided by RDF Schema alone. This chapter would have been better situated after Chapter 5, which addresses RDF Schema, and feels a bit out of place here. RSS 1.0, the RDF-based syndication format, gets a chapter all of its own, beginning with a short synopsis of the evolution of RSS and the rift between the RSS 0.9x/2.0 and RSS 1.0 camps, progressing through descriptions of the RSS elements, some discussion of the use of modules, RSS autodiscovery, and aggregators (Amphetadesk, Meerkat, and NetNewsWire are mentioned), and finishing with an example RSS file (a syndicated list of book recommendations), producing RSS 1.0 using the Informa RSS Library (a set of Java classes), and merging two RSS 1.0 files using the XML::RSS Perl module. Two "Applications Based on RDF" (commercial and noncommercial) chapters top off the book. Noncommercial applications of RDF are visited first : Mozilla, where history and bookmarks, among other classes of information, are stored in RDF; the Creative Commons licensing scheme, whose proponents encourage content creators to embed RDF snippets into their documents and applications to provide information about the work itself and the restrictions placed on its reuse under the particular CC license that they've chosen; a Java and PostgreSQL based digital library system jointly developed by MIT and HP that uses RDF; and FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend), an RDF vocabulary designed to express personal information and interpersonal relationships. Among the list of commercial applications utilizing RDF that comprises the final chapter in the book is Chandler, the same as yet very-alpha personal information manager that's managed to garner multiple mentions on this site.

The Verdict

The real meat of Practical RDF, for me, was in Chapters 1 through 6 (plus the OWL chapter, Chapter 12). This is not to say that the material in the last 2/3 of the book isn't useful or interesting. The section on RDF software tools is a great annotated survey of what's out there right now ... and I would imagine that installing and testdriving each of the software applications featured in those chapters must have been an extremely time-consuming process. The chapters describing real-world applications of RDF could be useful to someone trying to convince a manager that RDF is a viable, widely-used technology. Given a choice, though, I would rather have seen those pages spent on additional coverage of RDF, RDFS, and OWL with more example RDF vocabularies developed (like PostCon, which the author formulated, then refined through RDFS and OWL). The displaced material could have been made available online at the author's site for the book. A lot of that information will become less accurate over time as the software evolves and people come up with more applications for RDF anyway.

All nitpicking aside, though, if you're looking for a book on RDF, then you can't go wrong with Shelley Powers' Practical RDF.

You can purchase Practical RDF from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

whovian writes "Chandra, the x-ray observatory launched by NASA in 1999, is being used to study the composition of Earth's moon, perhaps putting an end to the age-old question, "Is the moon really made out of cheese?" 'Nuff said. The original press release is starting to get noticed here(1), here(2) and here(3). A neat idea, if you ask me, but will this postpone any manned lunar missions?"

CETS writes "If it doesn't kill ya' it makes you stronger, so a little bit of a bad thing might be alright, according to Scientific American which has this article. " If dioxin and ionizing radiation cause cancer, then it stands to reason that less exposure to them should improve public health. If mercury, lead and PCBs impair intellectual development, then less should be more. But a growing body of data suggests that environmental contaminants may not always be poisonous--they may actually be good for you at low levels.""

CETS writes "If it doesn't kill ya' it makes you stronger, so a little bit of a bad thing might be alright, according to Scientific American which has this article. " If dioxin and ionizing radiation cause cancer, then it stands to reason that less exposure to them should improve public health. If mercury, lead and PCBs impair intellectual development, then less should be more. But a growing body of data suggests that environmental contaminants may not always be poisonous--they may actually be good for you at low levels.""

cEnTiBeE writes that this is "not about the Matrix," but rather about Near Earth Object tracking. "It's accomplished by a staff of 2.5 people watching to see when any 'vermin of the sky' plan to pay earth a visit. This piece titled Keeper of the Objects is in the August '03 issue of Scientific American."

cEnTiBeE writes that this is "not about the Matrix," but rather about Near Earth Object tracking. "It's accomplished by a staff of 2.5 people watching to see when any 'vermin of the sky' plan to pay earth a visit. This piece titled Keeper of the Objects is in the August '03 issue of Scientific American."

