Popular Science 2008 April by Yufei Chang

IF THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF A WIND TUNNEL, THIS MUST BE YOUR IDEA OF A TRUCK. BN_000413_Ford.indd 2

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If you’re the type who knocks the world down to size, you need a truck durable enough to help you do that. Ford F-150. It’s got the strongest frame of any half-ton pickup. So it’s not surprising Ford F-Series has more trucks on the road with 250,000 miles than any other brand.* Check it out at fordvehicles.com.

’08 FORD F-150

*Based on vehicle registration data and latest odometer readings available to R. L. Polk & Co. for 1992 and newer model year full-size pickups still on the road in the U.S. as of 1/1/07.

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CONTENTS

THE FUTURE NOW

FOUNDED IN 1872

TH IS MONTH’ S GUIDE TO I NNOVAT I ON A ND DI SC OV ER Y

VOLUME 272 #4

april ’08

HOW IT WORKS

P. 49

50 TOMORROW’S HYBRID Motors in each wheel of this car yield 160 mpg.

52 THE TOY THAT THINKS Inside Pleo, a dinosaur robot that listens and learns.

54 BETTER MILEAGE IN THE SKIES The Dreamliner’s cleaner, leaner jet engine.

56 SHOT IN THE GUT A pill that ﬁlms your intestines from within.

58 THE MICRO MOVIEMAKER Jitter-free video from a pocket-sized camera.

60 THE FLYING LASER GUN A warplane that can melt tanks from ﬁve miles out.

63 IN-EAR CONCERT Headphones that pack a subwoofer in your ear.

64 THE STURDIEST STORAGE

Flash memory lets your computer data survive a fall.

66 THE BEST VIEW YET FROM SPACE The satellite camera that will upgrade Google Earth.

sors, which look like pieces of foil, detect the electrical charge from your ﬁngers. (The iPhone works the same way.) Pleo distinguishes among touches by measuring the duration and location rather than the force. That data goes to the main processor, which can receive messages from several sensors at the same time, so Pleo can respond to multiple touches.

Full-color camera

on both sides of his head. He can identify the direction of a noise by determining in which ear the sound is loudest or, as we do, by sensing in which ear a sound arrives ﬁrst.

MOTION: Pleo’s main processor sends data to four less-powerful processors, each of which runs up to four motors simultaneously and controls movements in Pleo’s 15 joints.

Infrared transceiver CAPACITIVE SENSORS recognize human touch

2. POWER UP The Sayaka doesn’t need a motor to move through your gut, but it does require 50 milliwatts to run its camera, lights and computer. Batteries would be too bulky, so the cam draws its power through induction charging. A vest worn by the patient contains a coil that continuously transmits power.

reaches the intestines, the Sayaka cam begins capturing 30 two-megapixel images per second (twice the resolution of other pill cams). Fluorescent and white LEDs in the pill illuminate the tissue walls.

SNOOZING: To prevent Pleo from

4. SPIN FOR CLOSE-UPS

overheating, an internal thermostat tells the processor to make him less active as his temperature rises.

Previous pill cameras place the camera at one end, facing forward, so the tissue walls are visible only in the periphery of their photos. Sayaka is the ﬁrst that gets a clearer picture by

PAWS contain sensor pads that detect surface texture

mounting the camera facing the side and spinning 360 degrees so that it shoots directly at the tissue walls. As the outer capsule travels through the gut, an electromagnet inside the pill reverses its polarity. This causes a permanent magnet to turn the inner capsule and the image sensor 60 degrees every two seconds. It completes a full swing every 12 seconds—plenty of time for repeated close-ups, since the capsule takes about two minutes to travel one inch.

Combined low-frequency speaker and subwoofer

how it works

GREEN JET ENGINE how genx generates thrust In a “high-bypass” turbofan engine like the GEnx, 90 percent of the thrust comes from spinning fan blades in front that draw in massive quantities of air and force it out in a ring around the engine’s center, or core. The GEnx’s primary

The GEnx engine, the powerplant of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, burns 15 percent less fuel than conventional jet engines by using fewer components and lighter composite parts. Flying in 2009, the engine will also be quieter and more durable By Eric Adams

ACCESSORY GEARBOX turns generators to make electricity for the airplane

FAN-HUB FRAME slides over the fan disk and holds the engine in place

innovation is in its fan blades, which have been reshaped to move air more efficiently with fewer blades and are made of carbon fiber to save weight. In order to keep that fan turning, a small percentage of the incoming air instead flows into

HIGH PRESSURE TURBINE moves air from combustor to low-pressure turbine

the core, where it passes through two compressors, mixes with fuel, and ignites in a combustor. That combustion powers turbines that drive the fan up front. The exhaust of that core air provides the other 10 percent of the engine’s thrust.

EXHAUST NOZZLE vents air out the back of the engine

the SD card into a PC, and software compiles thousands of overlapping images into a ﬂat map of the intestines that can be as large as 1,175 megapixels. Doctors can replay the ride as video and magnify a problem area up to 75-fold to study details.

7. LEAVE THE BODY At around $100, the cam is disposable, so patients can simply ﬂush it away.

4. STAND CLEAR A kind of reverse telescope called the beam expander inside a retractable, swiveling pod called the turret widens the beam to 20 inches and aims it. The laser’s computer determines the

Coil Armature

ACOUSTIC FILTER keeps frequencies separated

High-frequency speaker

HOW to deliver pristine sound

Outer capsule INNER CAPSULE spins 360 degrees

IMAGE SENSOR captures 30 images per second

Computer processor

1. SEPARATE THE SIGNAL A circuit called a crossover divides the audio signal into different frequency ranges and routes each batch to one of four speakers in the earphone.

2. ACTIVATE THE SPEAKER The signal from the crossover enters a speaker and flows into a tiny copper coil, which responds with faint electromagnetic vibrations. Nearby, a small strip of metal, or armature, balances between the fields created by two magnets. The vibrations disrupt this magnetic field, causing the magnetized armature to pivot.

3. MOVE THE AIR When the armature moves, it pushes a small rod connected to a diaphragm, which in turn pushes the surrounding air and generates sound waves.

FAQ

4. DELIVER THE SOUND One sound tube carries the high frequencies while another handles the mids and the lows. Mixing treble and bass in your ear instead of in the headphones, as other earbuds do, makes music sound less like you’re hearing it inside a phone booth and more as it would in the hall where it was recorded. Acoustic ﬁlters prevent interference between the high and low frequencies inside the sound tubes.

BEAM EXPANDER widens laser to 20 inches across TURRET aims beam

BEAM CONTROL stabilizes laser beam

OPTICAL BENCH reﬁnes beam with mirrors

LASER BEAM travels in pipe above crew

OPTICAL RESONATOR creates the light pulse

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 57

how it works

THE MICRO MOVIEMAKER By Séan Captain photographs by john b. carnett

CAMCORDER

MAIN CIRCUIT BOARD holds the image processor, which controls the autofocus and iris, cleans up the raw data from the sensors, and compresses the video up to 60-fold to ﬁt on an SD memory card. A separate processor controls the image-stabilizer lenses.

This HD camcorder packs 12 lenses in a barrel the size of your thumb for vivid, jitter-free video in a pocket-friendly package

BATTERY holds lithium-ion cells that can power about an hour of shooting.

Optical image stabilizer

POPSCI.COM APRIL 2008 POPULAR POPULAR SCIENCE SCIENCE 63

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM

PRESSURIZED NITROGEN forces oxygen and iodine together to create the laser

HOW HOT IS THE BEAM? The laser itself isn’t hot, but it can heat its target to thousands of degrees. DOES THE LASER SEAR EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH? Yes. If a bird flew into the firing laser’s line of sight— well, no more bird. Fortunately, the weapon will fire for only a few seconds at a time, minimizing the risk. DOES IT MELT ITS TARGET OR JUST SET IT AFLAME? That depends on what it hits. It will melt metal, but if the target is combustible, it will burn.

Image sensors

how it works

FLASH MEMORY

THE STURDIEST STORAGE flash-based drive stores information in the computer-readable language of 0s and 1s. But instead of writing data by flipping magnetic poles on a spinning disk, flash memory

just shuttles electrons around on a stamp-size microchip. With no moving parts (except, of course, the electrons), a ﬂash drive eats less power and is more durable than an ordinary hard drive. It can even sur-

D beam size: 20 in. D range: 5 miles D test ﬂight: this year D info: boeing.com

60 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

Zoom-lens motor

SEALED EXHAUST holds spent chemicals

Size: custom-fit D frequency range: 10 HZ–16,500 HZ D Price: $1,150 D info: ultimateears.com

second D Shots captured per patient: ~870,000 D Cost: $100 D info: rfamerica.com

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how it works

IMAGING SATELLITE

DATA ANTENNA beams images back to Earth

THE BEST VIEW YET FROM SPACE

STAR TRACKERS calculate the satellite’s position based on star coordinates

When the GeoEye-1 surveillance satellite comes online this spring, its advanced optics will produce more-detailed images than any commercial satellite, capturing objects as small as home plate on a baseball diamond and ﬁlling in the fuzzy spots on Google Earth By bjorn carey

vive a 10-foot drop. (A hard drive can wipe out your data if its mechanical arm scratches its disk.) The cost per gigabyte is still high, but it’s falling fast, and ﬂash drives are already starting to appear in some laptops.

IRIS automatically regulates the amount of incoming light.

FOCUS LENS moves back and forth in less than a second, keeping images sharp.

The 4,400-pound GeoEye-1 will travel 425 miles into space on the back of a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. Over the satellite’s planned seven-year life, it will be able to adjust its orbital altitude by 60 miles, which it will need to do to maintain a consistent view of Earth: Atmospheric drag and pressure from solar winds will gradually push the satellite down.

LOW-PRESSURE TURBINE receives the superheated air, which rotates its blades. This spins a shaft, which turns the fan blades in front, drawing in more air and keeping the engine going.

2. STABILIZE IT Light then passes

3. SPLIT IT Before the image can

Light enters the front of the camcorder and passes through a series of aspherical lenses and so-called low-dispersion lenses, which are made of ultra-pure glass. Together, these bend the light to magnify the images but don’t spread out colors the way a prism or cheap lens would. (That can lead to green or red smears in the footage.) A motor-driven zoom lens slides back and forth to change the view from slightly wider than the naked eye’s to an 8.5fold magniﬁcation. With a large aperture (f/1.8), the camera captures enough light to record clear action in a candlelit room.

to an optical image stabilizer that smoothes out jitters from shaky handheld shooting. Gyrosensors below the lens barrel measure the camcorder’s minute movements up and down and left and right. A processor analyzes the data and sends signals to the stabilizer, where a lens ﬂoats in a magnetic ﬁeld. Adjusting the electromagnets nudges the lens in the opposite direction of the camera jitter, as frequently as 4,000 times per second, to compensate for the movement and deliver a steady beam of light to the image sensors.

be recorded, the light beam has to be divided into the red, green and blue components that your TV will later use to reassemble the video. Most camcorders split the light with alternating color ﬁlters over the individual pixels on a single imaging chip. But those ﬁlters absorb much of the light and dull the colors. Panasonic instead uses a series of prisms to separate the beam into three color streams. Each stream strikes a separate image sensor that measures its intensity on 560,000 pixels to produce more-vivid video than single-sensor cameras can.

SIZE: 2.6 X 2.6 X 5.3 in. D weight: 14 oz. D resolution: 1,920 X 1,080 pixels D cost: $1,000 D

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LCD receives live video from the processor in real time.

Magniﬁed 10,000 times

SD MEMORY CARD records up to ﬁve hours of high-def video on a 32-gigabyte card.

creating better color

JACKS provide video and audio outputs and a computer connection.

info: panasonic.com

STEADY NOW Electromagnets in the camcorder’s image stabilizer adjust the lens to counteract jittery hands. Then prisms direct each primary color of light to a dedicated image sensor.

58 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

Magniﬁed 110,000 times 1 0 1

B e-

e- e-

Electromagnet

Flash memory stores 0s and 1s in millions of miniature transistors, each 1,000 times as thin as a human hair. If the transistor conducts current, the chip reads it as 1; if not, it’s 0. The current flows just underneath the transistor along the chip’s base, or substrate [A]. When the chip is empty, all transistors are set to 1. But when you hit “save,” the chip records data by blocking the current to some transistors, turning them into a 0. To do so, the chip briefly applies 20 volts to a piece of silicon called a control gate [B]. This pulls electrons onto another silicon bit called a floating gate [C], leaving a positively charged area directly below—and breaking up the usual path of electrical current. The only way to move the electrons and change the pattern of 1s and 0s—thereby changing your data—is by applying precise voltages to the transistors. That means even kicking your laptop won’t erase your file.

Image sensors

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 59

2. RECEIVE COMMANDS GeoEye operators send instructions on what and when to photograph from one of four ground stations in Alaska, Virginia, Norway and Antarctica. Even though the satellite will be used commercially, all transmissions are encrypted under the licensing terms of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

HOW flash memory saves a file

Size: 3 X 2 in. D capacity: up to 64 gB D speed: can save 35 MB per second D info: micron.com

Lens Prisms

D thrust: 57,000–75,000 lbs. D cost: $16 million per engine D info: geae.com

54 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

INSET PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY PANASONIC; ILLUSTRATION: KRIS HOLLAND

COMBUSTOR forces the compressed air through 22 nozzles that mix it with fuel, then it ignites the mixture. The GEnx’s nozzles create a swirling effect that allows the engine to use a leaner air/fuel mix, reducing emissions.

1. COLLECT THE LIGHT

SAVE SMALL These scanning electron microscope images zoom in on a ﬂash drive [above left]. Made by Micron Technology, the 64-gigabyte, three-bytwo-inch drive is destined for notebook computers.

64 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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3. GET IN POSITION GeoEye-1 is the ﬁrst non-military satellite to use military-grade GPS units,

highly accurate devices that tell the satellite exactly where it is in the sky. Two star trackers calibrate the camera’s location and angle based on known star coordinates. Combined, these systems can pinpoint an object’s position on the ground within nine feet, 1.5 times as accurate as previous satellites.

4. ALIGN THE CAMERA Once the satellite is over the target— a New York City block or a miles-wide patch of rainforest in Brazil—reaction wheels spin to orient it. As it nears the proper position, the wheels spin in reverse to halt the satellite’s rotation and train the camera on the target.

5. CHECK THE LIGHTING Ground control calculates the sun’s and the satellite’s angle to Earth to determine exposure time. Because the satellite’s 16-inch resolution depends critically on the precise shape and spacing of the optics, they are sealed in a tube and kept at around 72°F to prevent them from warping in the widely

varying temperatures of space. The tube’s door opens only when the camera is ready to take an image.

6. TAKE THE SHOT The camera scans the target in 20,000 37,500-by-1-pixel strips every two seconds, allowing it to easily create a 90-billion-pixel image (about 6,000 square miles) in two minutes. A data-processing unit compresses the image ﬁles and stores them on a one-terabyte solid-state drive.

7. BEAM IT DOWN The sat can capture an area the size of Texas every day. It downloads encrypted images to the ground stations 40 times a day over radio waves. Once GeoEye combines the strips into full images, they are sent to buyers including Google Earth and countries with limited or no surveillance satellites, as well as the government’s National GeospatialIntelligence Agency, which is GeoEye’s primary customer.

ZOOM LENS You can barely make out the tennis court in a standard, one-meterresolution satellite image of Denver [left], but you can clearly see the court’s shape with the 16-inch resolution of GeoEye-1 [right].

COURTESY MICRON

Zoom lens

how to create color-rich, steady-handed video

body length: 14 ft. D Weight: 4,300 lbs. D Altitude: 425 miles D Orbit: 98 min. around poles

GPS units D

UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

68 BREEDING THE OIL BUG

74 STOP, DROP, AND ROLL The next heroic ﬁreﬁghter could be a waterwielding robotic pill bug. By Michael Dumiak

76 SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE OBVIOUS

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM

INSIDE THE OPTICS Light hits the doughnut-shaped, three-foot-wide primary mirror [A] and bounces to the one-foot secondary mirror [B], which reﬂects it through the hole onto the third mirror [C], which focuses the image and sends it to the camera [D].

Solar panels SOLID-STATE DRIVE stores images

Thermal blanket REACTION WHEELS help orient satellite DOOR opens to reveal camera

D velocity: 17,000 mph D Resolution: 16 in. D project Cost: $502 million D info: geoeye.com

66 POPULAR POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008 MONTH 2007

CONCEPTS & PROTOTYPES

A California company thinks it can turn sugar into gasoline. Its assembly line? Millions of genetically engineered bacteria. By Amanda Schaffer

the FUTURE of biofuels

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How to Capture Images from 425 miles up

COURTESY GENERAL ELECTRIC

COVER: NICK KALOTERAKIS; THIS PAGE: TOP: NICK KALOTERAKIS; BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: COURTESY AMYRIS; JOHN MACNEILL; KEVIN FEBRUARY

2. HEAT UP THE LASER

distance to the target and adjusts the beam so it condenses into a focused point at just the right spot. Tracking computers help make microscopic adjustments to compensate for both the airplane’s and the target’s movement. A burst of a few seconds’ duration will burn a several-inch-wide hole in whatever it hits.

Rod SOUND TUBE carries audio deep into ear

1. GET INTO ORBIT

length: 192 in. D weight: 12,500 lbs. D fan diameter: 111 in. D blades in fan: 18

3. AMPLIFY THE BEAM The optical resonator bounces this light between mirrors, forcing more iodine molecules to cough up their photons, further increasing the laser beam’s intensity. From there, the light travels through a sealed pipe above the weapon’s crew station and into a chamber called the optical bench. There, sensors determine the beam’s quality, while mechanically controlled mirrors compensate for movement of the airplane, vibration and atmospheric conditions. Precise airﬂow regulates the chamber’s temperature and humidity, which helps keep the beam strong.

Magnets

56 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

1. FIND YOUR TARGET When the C-130 flies within targeting range (up to five miles away), the gunner aims using a rotating video camera mounted beneath the fuselage. The computer locks onto the object to continually track it. A second crew member precisely adjusts the laser beam’s strength—higher power to disable vehicles, lower power to knock out, say, a small power generator. The gunner hits “fire,” and the computer takes over from there.

In a fraction of a second, chlorine gas mixes with hydrogen peroxide. The resulting chemical reaction creates highly energetic oxygen molecules. Pressurized nitrogen pushes the oxygen through a ﬁne mist of iodine, transferring the oxygen’s energy to iodine molecules, which shed it in the form of intense light.

Mid-range speaker

Prisms

HIGH-PRESSURE COMPRESSOR squeezes the air even further to get it ready for combustion. GEnx creates more compression with fewer rows of blades than other engines thanks to three single-piece blade/disk hybrids, called blisks, that prevent air from leaking between the blades and disks. In addition to saving fuel, they reduce components, cut maintenance, and decrease noise.

Last December, Boeing, under contract from the Department of Defense, installed a $200-million prototype of the laser into a C-130 at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico in preparation for test flights this year. From there it will go to the Air Force for more testing, and it could be in battle within five years. Precise control over the beam’s aim allows it to hit a moving target a few inches wide and confine the damage to that space. The Pentagon hopes such precision will translate into less collateral damage than even today’s most accurate missiles. Future versions using different types of lasers could be mounted on smaller vehicles, such as fighter jets, helicopters and trucks.

6. DELIVER VIDEO Doctors pop

Gyrosensors

LOW PRESSURE COMPRESSOR receives a burst of air from the fan and begins to compress it to accelerate it through the engine. Everything from this point back can be replaced as a unit separately from the fan, which wears more slowly. This saves airlines money.

How to Melt a Tank in Three Seconds or Less

Boeing’s new laser cannon can melt a hole in a tank from ﬁve miles away and 10,000 feet up—and it’s ready to ﬂy this year By Eric Adams

Size: 2,600 cu. ft. D Weight: 40,000 lbs. D Cost: $200 million D Time in development: 5 yrs.

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BETTER MILEAGE IN THE SKIES

how it works

AIRBORNE LASER

THE FLYING LASER GUN enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

DIAPHRAGM vibrates to create sound waves

memory: 2 MB flash D battery life: 1 hr. D Cost: $350 D info: ugobe.com

52 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008 MONTH 2007

BEARING SYSTEM keeps parts spinning freely

CROSSOVER divides the audio signal

The Sayaka is 40 percent smaller than previous endoscope cameras.

Size: 0.91 in. long; 0.35 in. wide D Image resolution: 2 megapixels D Frame rate: 30 shots per

FAN BLADES are curved to move air more efﬁciently, and are made from carbon ﬁber instead of metal, saving 500 pounds

EARBUDS

Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pro custom earphones pack in four separate speakers—including a subwoofer—to create sound as realistic as if you were hearing it live By mike kobrin

5. OFFLOAD DATA Instead of storing each two-megapixel image internally, Sayaka continually transmits shots wirelessly to an antenna in the vest, where they are saved to a standard SD memory card.

THE NEXT GENERATION Jiro Maruyama, the president of RF System Lab, the Japanese company that developed the Sayaka, says future versions might have drug-delivery capabilities or even tiny lasers to treat cancerous cells up close.

SKIN is made of soft rubber designed to feel lifelike

Size: 21 in. long; 8 in. tall; 6 in. wide D length of real camarasaurus: 59 ft. D weight: 3.5 lbs. D

how it works

IN-EAR CONCERT

Fluorescent LED

3. START SNAPPING When it

MAIN PROCESSOR controls behavior and memory

ILLUSTRATIONS: KEVIN HAND; PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY GEO-EYE

HEARING: Pleo has microphones

WHITE LEDS illuminate tissue walls

actual size

HOW the pill films YOUR innards gulps down the capsule, and the digestive process begins. Over the next eight hours, the pill travels passively down the esophagus and through roughly 20 to 25 feet of intestines, where it will capture up to 870,000 images. The patient feels nothing.

how many times you touch each sensor, and act accordingly. If he knows that you typically scratch him under the chin, he’ll crane his neck out and coo for it.

Motors

PILL CAM Permanent magnet Electromagnet

Pop this pill, and eight hours later, doctors can examine a high-resolution video of your intestines for tumors and other problems, thanks to a new spinning camera that captures images in 360 degrees. Developed by the Japanese RF System Lab, the Sayaka endoscope capsule enters clinical trials in the U.S. this month By Gregory Mone

1. DOWN THE HATCH The patient

how it works

SHOT IN THE GUT

CREATING A LASER that can melt a soda can in a lab is a ﬁnicky

LEARNING: Pleo’s main processor triggers actions based on physical input—put his plastic leaf in his mouth, for instance, and if he’s hungry, he’ll chew on it—as well as information stored on internal ﬂash memory. The episodic, or short-term, memory stores a limited number of events that the processor determines to be signiﬁcant, like the time Pleo sensed being held up by his tail. But he can also record cumulative memories, like

WOOFER produces low growls

TWEETER produces high-pitched sounds

BOB SAULS

FEELING: Eight capacitive sen-

PIVOT in the twopart spine allows Pleo to wiggle his torso

Rechargeable nickel hydride battery

SKELETON modeled after the fossilized bones of a real Camarasaurus

Microphones

XRAY ILLUSTRATION: DAVID ARKY

ROBOT DINO

Four years in the making, Pleo, from California start-up Ugobe, is a baby dinosaur robot that acts and learns like a real animal, remembering traumatic experiences and friendly owners. We peeled off its skin to reveal more than a dozen motors, six processors and 38 sensors behind its personality By Sarah Z. Wexler photographs by John B. Carnett

ILLUSTRATION: MEDI-MATION; PHOTOGRAPH: LUIS BRUNO

how it works

THE TOY THAT THINKS

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Scientists learn that rock stars party hard and teens buy stuff to feel cool. Well, duh. But there’s more insight behind these ﬁndings than you might think. By Jason Daley APRIL 2008 POPULAR SCIENCE 03

2/9/08 10:22:30 AM

CONTENTS

THE

FUTURE EVERY DAY

p OP s CI on the web

W W W . P O P S C I . C O M 28

84 REGULARS MEGAPIXELS 10 THE MUST-SEE PHOTOS OF THE MONTH Resurrecting a rat’s heart; microscopic mushroom clouds.

WHAT’S NEW

YOU SAW IT HERE Our Web site highlights innovative tools.