I've never given much credence to the "only use 10% of our brains" urban legend, but this article, Savant for a Day, is making me reconsider. I'd like to see controlled, double-blind studies, but Snyder's machine already sounds very interesting -- hey, anyone can learn to draw, but I want to flip a switch to put my brain into calculator mode. EM-brain experimentation has taken off since Michael Persinger's work and other recent research.

Roland Piquepaille writes "This is the third year that Scientific American gives these awards. This is a collection of 50 sites which have something really neat to offer: science. "It's a jungle out there. With more than three billion Web pages to sift through, finding great science sites is harder than ever. The good news is the editors at Scientific American have once again trawled the Internet for the best the Web has to offer. We think our list of winners has something for everyone." These 50 sites are classified in ten categories, like anthropology & paleontology or astronomy & astrophysics. In this column, you'll discover my personal four favorite sites, including a great one featuring optical illusions (the link is too complex to be included here)."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Our computers are probably 10,000 times faster than they were twenty years ago. But operating them is much more complex. You all have experienced a PC crash or the disappearance of a large Internet site. What to do to improve the situation? This Scientific American article describes a new method called recovery-oriented computing (ROC). ROC is based on four principles: speedy recovery by using what these researchers call micro-rebooting; using better tools to pinpoint problems in multicomponent systems; build an "undo" function (similar to those in word-processing programs) for large computing systems; and injecting test errors to better evaluate systems and train operators. Check this column for more details or read the long and dense original article if you want to know more."

DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.

regs writes "Synesthesia is a pretty interesting phenomenon to experience and even just contemplate. Those kooky scientists are at it again, with new insights into 'hearing smells', 'seeing sounds', and 'tasting colors'. A recent study seems to shed insight into the brain mechanisms involved in synesthesia. Interesting read."

Billy the Mountain writes "At Scientific American's website there's an short and interesting article describing how the lack of scrutiny in the patent department enables ordinary citizens to manipulate the system with the effect of writing new laws. (Meanwhile, I'm busy patenting taxation and will be unable to answer any emails this week. Oh, and you can thank me later! :)"

Billy the Mountain writes "At Scientific American's website there's an short and interesting article describing how the lack of scrutiny in the patent department enables ordinary citizens to manipulate the system with the effect of writing new laws. (Meanwhile, I'm busy patenting taxation and will be unable to answer any emails this week. Oh, and you can thank me later! :)"

An anonymous reader writes "Boffins at Caltech and UC Santa Barbara say a basic discovery in magnetic semiconductors could result in a new generation of "spintronic" devices. The physicists say the new phenomenon, called the giant planar Hall effect, has to do with what happens when the spins of current-carrying electrons are manipulated. Practical applications? New paradigms in information storage, magnetic logic to replace transistors as switches in certain applications and possibly use of the quantum states of the spins themselves for logic gates in future quantum computers. Found in the Science Blog."

It's in Scientific American, it must be true. This month's cover story: Parallel Universes. "The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 10²⁸ meters from here." That number's a lot bigger than 10 to the 10^1.42 meters, which are the farthest observable objects in what we call our universe. And anyway, twin or not, anyone outside my light-cone is dead to me. That's just a rule I have. If you're skeptical of the multiverse, go read our discussion of a similar article from two days ago.

jscribner writes "Scientific American is running a feature on IBM Research's Text-to-Speech technology. It discusses the current state of affairs in this field, and describes IBM's phoneme based 'Supervoices' approach. The IBM site provides a demonstration, allowing users to enter text to be rendered to speech, as well as providing several examples in other languages."

jscribner writes "Scientific American is running a feature on IBM Research's Text-to-Speech technology. It discusses the current state of affairs in this field, and describes IBM's phoneme based 'Supervoices' approach. The IBM site provides a demonstration, allowing users to enter text to be rendered to speech, as well as providing several examples in other languages."

Steve0987 writes "Scientific American has a list of suggested Christmas presents for the those technical people on your shopping list. There are a couple I might add to my letter to Santa." Um, I'd also like to add some wireless speakers, but the the coal from the Titanic seems a bit macabre.