15 RECREATION

TOOLS OF THE WEEK

Dive underwater for hours with an air-recycling system.

Each Friday, our friends at toolmonger.com provide a list of must-have gizmos for renovating, repairing, and demolishing things, at popsci.com/tools.

16 THE GOODS A movie-making microscope; a diminutive disk.

18 AUTOMOTIVE GM reinvents carbon ﬁber for its hot new ‘Vette.

28 GADGETS

MORE DAILY NEWS

HEADLINES 31 COMPUTING The $100 laptop runs into million-dollar troubles.

32 ARCHITECTURE The world’s most eco-friendly museum.

37 FUTURE FOOD

THE NEW POPSCI PODCAST: COCKTAIL-PARTY SCIENCE Listen in as the editors of POPULAR SCIENCE mix up martinis, discuss the week’s developments in science and technology, and chat with the writers and experts behind POPSCI articles. Raise a glass and join us at popsci.com/podcast.

A bioengineered burger, from bun to ketchup.

40 INSPIRED BY NATURE

5-MINUTE PROJECTS

Building better sonar by copying a bat’s ear.

Our crack team of do-it-yourselfers teaches you how to make slime, homemade hard drives, and iPod accessories (not necessarily at the same time) in this month’s video feature. Follow along at popsci .com/5minutes.

HOW 2.0

81 YOU BUILT WHAT?! A Battlestar Galactica cockpit for the living room.

84 GRAY MATTER Turning oxygen into a (highly ﬂammable) liquid.

86 BUILD IT A kitchen notepad made from an old phone screen.

88 ASK A GEEK Don’t lose your pals’ numbers when you lose your cellphone.

FYI 90 Do men or women give better directions? Can cockroaches really survive an atomic bomb?

OTHER STUFF 06 FROM THE EDITOR 09 THE INBOX 112 PPX: THE POPSCI PREDICTIONS EXCHANGE

HOW IT WORKS After this issue shows you how a flying laser gun and an imaging satellite work, visit our Web site to see them in action. Check out the animated versions at popsci.com/howitworks.

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: ISTOCK; MIKE WALKER; COURTESY TOOLMONGER.COM; SABINE SCHECKEL/GETTY IMAGES; DOROTTYA MATHE; KEVIN HAND; COURTESY LG ELECTRONICS

Watching digital TV in the backseat of your car.

04 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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BECAUSE BOMB-SNIFFING DOGS DON’T WORK WELL UNDERWATER.

It locates and destroys underwater mines at the command of an operator who’s nowhere in the vicinity. And it’s just one example of the cutting-edge technology you’ll be able to get your hands on when you become a proud part of the U.S. Navy. To learn more, visit navy.com or call 1-800-USA-NAVY. © 2007. Paid for by the U.S. Navy. All rights reserved.

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FROM THE EDITOR THE FUTURE NOW

Editor-in-Chief Mark Jannot Deputy Editor Jacob Ward Creative Director Sam Syed

OF THE NINE TECHNOLOGIES whose innards we expose and illuminate in our third annual How It Works extravaganza, beginning on page 49, two stake a claim to the ever-more-cherished mantle of Green. That ratio seems appropriately robust to me, just as it’s appropriate that the two engineering marvels in question—a (relatively) fuel-efficient jet engine and a (notably) fuel-efficient concept car—are both transportation-related technologies. The threat of human-influenced global warming is no longer in serious debate, and cars and planes are major carbon-dioxide-spouting malefactors. At the same time, they’re utterly indispensable. As it happens, a few correspondents have taken us to task for choosing in recent issues to highlight a variety of environmental and energy-related tech visions, as if in doing so we’re pandering to some squishy tie-dyed agenda. I suppose you could say we’re pandering, but what we’re pandering to is your interest in seeing what technological ingenuity can do to solve intractable global problems that otherwise elicit in many people nothing but frustration and despair. I’m particularly attracted to possible solutions that (though they may be far off) are fundamentally pragmatic, that don’t require Americans to entirely upend our lifestyle. That’s why I love the approach taken by the entrepreneurial researchers profiled in “Breeding the Oil Bug” [page 68], who intend to coax bacteria to transform sugar into a rather familiar sort of “alternative” fuel option: gasoline. After all, why replace gas if we don’t have to? Why give up a form of energy that our entire auto-fuel infrastructure is built to support and deliver, if we can instead concoct a gasoline that emits little more CO2 into the atmosphere than it has already sucked from the air during its previous life as a field of sugarcane? The idea is pure genius. It’s also, unfortunately, a drop in the barrel. As one of our heroes’ competitors remarks to writer Amanda Schaffer, “Every one of the companies working in this area could be successful beyond their wildest ambitions, and Exxon would never know it.” There will be no single magic bullet for our environmental and energy woes. Which is why you can expect to see us cover a multitude of potential solutions MARK JANNOT in the months and years ahead.

There will be no single magic bullet for our environmental and energy woes.

mark.jannot@bonniercorp.com

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Pragmatic Visionaries

EDITORIAL Executive Editor Mike Haney Articles Editor Michael Moyer Editorial Production Manager Felicia Pardo Senior Editor Nicole Dyer Copy Chief Rina Bander Senior Associate Editors Seán Captain, Seth Fletcher, Martha Harbison Associate Editors Lauren Aaronson, Doug Cantor, Bjorn Carey Editorial Assistant Amy Geppert Editor at Large Dawn Stover Contributing Technology Editor Steve Morgenstern Contributing Editors Eric Adams, Theodore Gray, Eric Hagerman, Joseph Hooper, Suzanne Kantra Kirschner, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, Rena Marie Pacella, Dave Prochnow, Jeffrey Rothfeder, Jessica Snyder Sachs, Rebecca Skloot, Elizabeth Svoboda, Kalee Thompson, Phillip Torrone, James Vlahos, Speed Weed Contributing Troubadour Jonathan Coulton Contributing Futurist Andrew Zolli Editorial Intern Day Greenberg

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the inbox letters@popsci.com

Window of Opportunity About â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whatever Happened to the Blended Wing?â&#x20AC;? [â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fly the Eco-Friendly Skies,â&#x20AC;? February]: I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that Boeing would abandon a design that is 23 percent more fuel-efďŹ cient just because passengers canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see out of a window, especially considering that there is a (relatively) low-cost, lowweight solution. A wide-angle camera on each side of the airplane could provide a real-time image to window-sized LCD screens at each row. And on those bad-weather days when all you can see is cloud cover, each passenger at a â&#x20AC;&#x153;windowâ&#x20AC;? could choose to see video recorded along the same route on a clear day and synchronized to the current ďŹ&#x201A;ight. Mike Smith Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Correction C

Classy Science Editor-in-chief Mark Jannot recently wrote about a ďŹ fth-grade class inspired by POPSCIâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and he challenged the students to change the world [â&#x20AC;&#x153;From the Editor,â&#x20AC;? Feb.]. They responded by mailing in essays about their ideas. Their teacher explains the project below; visit popsci.com/savetheworld to see the kidsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; handwritten letters. I have decided to do the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jannot Challengeâ&#x20AC;? every year with my students. I have kept copies of their essays to give to each of them when they are seniors in high school so they can remember the goals they set and the enthusiasm they had for science. Jennifer Daftari Jay, Okla.

IIn â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fly the Eco-Friendly Skies,â&#x20AC;? we wrote tthat â&#x20AC;&#x153;every pound of jet fuel releases th tthree pounds of carbon into the upper th aatmosphere.â&#x20AC;? But, as several readers at p pointed out, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no way to create three p pounds of weight out of one pound. Every p pound of jet fuel creates three pounds o carbon dioxideâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;during combusof ttion, two oxygen atoms from the air are ti aattached onto every carbon atom in the at ffuel, effectively tripling its mass. Unforfu tunately, we used the common shorthand â&#x20AC;&#x153;carbonâ&#x20AC;? for â&#x20AC;&#x153;carbon dioxide emissions.â&#x20AC;? Our apologies for the confusion.

THE FUTURE NOW

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APRIL 2008 POPULAR SCIENCE 09

more amazing photos MEGAPIXELS pOPsCI See at popsci.com/gallery. ON THE WEB

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME Sure, these look like mushroom clouds of nuclear doom, but they’re really just evidence that nanoscale construction is tricky business. Engineering physicist Fanny Béron of the Polytechnic School of Montreal accidentally left the power on for too long when making 175-nanometer-wide wires. When the wires overflowed from their mold, creating the lumpy structures [here colored orange], she turned the error into art by etching away the molds and imaging the remaining malformed nanowires using a scanning electron microscope. Digitally added color completed the Armageddon effect. The image won first place at the Materials Research Society’s fall 2007 “Science As Art” competition. BY DAY GREENBERG photograph BY Fanny béron

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MEGAPIXELS MEGAPIXELS

THE BEAT GOES ON Hearts built to order may be just around the corner organs their overall shape—which they then reseeded with heart cells from a newborn rat. They attached the organ to electrodes and waited. Then it happened: The heart started to beat regularly. “We were all running around like crazy, scared that it would [just stop and] never beat again,” says team member Harald Ott, a surgical resident at Massachusetts General

Hospital in Boston. The reanimation technique is now being tested on pig hearts, which are much closer in structure to human hearts than are rat hearts. Organs from built-to-order collagen matrices could help treat the five million Americans who suffer from heart failure and the some 2,600 patients currently waiting for transplant donors. BY DAY GREENBERG

STARTING POINT A rat heart serves as

a template to create a living organ.

ALMOST THERE Using a detergent, the heart has been partially denuded of cardiac cells.

READY FOR SEEDING Once all the cells are dissolved and rinsed away, only the collagen matrix is left behind.

THOMAS MATTHIESEN; FACING PAGE: EMILY JENSEN/UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ACADEMIC HEALTH CENTER XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

A dead heart beats again, thanks to the efforts of scientists at the University of Minnesota. To rebuild and reanimate the organ, which was harvested from a rat, scientists first stripped the old heart cells away with a detergent typically found in shampoos. That left behind a collagen matrix—the protein fibers that hold groups of cells together and help give

12 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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THE NEXT STEP Scientists have suc-

cessfully decellularized pig hearts [like this partially stripped heart], but they havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yet reanimated one.

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STILL WATERS This diving gear reuses air instead of emitting it, avoiding bubbles.

Ocean-dive longer with a military-style system that recycles your air IF YOU PLUNGE into the sea to ogle exotic wildlife, why not stay a while—and get an even closer view? Cavediving engineer Bill Stone [see “Journey from the Center of the Earth,” February 2007] makes that possible with the most user-friendly version yet of a rebreather, a device that recycles your exhaled air, removes carbon dioxide, and adds oxygen. (A scuba device quickly burns through tanks of fresh air.) On a typical dive, the Poseidon Discovery lets divers stay underwater at least three times as long as scuba gear can, and since you don’t exhale into the water, you don’t create bubbles or

noise that can scare off fish. Military and advanced divers have used rebreathers for decades, but they’re pricey rigs (about $10,000) that require extensive training on how to manually mix gases in case the gear fails. Stone’s recreational model automates the safety system with built-in computers that check all components pre-dive, plus two oxygen sensors that monitor the gas mix. If the system spots an air-recycling malfunction, the mouthpiece vibrates and blinks an alert. Just flip its lever to inhale from a small fresh-air tank and return safely to the surface.

LIP SERVICE The mouthpiece vibrates and blinks to alert you of a malfunction.

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CAREFUL COMPUTER A computer indicates how many minutes of air you have left.

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WHAT ’S NEW A PRECISE PEACE

CELLS ON SCREEN

The first digital noise-canceling headphones eliminate background din with finely tuned modes for planes, traffic and offices. Instead of trying to cancel out analog sound waves, they convert sound to digital files and use software to excise noise. Sony MDR-

With a 3.5-inch LCD instead of a squinty eyepiece, this digital microscope can share its 1600x magnification views with a roomful of amateur biologists. It can save pictures or short videos to memory cards or upload them to a computer. Celestron

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Hot water kills allergens like dust mites, but it also damages fragile fabrics. This washer uses steam to soften proteins in the mites’ bodies first, so a smaller amount of hot water quickly dissolves the sneeze-inducing critters. LG Steam-

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SHARE WHERE Garmin’s handheld GPS units are the first that use radio waves to wirelessly swap information—such as routes or waypoints—from up to 10 feet away, so everyone in your hiking party stays on the same path.

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POCKET SLICER At only 15 ounces, this mini circular saw is one of the smallest cordless cutters available, making it the right size for precision trimming of carpet, cardboard and paper that could crinkle between scissor blades.

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HOLLYWOOD CONNECTIONS Panasonic’s Blu-ray player is the first to support picture-inpicture views, an Internet connection and other interactive features. New movies could offer downloads of subtitles or related games, for instance. Panasonic DMP-BD50 Price

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16 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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BETTER BURNER The Helios camping stove maintains a steady gas flow, giving campers an even flame. Instead of taking vapor from inside the liquidbutane can, where pressure can change, it pipes out liquid and vaporizes it at the burner. Jetboil Helios From $150; jetboil.com

DISKREET Using the first 1.3-inch hard drive (iPod Classics use a 1.8inch), LaCie crams up to 40 gigabytes—equivalent to 36,000 8x10 digital photos or 60 hours of standard-def video—into a glossy box smaller than two packs of gum. LaCie Little Disk $120

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SHOT ON LOCATION Pinpoint your vacation photos in programs like Google Earth. This pocket-sized GPS receiver notes your location as you shoot. Slip in your camera’s memory card (no matter the brand), and it matches the timestamp on each photo to your location at that time to tag each image file with coordinates. ATP PhotoFinder $100; atpinc.com

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FIGHT THE POWER Now you can keep devices from sucking power in standby mode without crawling behind your desk to turn off your power strip. Belkin’s surge protector comes with a remote control that works even from another room. Belkin Conserve Energy Saving Surge Protector $50; belkin.com

NOT TOO BRIGHT Some digital cameras blur a scene’s brightest colors, making it hard to see, say, a white object on a beach. This shooter’s processor extracts more information on brights and darks from the image sensor, so it creates photos with a wider range of shades. Fujiﬁlm FinePix F100fd

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WHAT’S NEW | AUTOMOTIVE

EXTREME CLOSE-UP

SUPERCAR SUNBLOCK

GM reinvents carbon fiber to dress up the Corvette ZR1 AFTER SPENDING $100,000 on a car, you don’t expect the lightweight carbon-fiber trim to turn yellow and peel in the sun. But that’s the downside for carbon fiber with clear-coat (instead of colored) paint, as GM found when testing materials for the 2004 Corvette Z06 Commemorative Edition. So the company redesigned the clear coat and the epoxy resin binding the carbon fibers in

the roof and trim of the 2009 Corvette ZR1. Standard clear-coat paint lets ultraviolet light reach the epoxy, causing it to discolor. GM engineers added a benzene-based powder to the paint to block the lower-frequency part of the UV range, and they created an epoxy that won’t degrade under the higher frequencies. Unfortunately, the new clear coat has its own

yellow tinge, but GM developed what it calls an “offset additive” to shift it back to a neutral hue. Although the technology isn’t cheap—the half-gallon of paint on the ZR1 costs nearly $1,000—GM is patenting it for other uses. So even if you can’t drop 100 grand on a car, you may see the beneﬁts in somewhat less expensive products such as tennis rackets.—Don Sherman

More Amazing ’Vette Tech THE INNOVATIONS in the 2009 ZR1

are more than skin-deep. According to GM, the first supercharged V8 engine in Corvette history should pound out greater than 620 horsepower, propelling the car to beyond 200 mph. GM had to reengineer the transmission with new gears, shafts and housings to handle the engine’s estimated 600 pound-feet of torque, and it added wider tires to hold the road. With the new drivetrain and components such as carbon-ceramic brake rotors and those carbon-fiber body panels, the ZR1 should trump the $308,000 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano on power-to-weight ratio, acceleration and top speed.

CLEAR ADVANTAGE These carbon-ﬁber panels are coated in a clear paint that wards off damaging sunlight.

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WHAT ’S NEW | GADGETS

MEDITATION MACHINES Upcoming gadgets track—and help lower—your stress YOU’RE A BALL OF ANXIETY: head pounding, jaw clenched. And you could feel worse down the line, since ongoing stress can wreak havoc on your health. But new devices help you stop tension by picking up on early warning signs. They precisely monitor a bevy of biological stats, wirelessly deliver the data to your computer or phone in real time, and guide you in calming exercises that help you chill out instead of losing your cool.—Elizabeth Svoboda

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The Personal Efﬁciency Trainer tracks anxiety so you can pinpoint the exact moment you start to freak out about a speciﬁc event, such as giving a speech. For example, if you become nervous on the way to the talk, next time you can try a jitter-controlling technique when it’s most effective. A wrist-worn device senses your skin’s electrical conductivity (which increases with sweat). It uses Bluetooth to send data in real time to your computer. Of course, the price alone could cause stress levels to spike —look for wireless connectivity in moremainstream gadgets soon. Brainquiry

Make therapeutic exercises fun, and you might actually do them. The Personal Input Pod, packed with skin-conductivity sensors, connects to Bluetooth-enabled cellphones to control games that you win by relaxing. For example, hold the PIP between your thumb and foreﬁnger, and as you become calmer—and therefore less sweaty—your game character moves faster toward the ﬁnish line. Compete against the machine or against a pal holding a second Pod. The PIP could go on sale later this year, along with a choice of good-for-you games.

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Nokia’s concept phone is a biofeedback jack-of-all-trades. You custom-order it with various sensors that take stock of both your health and the environment— anything from a heart-rate counter to an ozone monitor. These detectors ﬁt in a solar-powered, neck- or wrist-worn unit that sends data to your cellphone using a wireless technology called near-ﬁeld communication. Software on the phone analyzes the info, recommending, say, that you take it easy if your heart rate is high and smog levels rise. The phone could even send your stats to an online database, helping researchers track worldwide health. Nokia Eco Sensor

20 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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FROM LEFT: LUIS BRUNO (2); COURTESY NOKIA

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WHAT ’S NEW | HOME ENTERTAINMENT

future

FLAT BLACK

Next-gen TVs will combine the thinnest ﬂat screens with the deepest black levels to produce the best-looking video yet

WHAT A DIFFERENCE a few months make. Hitachi’s 1.5-inch-thick LCD television looked impossibly thin when it debuted last October. Now, plasma-maker Pioneer has a prototype panel that measures a mere 0.35 inch thick. It’s also built a TV with the most vivid picture ever by doing what had always seemed impossible: turning the screen absolutely black. Darker black in scenes produces higher contrast, which makes colors pop and accentuates details. The thin set is a bare panel with the electronics condensed into a 0.96-inch-thick box that covers only half the back (for a maximum thickness of 1.3 inches). Pioneer achieved this after years of consolidating components— putting more functions into ever fewer chips and reducing the number of glass layers that hold the light ﬁlters in its

current

plasma panels. The result: a 50-inch TV that weighs 41 pounds—about half the heft of current models. The extremely black screen comes from redesigning how plasma screens work. Other sets require that all the pixels, even those in black parts of an image, remain dimly lit so they are primed to ﬁre in milliseconds. Launched less than a year ago, Pioneer’s ﬁrst Kuro TVs (named after the Japanese word for “black”) cut this so-called idle luminance by 80 percent. The latest version eliminates the remaining 20 percent. For now, the two screen technologies exist in separate prototype sets. In two or three years, Pioneer plans to combine them into one ultra-skinny, ultra-black, ultralustworthy television.—Seán Captain

THE FUTURE IS DARK current

4.5 inches wide

GRAY AREA Pioneer’s current TV produces the deepest blacks of any plasma (or LCD), but they still look faded.

future

0.35 inch wide

QUITE A CONTRAST Showing a bright object on the absolute black background of the prototype set displays an extreme contrast ratio that exceeds the range of the digital camera used to take this photo (hence the white areas on the ﬂower). Actual size 22 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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FIRST-EVER, Exclusive U.S. Release Thanks to an exclusive agreement with Australia’s worldfamous Perth Mint, New York Mint has secured the rights to the first 8,000 coins struck of this brand new Silver Koala issue. This is the first-time this offer has been released in the United States. Plus, each legal-tender coin is struck in a full ounce of .999 pure silver and has been certified in Gem Brilliant Uncirculated condition by the Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC).

Incredible “First Strike” Specimen—Guaranteed! Featuring an engaging vignette of a Koala mother and her cuddly cub clinging to her back, each coin has also been certified by the Mint Master at the prestigious Perth Mint to be one of the first 8,000 coins struck. The combination of this one-year-only design and its silver purity as well as the pristine condition and desirable “First Strike” status has collector interest running sky high. Like its Panda counterpart, the Silver Koala coins will feature a new design each year, and this 2008 issue is sure to please collectors worldwide!

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2/8/08 4:22:11 PM

WHAT ’S NEW | RECRE ATION

HOW IT WORKS

PUMP IRON— AND WATER

This water-based home gym adjusts weights all by itself to give you a better workout STRENGTH TRAINING has barely changed since the Governator was Mr. Universe. Whether you do bench presses or leg curls, you still lift a given amount of weight again and again. But with a new system from Afterburner Fitness, you can switch weights in the middle of a set without letting go of the bar. The machine automatically decreases the load as you tire, letting you either start with a higher-than-usual heft (a technique recommended by some experts) or simply do more reps before you reach exhaustion. Afterburner’s trick is to replace a traditional stack of iron weights with a water tank that gradually empties, lightening the load. Let the machine’s computer use a standard rate of decrease, or control the weight yourself using voice commands. Look for the system to go on sale in about a year, as an add-on to existing home gyms or as part of a stand-alone machine. —Therese Iknoian

Lift the load tank, holding up to 180 pounds of water. Hoses drain water to gradually reduce weight. Valve controls how much water leaves load tank. Iron weights can add dozens of extra pounds. Charge tank stores reserve water. Pump ﬁlls load tank to start next workout.

GET IT: Price not set; afterburnerﬁtness.com

ILLUSTRATION: KEVIN HAND; PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY TRIXTER

IN RELATED NEWS: REALITY BIKES TURN YOUR LIVING ROOM into a bike path with the most realistic cycling simulator yet. A virtual rider on the Xdream’s video screen mirrors your every movement, whether you put your foot down for a rest or stand on the pedals for a sprint. Unlike other simulator bikes, which register only handlebar motion and pedal speed, the Xdream has sensors embedded throughout. For example, pressure sensors in the seat detect when you stand up. The crankset sports a potentiometer (similar to the sensor in a joystick) that helps match the position of the virtual pedals to yours. Xdream also responds to changes in the game’s terrain. Slog through onscreen mud, and an opposing magnetic ﬁeld inside increases the wheels’ resistance. Luckily, there’s no actual mud to dirty your $10,000 ride.

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GET IT: Trixter Xdream $9,700; xbiking.com

APRIL 2008 POPULAR SCIENCE 25

2/12/08 4:15:19 PM

BLACK BELT MEETS BLACK TIE.

honda.com 1-800-33-Honda RTL model shown. ÂŠ 2007 American Honda Motor Co., Inc.

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Whether you’re headed out for a classy night on the town or just gearing up for some serious dirt kicking on the open range, the Ridgeline’s spacious five-passenger interior and rugged 247-horsepower engine are up for practically any challenge. And with an available Honda Satellite-Linked Navigation System, you’ll be ready to find your way on to life’s next adventure, be it valleys or valets. The Ridgeline. Built by Honda. TM

THE RIDGELINE

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2/6/08 12:35:58 PM

WHAT ’S NEW | GADGETS

WHAT’S NEXT

MOVING PICTURES Live digital television broadcasts come to handhelds and highways as they bounce off buildings and moving vehicles. This can cause the same television signal to hit an antenna dozens of times— which confounds the TV tuner and leads to a frozen or black screen. The new mobile broadcasts embed within the transmission extra code that the tuner uses to determine how the signal got jumbled and then re-create the original data. It works: Video played ﬂawlessly during our road tests in trafﬁc-choked downtown Las Vegas and on a nearby highway. Both Samsung’s technology, called A-VSB, and LG’s, called MPH, are com-

patible with today’s digital-television standards, so stations can slip them in alongside their high-deﬁnition broadcasts. Unlike other mobile-television offerings, like FLO TV on Verizon cellphones, you probably won’t need a subscription to tune in. And you can get the full range of programming offered on standard TV, including local news, sports and weather. The U.S. television standards-setting body, the ATSC, is currently testing the LG and Samsung technologies and may approve one this summer. That could get the show rolling by mid-2009.—Seán Captain

THREE WAYS TO WATCH LIVE TV ON THE GO

IN A BACKPACK TV receivers easily fit in devices like GPS units, laptops or handheld media players like this prototype from Samsung.