Steve0987 writes "Scientific American has a list of suggested Christmas presents for the those technical people on your shopping list. There are a couple I might add to my letter to Santa." Um, I'd also like to add some wireless speakers, but the the coal from the Titanic seems a bit macabre.

prion86 writes "Physisist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast) believes she has found a way to blend relativity with quantum theory. The article can be found on the Scientific American site."

prion86 writes "Physisist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara (try saying that 3 times fast) believes she has found a way to blend relativity with quantum theory. The article can be found on the Scientific American site."

Bill Kendrick writes "The 'Simputer' (Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer), a Linux-based PDA developed by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, and released a few weeks ago, has been reviewed by Scientific American, and they seem to like it!"

Col. Panic writes "Scientific American is running a small story about the amount of material required to produce silicon chips and the potential hazards of associated toxic chemicals." This combined with coltan mining processes sure paints a dark picture of the chip industry.

Col. Panic writes "Scientific American is running a small story about the amount of material required to produce silicon chips and the potential hazards of associated toxic chemicals." This combined with coltan mining processes sure paints a dark picture of the chip industry.

Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe writes "Researchers at Ohio State University have turned up some interesting things about aluminum when sheared at the atomic leavel. Apparently it mimics certain ceramics and semiconductors, as well as having a stronger shear-strength than copper. I can't wait until we can get all sorts of cool new toys from this vein of research."

loucura! writes "Scientific American has a fairly technical article on the real-time control of robotic limbs using recorded neuron patterns. The researcher's macaque has simultaneously controlled two robotic arms in addition to its own arm motion. The amazing thing? One of the arms was 600 miles away. So, they transmitted and translated the "commands" into motion in less than 300 milliseconds!" It's still a long ways off from helping the disabled or making a Dr. Octopus suit, but the potential uses are pretty cool.

loucura! writes "Scientific American has a fairly technical article on the real-time control of robotic limbs using recorded neuron patterns. The researcher's macaque has simultaneously controlled two robotic arms in addition to its own arm motion. The amazing thing? One of the arms was 600 miles away. So, they transmitted and translated the "commands" into motion in less than 300 milliseconds!" It's still a long ways off from helping the disabled or making a Dr. Octopus suit, but the potential uses are pretty cool.

dcunning writes "Over the last several years (in my short view) there has been a fairly constant hum as to whether or not processors will continue to be able to keep up with Moore's law. Usually this question (and the arguments answering it) is phrased in terms of the ability to continue to shrink transistors/wires/etc. and escape such things as electron tunneling, etc. Scientific American has an interesting article titled Lightning Rods for Nanoelectronics discussing the how's and what's of another issue: handling electrostatic charges as devices become smaller (and hence more sensitive to both the shock and the resultant heat.) After all, being able to build a 100GHz chip is useless if merely breathing on it will fry its circuitry."

Whispers_in_the_dark writes "Scientific American has an article about GM's approach to fuel cell based vehicles of the future. It appears that GM wants to build a common fuel cell based drive-by-wire chassis that it will mount the body panels, control systems, and passenger compartments. This would provide a great deal of flexibility and upgradability to the cars of the future. GM has even more details."

frank249 writes "The September issue of Scientific American has an article discussing the possibility of time travel. They say that it wouldn't be easy, but it might be possible. It could be a while until we can expand worm holes and tow them to a neutron star but didn't someone say that if it is possible it will happen. If it is impossible it will just take a little longer."

frank249 writes "The September issue of Scientific American has an article discussing the possibility of time travel. They say that it wouldn't be easy, but it might be possible. It could be a while until we can expand worm holes and tow them to a neutron star but didn't someone say that if it is possible it will happen. If it is impossible it will just take a little longer."

batkins writes: "According to this article in Scientific American, the ancient city of Venice could disappear beneath the sea within a few decades. The Italian government has initiated a program called Moses to help prevent the loss of the great city. Venice has been slowly sinking for years, but industrial meddling with its groundwater has quickened the pace. Project Moses will begin this December."

LeBain writes "This Sep. 2002 Scientific American article on 'confirmation bias' and why people believe in the paranormal reminds us, 'we need to teach that science is not a database of unconnected factoids but a set of methods designed to describe and interpret phenomena.'"