IN THE CAR A threadlike wire antenna along the edge of the windshield pulls in a signal strong enough for an in-car entertainment system.

IN YOUR POCKET In place of choppy Web video or pricey subscription services, cellphones can tune in the same programs that you get at home.

HOW IT WORKS: BROADCASTS TO MOVING TARGETS AN ANTENNA picks up not just one transmission from a tower [A] but also reﬂections [B] that merge with the original broadcast into a single distorted signal [C]. This produces a broken-up or blank screen. TV receivers unscramble the data using error correction code—markers in the signal that

indicate how it got distorted—and recreate the original signal [D]. The challenge is greatest with moving targets, since reﬂections are constantly changing. Error correction code makes up about half the signal sent to home televisions, but about 75 percent of mobile broadcasts.

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A C

ILLUSTRATION: PAUL WOOTTON; PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM LEFT: COURTESY SAMSUNG; COURTESY KENWOOD; COURTESY LG ELECTRONICS; INSETS, FROM LEFT: NBC/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; ABC/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION; 20TH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION

FOR ALL OF TODAY’S in-car entertainment options, live, local digital TV still isn’t one of them. Even at home, digital television signals can break up if you wiggle the antenna, and you can’t get a picture at all in a moving vehicle. But soon, you may see ﬂawless video even if your set is barreling down the road at more than 100 mph. LG Electronics and Samsung have both ﬁgured out how to send video to a moving target, like a headrest TV or a mobile phone. One key trick is overcoming a problem called dynamic multipath, the ever-changing ricochet of radio waves

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM

2/8/08 4:36:13 PM

“The color and clarity of DiamondAura rivals that of a flawless D-colored diamond”. —Steven Rozensky Noted jewelry expert

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The Fifth C? Cut, Color, Carat, Clarity…Chemistry?

s it possible that the mind of a scientist can create more beauty and romance than Mother Nature? The laboratories at DiamondAura were created with one mission in mind: Create brilliant cut jewelry that allows everyone to experience more clarity, more scintillation and larger carat weights than they have ever experienced. So, we’ve taken 2.5 carats of our lab-created DiamondAuras and set them in the most classic setting—the result is our most stunning, fiery, faceted design yet! In purely scientific measurement terms, the refractory index of the DiamondAura is very high, and the color dispersion is actually superior to mined diamonds. Perfection from the laboratory. We named our brilliant cut stones DiamondAura, because, “they dazzle just like natural diamonds but without Place one of your own rings on top of one of the circle diagrams. Your ring size is the circle that matches the inside diameter of your ring. If your ring falls between sizes, order the next larger size.

COMPARE FOR YOURSELF AT 2.5 CARATS Mined Flawless DiamondAura Diamond Compares to: Hardness Cuts Glass Cuts Glass Cut (58 facets) Brilliant Brilliant Color “D” Colorless “D” Colorless Clarity “IF” “F” Faultless Dispersion/Fire 0.044 0.066 2.5 c.t.w. ring $60,000+ $145 the outrageous cost.” We will not bore you with the incredible details of the scientific process, but will only say that it involves the use of rare minerals heated to an incredibly high temperature of over 5000˚F. This can only be accomplished inside some very modern and expensive laboratory equipment. After several additional steps, scientists finally created a clear faultless marvel that looks even better than the vast majority of mined diamonds. According to the book Jewelry and Gems–the Buying Guide, the technique used in DiamondAura offers, “The best diamond simulation to date, and even some jewelers have mistaken these stones for mined diamonds.” The 4 C’s. Our DiamondAura 3-Stone Classique Ring retains every jeweler’s specification: color, clarity, cut, and carat weight. The transparent color and clarity of DiamondAura emulate the most

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HEADLINES disco v er ie s , a d va nce s & deb at e s in science

Inside the greenest museum in history

A robotic butler trains for combat

Your burger on biotechnology

COMPUTING

THE $100 HEADACHE Amid delays and feuds, the One Laptop Per Child program is picking up the pieces Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was a shining example of innovative, nonprofit goodness. It had a bold humanitarian mission to develop and send $100 laptops to children in developing nations, and its founder, Nicholas Negroponte, had ambitions of distributing up to 10 million units by the beginning of 2007. The XO laptop won widespread acclaim and plenty of accolades (including a 2006 Best of What’s New Grand Award in this magazine). But this past year has brought the high-flying OLPC back to earth. Production of the laptops has stalled, and the price tag of the machine has doubled to $200. As of January, OLPC had built only around 250,000 laptops, and delivery problems left some critics fuming. Worse, Intel parted ways with the organization over creative and management differences to work on its own low-cost educational laptop, called Classmate. On top of that, an international tech firm slapped OLPC with a

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM

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$20-million lawsuit in Nigeria claiming keyboard-design infringement, and founding chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen tendered her resignation to run her own for-profit company, Pixel Qi, that develops inexpensive computing devices. Now, looking to revitalize its efforts and broaden its appeal, OLPC is working with Microsoft to fieldtest a modified version of Windows XP on the laptop. Although Walter Bender, OLPC’s president of software and content, says the organization is just keeping its options open and has no intention of replacing the XO’s Linux operating system, the collaboration has raised some eyebrows. Experts applauded the original decision to use Linux since, unlike Windows, its opensource nature would allow local programmers to write code in their native languages. And because Windows XP requires more computer memory, run-

REBOOT, PLEASE Because of production and partnership woes, the cost of the $100 laptop has jumped to $200.

ning the operating system stands to drive up the machine’s price. Beyond the technology tangles, perhaps OLPC’s biggest challenge may simply be living up to its own ambitious goals. Following slower-than-expected development of the XO, production started just last November and, at press time, OLPC had

shipped fewer than 200,000 of the XO laptops abroad, with another 80,000 going to participants in the Give One, Get One campaign in North America. But even if these numbers fall far short of Negroponte’s initial goal, they would be considered pretty strong for most small computer manufacturers in a

COURTESY MIKE MCGREGOR; ICEPACK: SUPERSTOCK

THREE YEARS AGO, One

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HE ADLINES

THE LIVING MUSEUM For a newly minted museum in San Francisco, the green architecture is the main exhibit FROM A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW, the domes of the California Academy of Sciences, set to open in the fall, bulge out of the ground like giant scoops of green ice cream. These undulating hills built into the museum’s 2.5-acre, ﬂora-covered roof integrate the building into the green space of surrounding Golden Gate Park. They also conserve energy, since the roof insulates and ventilates the 400,000square-foot museum below. Designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, whose works include the landmark modern-art museum Centre Pompidou in Paris, the $484-million structure will most likely be the largest

public building ever to qualify for the U.S. Green Building Council’s “platinum” LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating. The designation, so far held by just 70 buildings worldwide, is the highest honor in green construction. Beneath the roof, museumgoers will find a natural-history museum, a planetarium, a rainforest with free-flying birds, a coral reef inhabited by 4,000 fish, and an aquarium filled with saltwater pumped in from the Pacific Ocean. The most influential display, though, may well be the marriage of the museum’s physical design with its educational mission. “It’s not about dusty stuffed animals,” says execu-

tive director Greg Farrington. “It’s about human survival and living in harmony on planet Earth.”—Kalee Thompson ROOTED IN SUSTAINABILITY The living rooftop is tiled with 50,000 biodegradable trays made of coconut husks. Each tray is specially layered to keep plants from slipping down the roof’s steep slopes.

ILLUSTRATIONS: GRAHAM MURDOCH; PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM LEFT: CHARMAGNE LEUNG AND STEPHANIE STONE/CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

ARCHITECTURE

A Retractable roof

Planetarium

Coral reef

Pumping station

short period of time. Roger Kay, the president of computer-industry analysis and consulting ﬁrm Endpoint Technologies Associates, which has followed OLPC since its conception, says the nonproﬁt is “doing OK—not brilliantly, but all right.” Although the XO works well for a low-cost device, he says, the execution of the project—everything from failing to

secure buyers in large markets such as China and India, to relying on pro-bono distributors, to its public breakup with Intel—is indicative of OLPC’s lack of business experience. The question is how quickly the organization can learn from its mistakes. Bender remains unfazed by the program’s rocky start—“We’re looking at getting millions

Aquarium

[of laptops] out in 2008,” he says—but in the coming year, the nonproﬁt will need to recruit a new CTO and ﬁll Intel’s vacancy by enlisting a partner wealthy enough to replace the chip maker’s millions of dollars in funding. Resolving the Nigerian dispute is also key, because OLPC is prohibited from doing business in that populous market (an

32 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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INSIDE THE GREENEST MUSEUM THE LIVING ROOF Planted with nine local species, the 2.5-acre roof [A] is the largest swath of native vegetation in San Francisco. It absorbs 98 percent of rainwater, so it doesn’t need irrigation.

VENTILATION Computer modeling of local wind patterns helped architects place the roof’s seven mounds to maximize air ﬂow. The valleys

correspond with open areas in the exhibition space below. Cool air blowing through the mounds draws warm interior air up through vents in the ceiling, providing constant circulation that reduces the need for air conditioning.

RETRACTABLE ROOF Between the planetarium and the rainforest is the museum’s central plaza, which opens via a retractable Mylar rain screen.

walls and skylights [B] are made of high-performance glass that reﬂects most heat, while rooftop solar panels supply up to 10 percent of the museum’s electricity needs.

recycled sources. The concrete contains 30 percent ﬂy ash (a by-product of coal plants), and the structure is insulated with recycled blue jeans.

WATER USE MATERIALS All of the building’s structural steel comes from

LIGHTING Natural light reaches 90 percent of the building’s exhibition spaces, minimizing the use of electricity. In addition, the building’s

A pumping station at nearby Ocean Beach sucks water two and a half miles from the Paciﬁc through a buried pipe to a holding tank in the museum’s basement, where it is treated, heated, and distributed to the aquarium and coral reef.

PARK-N-PLUG The museum offers a recharging station for electric and plug-in vehicles.

Recharging station

Rainforest

p OPsCI on the web

Solar panels

Take an animated tour of the museum at popsci.com/green.

The question is what One Laptop Per Child can learn from its mistakes. estimated 57 million children) until the matter is settled. Additionally, OLPC plans to streamline production, roll out machines that will work in other languages, and continue developing the next version of the XO, which Bender expects will come closer to the $100

mark when it is released in a few years. Meanwhile, despite OLPC’s turmoil, families are putting the XO to good use. Last March, 20 students in Ban Samkha, a remote, rice-growing village in Thailand, got their hands on the machines—a ﬁrst for some. They

quickly began to use Google, connect with new friends around the world, and monitor local weather to help alert the landslide-prone village when it’s at risk. The Ban Samkha experience serves as a vivid reminder that the OLPC project is worth rooting for.—AMY FELDMAN

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HE ADLINES

FUTURE SOLDIER

The military is designing a robotic “butler” that will provide cover ﬁre, ammo, food and peace of mind during combat THE AMERICAN SOLDIER may soon have a personal combat-ready sidekick that will fetch him essentials such as water, ammo and medicine and provide extra firepower when he’s under attack. It’s a robotic servant dubbed BirdDog that’s in the works by the U.S. Navy and the private research firm Science Applications International Corporation. BirdDog is designed to complement the military’s future fleet of unmanned vehicles, which are expected to account for one third of all ground combat vehicles by 2015. The system will link sensors on a soldier’s body and gear to an all-terrain robot equipped with tools such as radar, GPS and motion detectors. Feeding on

real-time data, the robot will be able to track the soldier’s location, ammunition stock and vital signs and then coordinate and provide support. The ultimate goal, says Bart Everett, the director for robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which oversees the research, is a robot that can reason about the actions of a human and respond accordingly. For now, BirdDog is limited to simple tasks, such as shadowing a soldier. “We’re trying to find better ways of letting a robot know how it can help, so the human doesn’t have to babysit it,” Everett says. The next step is to field-test a system that can scan terrain and upload tactical maps to a soldier.—Saba Berhie

FOLLOW THE LEADER An autonomous BirdDog prototype, armed with a paintball gun, uses software and sensors to shadow the movements of a soldier.

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DNA, WELL DONE Small, precise heating units are the key to pocket-sized genetic tests.

SHRINKAGE

THE QUEST TO MAKE REALLY TINY THINGS

THE WORLD’S SMALLEST CRIME LAB An ant-size microwave cooks DNA to catch crooks THE LATEST in space-saving kitchen technology won’t pop your popcorn, but it could help nab criminals. A new micromicrowave, smaller than an ant, can heat pinhead-size drops of liquid to precise temperatures—critical for the kind of lab-on-a-chip devices investigators could someday use in the field for biological analyses such as DNA fingerprinting. This microwave looks nothing like the countertop variety. Three gold wires are laid onto a thin glass slide and divided by channels half the width of a human hair. The sample liquid is pumped into the channels, and the middle wire, which is hooked up to a microwave signal generator, emits microwave energy. The liquid absorbs this energy and heats up to a precise temperature. “It works just like a kitchen microwave oven except that it can deliver whatever microwave frequency we choose for exact heating,” says Michael Gaitan, leader of the National Institute of Standards and Technology group that is collaborating on the project with researchers at George Mason University. One big potential payoff: a portable DNA-analysis kit that could use crimescene evidence, such as a drop of blood, to produce the genetic fingerprint of the culprit. Gaitan says that, pending corporate funding, a commercial prototype of the microwave tech could be ready within a year.—MICHELLE BRYNER

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY NIST; COURTESY SAIC; COURTESY JAMES C. MCKENNA/SAIC (3)

ANOTHER ROUND, JEEVES

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM

2/7/08 2:37:34 AM

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Your favorite part of a Lunesta night just might be the morning. Wake up refreshed and recharged after a good night’s sleep. Non-narcotic Lunesta has helped so many who have trouble sleeping: - Fall asleep fast - Stay asleep - Wake up ready to start the day Lunesta is by prescription only. Individual results may vary.

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A great tomorrow starts tonight. IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION: Lunesta helps you fall asleep quickly, so take it right before bed. Be sure you have at least eight hours to devote to sleep before becoming active. Until you know how you’ll react to Lunesta, you should not drive or operate machinery. Do not take Lunesta with alcohol. Call your doctor right away if after taking Lunesta you walk, drive, eat or engage in other activities while asleep. In rare cases severe allergic reactions can occur. Most sleep medicines carry some risk of dependency. Side effects may include unpleasant taste, headache, drowsiness and dizziness. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088. See important patient information on the next page. © 2008 Sepracor Inc. LUN403-07

Please read this summary of information about LUNESTA before you talk to your doctor or start using LUNESTA. It is not meant to take the place of your doctor’s instructions. If you have any questions about LUNESTA tablets, be sure to ask your doctor or pharmacist. LUNESTA is used to treat different types of sleep problems, such as difficulty in falling asleep, difficulty in maintaining sleep during the night, and waking up too early in the morning. Most people with insomnia have more than one of these problems. You should take LUNESTA immediately before going to bed because of the risk of falling. LUNESTA belongs to a group of medicines known as “hypnotics” or, simply, sleep medicines. There are many different sleep medicines available to help people sleep better. Insomnia is often transient and intermittent. It usually requires treatment for only a short time, usually 7 to 10 days up to 2 weeks. If your insomnia does not improve after 7 to 10 days of treatment, see your doctor, because it may be a sign of an underlying condition. Some people have chronic sleep problems that may require more prolonged use of sleep medicine. However, you should not use these medicines for long periods without talking with your doctor about the risks and benefits of prolonged use. Side Effects All medicines have side effects. The most common side effects of sleep medicines are: • • • •

Drowsiness Dizziness Lightheadedness Difficulty with coordination

Sleep medicines can make you sleepy during the day. How drowsy you feel depends upon how your body reacts to the medicine, which sleep medicine you are taking, and how large a dose your doctor has prescribed. Daytime drowsiness is best avoided by taking the lowest dose possible that will still help you sleep at night. Your doctor will work with you to find the dose of LUNESTA that is best for you. Some people taking LUNESTA have reported next-day sleepiness. To manage these side effects while you are taking this medicine: • When you first start taking LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine, until you know whether the medicine will still have some effect on you the next day, use extreme care while doing anything that requires complete alertness, such as driving a car, operating machinery, or piloting an aircraft. • Do not drink alcohol when you are taking LUNESTA or any sleep medicine. Alcohol can increase the side effects of LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine. • Do not take any other medicines without asking your doctor first. This includes medicines you can buy without a prescription. Some medicines can cause drowsiness and are best avoided while taking LUNESTA. • Always take the exact dose of LUNESTA prescribed by your doctor. Never change your dose without talking to your doctor first. Special Concerns There are some special problems that may occur while taking sleep medicines.

Memory Problems Sleep medicines may cause a special type of memory loss or “amnesia.” When this occurs, a person may not remember what has happened for several hours after taking the medicine. This is usually not a problem since most people fall asleep after taking the medicine. Memory loss can be a problem, however, when sleep medicines are taken while traveling, such as during an airplane flight and the person wakes up before the effect of the medicine is gone. This has been called “traveler’s amnesia.” Memory problems have been reported rarely by patients taking LUNESTA in clinical studies. In most cases, memory problems can be avoided if

you take LUNESTA only when you are able to get a full night of sleep before you need to be active again. Be sure to talk to your doctor if you think you are having memory problems.

any changes in your behavior, or if you have any unusual or disturbing thoughts, call your doctor immediately.

Tolerance

Sleep medicines may cause sedation or other potential effects in the unborn baby when used during the last weeks of pregnancy. Be sure to tell your doctor if you are pregnant, if you are planning to become pregnant, or if you become pregnant while taking LUNESTA.

When sleep medicines are used every night for more than a few weeks, they may lose their effectiveness in helping you sleep. This is known as “tolerance.” Development of tolerance to LUNESTA was not observed in a clinical study of 6 months’ duration. Insomnia is often transient and intermittent, and prolonged use of sleep medicines is generally not necessary. Some people, though, have chronic sleep problems that may require more prolonged use of sleep medicine. If your sleep problems continue, consult your doctor, who will determine whether other measures are needed to overcome your sleep problems.

Dependence Sleep medicines can cause dependence in some people, especially when these medicines are used regularly for longer than a few weeks or at high doses. Dependence is the need to continue taking a medicine because stopping it is unpleasant. When people develop dependence, stopping the medicine suddenly may cause unpleasant symptoms (see Withdrawal below). They may find they have to keep taking the medicine either at the prescribed dose or at increasing doses just to avoid withdrawal symptoms. All people taking sleep medicines have some risk of becoming dependent on the medicine. However, people who have been dependent on alcohol or other drugs in the past may have a higher chance of becoming addicted to sleep medicines. This possibility must be considered before using these medicines for more than a few weeks. If you have been addicted to alcohol or drugs in the past, it is important to tell your doctor before starting LUNESTA or any sleep medicine.

Withdrawal Withdrawal symptoms may occur when sleep medicines are stopped suddenly after being used daily for a long time. In some cases, these symptoms can occur even if the medicine has been used for only a week or two. In mild cases, withdrawal symptoms may include unpleasant feelings. In more severe cases, abdominal and muscle cramps, vomiting, sweating, shakiness, and, rarely, seizures may occur. These more severe withdrawal symptoms are very uncommon. Although withdrawal symptoms have not been observed in the relatively limited controlled trials experience with LUNESTA, there is, nevertheless, the risk of such events in association with the use of any sleep medicine. Another problem that may occur when sleep medicines are stopped is known as “rebound insomnia.” This means that a person may have more trouble sleeping the first few nights after the medicine is stopped than before starting the medicine. If you should experience rebound insomnia, do not get discouraged. This problem usually goes away on its own after 1 or 2 nights. If you have been taking LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine for more than 1 or 2 weeks, do not stop taking it on your own. Always follow your doctor’s directions.

Changes In Behavior And Thinking Some people using sleep medicines have experienced unusual changes in their thinking and/or behavior. These effects are not common. However, they have included: • • • • • • •

More outgoing or aggressive behavior than normal Confusion Strange behavior Agitation Hallucinations Worsening of depression Suicidal thoughts

Pregnancy And Breastfeeding

In addition, a very small amount of LUNESTA may be present in breast milk after use of the medication. The effects of very small amounts of LUNESTA on an infant are not known; therefore, as with all other prescription sleep medicines, it is recommended that you not take LUNESTA if you are breastfeeding a baby. Safe Use Of Sleep Medicines To ensure the safe and effective use of LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine, you should observe the following cautions: 1. LUNESTA is a prescription medicine and should be used ONLY as directed by your doctor. Follow your doctor’s instructions about how to take, when to take, and how long to take LUNESTA. 2. Never use LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine for longer than directed by your doctor. 3. If you notice any unusual and/or disturbing thoughts or behavior during treatment with LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine, contact your doctor. 4. Tell your doctor about any medicines you may be taking, including medicines you may buy without a prescription and herbal preparations. You should also tell your doctor if you drink alcohol. DO NOT use alcohol while taking LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine. 5. Do not take LUNESTA unless you are able to get 8 or more hours of sleep before you must be active again. 6. Do not increase the prescribed dose of LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine unless instructed by your doctor. 7. When you first start taking LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine, until you know whether the medicine will still have some effect on you the next day, use extreme care while doing anything that requires complete alertness, such as driving a car, operating machinery, or piloting an aircraft. 8. Be aware that you may have more sleeping problems the first night or two after stopping any sleep medicine. 9. Be sure to tell your doctor if you are pregnant, if you are planning to become pregnant, if you become pregnant, or if you are breastfeeding a baby while taking LUNESTA. 10. As with all prescription medicines, never share LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine with anyone else. Always store LUNESTA or any other sleep medicine in the original container and out of reach of children. 11. Be sure to tell your doctor if you suffer from depression. 12. LUNESTA works very quickly. You should only take LUNESTA immediately before going to bed. 13. For LUNESTA to work best, you should not take it with or immediately after a high-fat, heavy meal. 14. Some people, such as older adults (i.e., ages 65 and over) and people with liver disease, should start with the lower dose (1 mg) of LUNESTA. Your doctor may choose to start therapy at 2 mg. In general, adults under age 65 should be treated with 2 or 3 mg. 15. Each tablet is a single dose; do not crush or break the tablet. Note: This summary provides important information about LUNESTA. If you would like more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist to let you read the Prescribing Information and then discuss it with him or her. Rx only

How often these effects occur depends on several factors, such as a person’s general health, the use of other medicines, and which sleep medicine is being used. Clinical experience with LUNESTA suggests that it is rarely associated with these behavior changes. It is also important to realize it is rarely clear whether these behavior changes are caused by the medicine, are caused by an illness, or have occurred on their own. In fact, sleep problems that do not improve may be due to illnesses that were present before the medicine was used. If you or your family notice

HE ADLINES

RECIPE FOR BURGER 2.0

FUTURE FOOD

YOUR BURGER ON BIOTECH

VITAMIN BUN After isolating a gene in wild wheat that controls protein, zinc and iron content, scientists at the University of California at Davis spliced the gene into domestic wheat, boosting nutrient content by 12 percent.

Scientists serve up leaner beef, tastier cheddar and healthier ketchup IF THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY has its way, ordering a hamburger might soon sound something like this: “one charbroiled cloned-beef patty, with genetically modified cheese, lab-grown bacon and vitamin-C-fortified lettuce, on a protein-spiked bun.” The burger of the future is delicious, nutritious and contains more engineering than a stealth

bomber. With the Food and Drug Administration ruling in January that meat and milk from cloned cows, pigs, goats and their offspring is safe to eat, the only thing keeping the superburger off your dinner plate is time. It will be a few years yet before cloned meat hits store shelves. Cloning the perfect (and tastiest) cow can cost upward of $15,000, which

makes clones themselves too expensive to eat, so we’ll have to wait until they spawn enough offspring (the old-fashioned way) to feed the masses. Meanwhile, researchers are busy formulating all the fixings. Take a look at what science is doing for the burger, from bun to beef and everything in between. —Rena Marie Pacella

CRUELTY-FREE BACON Scientists in the Netherlands have grown minced pork in a dish by adding water, glucose and amino acids to pig stem cells. Expect artiﬁcial ground meat by 2012 and bacon within the decade.

BETTER CHEDDAR Food engineers are boosting cheddar ﬂavor by adding a bacterial gene that produces an enzyme that eliminates the bitter taste created during ripening.

ILLUSTRATION: MITCH ROMANOWSKI DESIGN; PHOTOGRAPHS: COLIN SMALE; SCHNARE & STIEF/GETTY IMAGES

LEANER BEEF

Bun Bacon Cheese Beef Ketchup Lettuce

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Several companies are cloning the country’s most prized cows to produce leaner, tastier cuts of meat. Ranchers will start breeding the clones this spring, and in ﬁve years, the offspring will be ready to grill.

HEALTHIER KETCHUP The ethanol boom is driving up the price of corn syrup, so Heinz is breeding a tomato that is 10 percent sweeter than those grown today. Look for naturally sweeter ketchup by 2010.

HIGH-C LETTUCE By splicing rat genes into lettuce, Virginia Tech scientists ﬁgured out how to turn on the vegetable’s latent vitaminC-producing abilities (rats are natural C-makers). Since rodent-altered lettuce is somewhat unappetizing, the team used the data to identify plant DNA that can do the same thing.

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Theoretical physics has been hopelessly stalled for over 30 years. Moribund. Ossified. The Standard Model of particle physics uses over 20 ad hoc constants, and no one knows why they are necessary or why they have the values they do. Quantum physics and general relativity remain utterly incompatible. Cosmologists haven’t the foggiest idea what could have caused the Big Bang or what, if anything, came before it. And finally, after over 30 years of effort, string theory hasn’t even achieved the status of science. There is a very simple reason for this catastrophic, intractable mess. Theorists stopped asking why a long time ago. Without the why, the search for mathematical symmetries becomes numerology, not science. No telescope or particle accelerator, regardless of its size, is going to tell us why the universe is the way it is. When the why’s remain unanswered, there is no understanding. When there is no understanding, there is no progress. But this sad situation is about to change forever. Our Undiscovered Universe is all about the why. It’s an entirely new paradigm, a premise so powerful that it can finally answer the most important question of all: “Why does the universe exist?” This, in turn, reveals many of nature’s secrets to a depth and clarity never before imagined.

Unified i Rational i Revolutionary i Empirically Validated 100 years ago, Einstein found a small part of the universe’s four-dimensional geometry. Null Physics provides the rest of it. After reading this book, concepts like string theory and the Big Bang will seem positively ludicrous in comparison. Here is a brief glimpse of its sweeping unification: ¾ Energy is a three-dimensional substance, and its most basic unit is time-distance2. ¾ Our universe has only a single fundamental constant: its finite, four-dimensional volume. ¾ A black hole’s peak density is 1.2(10)19 kg/m3, about 60 times more dense than atomic nuclei.

Welcome to 21st century physics

Are you ready for an incredible journey?

nullphysics.com 479 pages, hardcover, $59. Available exclusively at nullphysics.com. 2007 Aridian Publishing Corporation, (877) 274-3426

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HE ADLINES

INSPIRED BY NATURE

MED TECH

ENVIABLE EARS Reverse-engineering bat hearing could lead to better sonar being beautiful. But its ugliest features— its freakishly ornate ears and intricately furrowed mouth—play a key part in the animal’s uncanny ability to track its prey. The mystery is how. Now, through sophisticated computer modeling and robotics, Rolf Müller and Herbert Peremans are at last beginning to reverse-engineer a digital approximation of the bat’s ultrasonic sonar system. Their effort, part of an $8.5-million European Union project called CILIA, could lead to more-advanced sonar technology—and possibly even bat-inspired antenna designs. All active sonar, including in the animal world, involves emitting sound pulses and interpreting the reflected echoes. But even the best man-made systems are no match for the bat, which can sort through countless noises on the fly to pinpoint obstacles or prey, a key part of a navigational process known as echolocation. Müller, a computational physicist at Shandong University in China, has amassed

what is probably the world’s largest database of bat parts—nearly 600 Spock-like ears and wrinkly facial structures called noseleaves. His specimens come from caves, attics and occasionally even restaurant kitchens across Southeast Asia. In his lab, Müller puts the dissected parts through a digital CT scanner, which captures details as small as 10 microns. His team designed a computer model to simulate how sound waves pass through these structures and provide clues to how the bat’s natural sonar transmitter and antennae work. So far, the scientists have learned that a protrusion in the outer ear called the tragus (in humans, it helps hold earbuds in place) appears to help the bat organize the incoming sonic clutter. Müller is meeting with a NASA scientist to investigate whether the work could improve antenna designs. Meanwhile, Peremans, an electrical engineer at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, is busy creating a set of synthetic ears and mouths based on Müller’s 3-D scans. These will attach onto a life-size robotic bat head dubbed the “robat.” Carrying an ultrasonic transducer capable of producing bat-like 20- to 200-kilohertz pings, it will help them develop better robotic sonar and navigation systems.—Michael Stroh

SPOCKING The white, sonar-forming antennae on the “robat” [at left] are based on 3-D scans of bat ears [above]. Different shapes emit and receive speciﬁc sonic signals.

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NO MORE BLIND SPOTS A new drop washes away cataracts in aging eyes WHEN RAJIV BHUSHAN’S father complained of blurry, browned vision and pain from bright lights, doctors told him that surgically replacing his eyes’ lenses was the only way to correct the cataracts that had left him legally blind. Instead, after learning that cataracts result from an age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids in a person’s lens, Bhushan, an electrical engineer, set to work concocting a chemical solution to break up the molecules clouding his father’s eyes. Six years later, the eyedrops, called C-KAD, are entering the final stages of clinical testing. If all goes well, they will hit pharmacy shelves in two years, becoming the first non-surgical treatment. “Nobody, including myself, would have looked at this and thought it would work,” says Randall Olson, chairman of the department of ophthalmology at the University of Utah School of Medicine and scientific adviser for Bhushan’s company, Chakshu Research. “But during trials, I’ve seen cataracts disappear.” Even better, the drops might also relieve the blinding symptoms of glaucoma and macular degeneration. If Bhushan’s guinea-pig dad is any indication, the drops could slash the three million cataract surgeries performed every year in the U.S. After three months of daily drops, his vision had improved to 20/80—good enough to read his e-mail for the first time in a year.—COREY BINNS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BIOS DESCHANDOL AND SABINE FRANK AND PHILIPPE/PETER ARNOLD; SEAN JUSTICE/CORBIS; COURTESY ROLF MÜLLER AND ZHIWEI ZHANG (2); COURTESY HERBERT PEREMANS, APL

NOBODY EVER ACCUSED the bat of

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YOUR PROCESSOR: IT’S HOW YOUR COMPUTER WORKS EXPERIENCE THE ULTIMATE IN MOBILE PERFORMANCE + Take notebook computing to the next level with over 2X the performance when multitasking The Intel® Advanced Smart Cache allows both processing cores to access up to 6 MB L2 shared cache, providing enhanced performance, responsiveness and power savings. The shared cache balances the data needs of each core, giving you the ability to multitask more than 2X as fast as before. 4

NEXT-GENERATION VIDEO & HD IMAGING Push the limits of mobile computing Enjoy an enhanced video experience and get smoother playback with VC-1 hardware acceleration on optional Intel® Graphics.

ENABLING LONGER BATTERY LIFE + Designed for the longest possible battery life + Save power and get great battery life with low-leakage, hafnium-based technology and cool, energy-saving features like Intel® Intelligent Power Capability with Deep Power Down Technology. +

STAY CONNECTED WITH FASTER, BROADER WIRELESS + Go further, do more and use less with the ultimate in mobile technology Get up to 5X faster home networking and up to 2X the range with optional Intel® Next Gen Wireless N Technology running on a Wireless N network. 5

SPECIAL ISSUE

THIRD ANNUAL

HOW IT WORKS Ever get the urge to rip apart sophisticated machinery to ﬁgure out what makes it tick? Us too. Here are the nine devices we tore open this year

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THE FLYING LASER GUN Boeing’s new laser cannon can melt a hole in a tank from five miles away and 10,000 feet up—and it’s ready to fly this year By Eric Adams CREATING A LASER that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

The TOY DINOSAUR that thinks for itself

1. FIND YOUR TARGET

3. AMPLIFY THE BEAM

When the C-130 flies within targeting range (up to five miles away), the gunner aims using a rotating video camera mounted beneath the fuselage. The computer locks onto the object to continually track it. A second crew member precisely adjusts the laser beam’s strength—higher power to disable vehicles, lower power to knock out, say, a small power generator. The gunner hits “fire,” and the computer takes over from there.

The optical resonator bounces this light between mirrors, forcing more iodine molecules to cough up their photons, further increasing the laser beam’s intensity. From there, the light travels through a sealed pipe above the weapon’s crew station and into a chamber called the optical bench. There, sensors determine the beam’s quality, while mechanically controlled mirrors compensate for movement of the airplane, vibration and atmospheric conditions. Precise airﬂow regulates the chamber’s temperature and humidity, which helps keep the beam strong.

2. HEAT UP THE LASER In a fraction of a second, chlorine gas mixes with hydrogen peroxide. The resulting chemical reaction creates highly energetic oxygen molecules. Pressurized nitrogen pushes the oxygen through a ﬁne mist of iodine, transferring the oxygen’s energy to iodine molecules, which shed it in the form of intense light.

LASER BEAM travels in pipe above crew

SEALED EXHAUST holds spent chemicals

PRESSURIZED NITROGEN forces oxygen and iodine together to create the laser

XRAY ILLUSTRATION: DAVID ARKY

OPTICAL BENCH reﬁnes beam with mirrors

BOB SAULS

BEAM CONTROL stabilizes laser beam

TURRET aims beam

1. SEPARATE THE SIGNAL A circuit called a crossover divides the audio signal into different frequency ranges and routes each batch to one of four speakers in the earphone.

HEARING: Pleo has microphones on both sides of his head. He can identify the direction of a noise by determining in which ear the sound is loudest or, as we do, by sensing in which ear a sound arrives ﬁrst.

High-frequency speaker

3. MOVE THE AIR When the armature moves, it pushes a small rod connected to a diaphragm, which in turn pushes the surrounding air and generates sound waves.

MOTION: Pleo’s main processor sends data to four less-powerful processors, each of which runs up to four motors simultaneously and controls movements in Pleo’s 15 joints.

D beam size: 20 in. D range: 5 miles D test ﬂight: this year D info: boeing.com

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CAMCORDER

This HD camcorder packs 12 lenses in a barrel the size of your thumb for vivid, jitter-free video in a pocket-friendly package

BATTERY holds lithium-ion cells that can power about an hour of shooting.

PILL CAM Permanent magnet Electromagnet

WHITE LEDS illuminate tissue walls

1. DOWN THE HATCH The patient gulps down the capsule, and the digestive process begins. Over the next eight hours, the pill travels passively down the esophagus and through roughly 20 to 25 feet of intestines, where it will capture up to 870,000 images. The patient feels nothing.

Prisms Zoom lens

IRIS automatically regulates the amount of incoming light.

FOCUS LENS moves back and forth in less than a second, keeping images sharp.

1. COLLECT THE LIGHT

2. STABILIZE IT Light then passes

3. SPLIT IT Before the image can

SIZE: 2.6 X 2.6 X 5.3 in. D weight: 14 oz. D resolution: 1,920 X 1,080 pixels D cost: $1,000 D

3. START SNAPPING When it

LCD receives live video from the processor in real time. SD MEMORY CARD records up to ﬁve hours of high-def video on a 32-gigabyte card.

4. SPIN FOR CLOSE-UPS Previous pill cameras place the camera at one end, facing forward, so the tissue walls are visible only in the periphery of their photos. Sayaka is the ﬁrst that gets a clearer picture by

creating better color

JACKS provide video and audio outputs and a computer connection.

info: panasonic.com

STEADY NOW Electromagnets in the camcorder’s image stabilizer adjust the lens to counteract jittery hands. Then prisms direct each primary color of light to a dedicated image sensor.

Image sensors

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FLASH MEMORY that can take a dropkick A SATELLITE that can photograph home plate from 425 miles up P.66

BEARING SYSTEM keeps parts spinning freely

ACCESSORY GEARBOX turns generators to make electricity for the airplane

FAN-HUB FRAME slides over the fan disk and holds the engine in place

HIGH PRESSURE TURBINE moves air from combustor to low-pressure turbine

EXHAUST NOZZLE vents air out the back of the engine

storing each two-megapixel image internally, Sayaka continually transmits shots wirelessly to an antenna in the vest, where they are saved to a standard SD memory card.

7. LEAVE THE BODY At around $100, the cam is disposable, so patients can simply ﬂush it away.

Size: 0.91 in. long; 0.35 in. wide D Image resolution: 2 megapixels D Frame rate: 30 shots per

Outer capsule INNER CAPSULE spins 360 degrees

IMAGE SENSOR captures 30 images per second

Computer processor

LOW-PRESSURE TURBINE receives the superheated air, which rotates its blades. This spins a shaft, which turns the fan blades in front, drawing in more air and keeping the engine going.

second D Shots captured per patient: ~870,000 D Cost: $100 D info: rfamerica.com

length: 192 in. D weight: 12,500 lbs. D fan diameter: 111 in. D blades in fan: 18 56 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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D thrust: 57,000–75,000 lbs. D cost: $16 million per engine D info: geae.com

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how it works how it works

FLASH MEMORY DATA ANTENNA beams images back to Earth

THE BEST VIEW YET FROM SPACE

TOMORROW’S HYBRID

THE STURDIEST STORAGE

STAR TRACKERS calculate the satellite’s position based on star coordinates

The ReCharge, Volvo’s concept plug-in hybrid, could squeeze 160 miles from a gallon of gas by tossing out the power-wasting transmission. It packs a small electric motor inside each wheel, so that no power is lost in the drivetrain. Here’s a look at the next generation of fuel-efﬁciency By seth ﬂetcher

Next-generation laptops won’t have hard drives. Instead, they’ll use flash memory—the same found in camera memory cards and iPhones. Flashbased drives are thinner, faster and nearly indestructible By Lauren Aaronson LIKE A TRADITIONAL hard drive, a flash-based drive stores information in the computer-readable language of 0s and 1s. But instead of writing data by flipping magnetic poles on a spinning disk, flash memory

1. GET INTO ORBIT The 4,400-pound GeoEye-1 will travel 425 miles into space on the back of a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. Over the satellite’s planned seven-year life, it will be able to adjust its orbital altitude by 60 miles, which it will need to do to maintain a consistent view of Earth: Atmospheric drag and pressure from solar winds will gradually push the satellite down.

GeoEye operators send instructions on what and when to photograph from one of four ground stations in Alaska, Virginia, Norway and Antarctica. Even though the satellite will be used commercially, all transmissions are encrypted under the licensing terms of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

3. GET IN POSITION GeoEye-1 is the ﬁrst non-military satellite to use military-grade GPS units,

body length: 14 ft. D Weight: 4,300 lbs. D Altitude: 425 miles D Orbit: 98 min. around poles

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Magniﬁed 10,000 times GPS units D

Solar panels

Magniﬁed 110,000 times 1 0 1

SOLID-STATE DRIVE stores images

Thermal blanket REACTION WHEELS help orient satellite DOOR opens to reveal camera

D velocity: 17,000 mph D Resolution: 16 in. D project Cost: $502 million D info: geoeye.com

B e-

e- e-

SAVE SMALL These scanning electron microscope images zoom in on a ﬂash drive [above left]. Made by Micron Technology, the 64-gigabyte, three-bytwo-inch drive is destined for notebook computers.

HOW flash memory saves a file Flash memory stores 0s and 1s in millions of miniature transistors, each 1,000 times as thin as a human hair. If the transistor conducts current, the chip reads it as 1; if not, it’s 0. The current flows just underneath the transistor along the chip’s base, or substrate [A]. When the chip is empty, all transistors are set to 1. But when you hit “save,” the chip records data by blocking the current to some transistors, turning them into a 0. To do so, the chip briefly applies 20 volts to a piece of silicon called a control gate [B]. This pulls electrons onto another silicon bit called a floating gate [C], leaving a positively charged area directly below—and breaking up the usual path of electrical current. The only way to move the electrons and change the pattern of 1s and 0s—thereby changing your data—is by applying precise voltages to the transistors. That means even kicking your laptop won’t erase your file.

CHARGER feeds power to the battery when the car is plugged in at home. Eventually, the ReCharge will be equipped with an intelligent version that can automatically sense strain in your area’s electrical grid and either cut back its power consumption or feed electricity from its battery back into the system.

wheels eliminates the transmission, which typically wastes 10 to 20 percent of the engine’s energy. An interior disc, mounted to the wheel bearings, contains a series of independently controlled electromagnets, which emit a magnetic ﬁeld in response to an electrical current. Around that, an outer ring contains permanent magnets. Step on the accelerator, and a computer in the interior ring begins to rapidly switch the polarity of the electromagnets, repelling or attracting the permanent magnets. The faster the polarity changes, the faster the motor spins the wheels. The challenge is controlling four independent motors—if one spins even slightly faster, the car could veer violently. The ReCharge team’s next big hurdle is reﬁning the software that maintains precise control. As for performance, the car will have permanent all-wheel drive with no gearbox standing between your foot and the motors—in other words, it should go like a rocket.

6. TAKE THE SHOT

WHEEL MOTORS

PUTTING ELECTRIC MOTORS directly inside the

varying temperatures of space. The tube’s door opens only when the camera is ready to take an image.

The camera scans the target in 20,000 37,500-by-1-pixel strips every two seconds, allowing it to easily create a 90-billion-pixel image (about 6,000 square miles) in two minutes. A data-processing unit compresses the image ﬁles and stores them on a one-terabyte solid-state drive.

BATTERIES power all four motors and the car’s electronics. Unlike most plug-in hybrids, the ReCharge uses a lithium-polymer (rather than lithium-ion) battery. This is not only safer—it uses sheets of plastic instead of a volatile electrolyte solution—but it also powers the car for 60 miles before the engine kicks in to recharge it. Small lithium-polymer batteries have started to show up in gadgets such as the iPhone, but Volvo gets its larger, experimental versions from an undisclosed manufacturer.

HOW WHEEL MOTORS drive the car

How to Capture Images from 425 miles up

2. RECEIVE COMMANDS

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how it works

IMAGING SATELLITE

ILLUSTRATIONS: KEVIN HAND; PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY GEO-EYE

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In a “high-bypass” turbofan engine like the GEnx, 90 percent of the thrust comes from spinning fan blades in front that draw in massive quantities of air and force it out in a ring around the engine’s center, or core. The GEnx’s primary

5. OFFLOAD DATA Instead of

Lens

how genx generates thrust

The Sayaka is 40 percent smaller than previous endoscope cameras.

Electromagnet

Prisms

An EARBUD with a subwoofer inside

how it works

GREEN JET ENGINE

BETTER MILEAGE IN THE SKIES The GEnx engine, the powerplant of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, burns 15 percent less fuel than conventional jet engines by using fewer components and lighter composite parts. Flying in 2009, the engine will also be quieter and more durable By Eric Adams

Interior disc

COURTESY MICRON

Gyrosensors

how to create color-rich, steady-handed video

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FAN BLADES are curved to move air more efﬁciently, and are made from carbon ﬁber instead of metal, saving 500 pounds

ILLUSTRATION: MEDI-MATION; PHOTOGRAPH: LUIS BRUNO

Image sensors

memory: 2 MB flash D battery life: 1 hr. D Cost: $350 D info: ugobe.com

actual size

HOW the pill films YOUR innards

Optical image stabilizer

Zoom-lens motor

SKIN is made of soft rubber designed to feel lifelike

how it works

SHOT IN THE GUT

Fluorescent LED

By Séan Captain photographs by john b. carnett

PAWS contain sensor pads that detect surface texture

APRIL 2008 POPULAR POPULAR SCIENCE SCIENCE 63 POPSCI.COM

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how it works

SNOOZING: To prevent Pleo from overheating, an internal thermostat tells the processor to make him less active as his temperature rises.

CAPACITIVE SENSORS recognize human touch

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THE MICRO MOVIEMAKER

how many times you touch each sensor, and act accordingly. If he knows that you typically scratch him under the chin, he’ll crane his neck out and coo for it.

Motors

Infrared transceiver

MAIN PROCESSOR controls behavior and memory

Size: 21 in. long; 8 in. tall; 6 in. wide D length of real camarasaurus: 59 ft. D weight: 3.5 lbs. D

Size: custom-fit D frequency range: 10 HZ–16,500 HZ D Price: $1,150 D info: ultimateears.com Size: 2,600 cu. ft. D Weight: 40,000 lbs. D Cost: $200 million D Time in development: 5 yrs.

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Armature

ACOUSTIC FILTER keeps frequencies separated

INSET PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY PANASONIC; ILLUSTRATION: KRIS HOLLAND

A LASER CANNON that melts tanks from the air

Coil

HOW to deliver pristine sound

Full-color camera

TWEETER produces high-pitched sounds

Mid-range speaker

FAQ

A PILL CAMERA that shoots movies of your gut

WOOFER produces low growls

Rod

OPTICAL RESONATOR creates the light pulse

Rechargeable nickel hydride battery

DIAPHRAGM vibrates to create sound waves

Magnets

BEAM EXPANDER widens laser to 20 inches across

PIVOT in the twopart spine allows Pleo to wiggle his torso

SKELETON modeled after the fossilized bones of a real Camarasaurus

Microphones

SOUND TUBE carries audio deep into ear

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CROSSOVER divides the audio signal

Combined low-frequency speaker and subwoofer

ROBOT DINO

THE TOY THAT THINKS

Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pro custom earphones pack in four separate speakers—including a subwoofer—to create sound as realistic as if you were hearing it live By mike kobrin

A lightweight, fuelsipping JET ENGINE

An HD CAMCORDER that steadies shaky hands

EARBUDS

IN-EAR CONCERT

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how it works

AIRBORNE LASER How to Melt a Tank in Three Seconds or Less

COURTESY GENERAL ELECTRIC

A HYBRID with motors in the wheels

Outer ring

TIRES must be as thin as possible since the motor makes each wheel bigger. The ReCharge uses specially designed Michelin tires with a soft, resilient surface that also reduces rolling resistance.

Time to charge: 3 hrs.

Electromagnets Permanent magnets miles per gallon (est.): up to 160 D

Battery range: 60 miles

WHEN WILL IT ROLL? Not until 2015, most likely. The wheel motors, efﬁcient low-proﬁle tires and batteries are already being tested, but intelligent chargers and the necessary software still need to be developed. Some companies—including Lotus-partner Zap—have built cars powered by hub motors. These are similar to wheel motors but they contain gears, which leads to some of the energy loss and high weight that plagues all transmission-driven vehicles.

Size: 3 X 2 in. D capacity: up to 64 gB D speed: can save 35 MB per second D info: micron.com 50 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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ILLUSTRATION BY NICK kaloterakis

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TURN THE PAGE to see inside a 160mpg hybrid with no transmission and four motors!

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TOMORROW’S HYBRID The ReCharge, Volvo’s concept plug-in hybrid, could squeeze 160 miles from a gallon of gas by tossing out the power-wasting transmission. It packs a small electric motor inside each wheel, so that no power is lost in the drivetrain. Here’s a look at the next generation of fuel-efﬁciency By seth ﬂetcher

HOW WHEEL MOTORS drive the car PUTTING ELECTRIC MOTORS directly inside the wheels eliminates the transmission, which typically wastes 10 to 20 percent of the engine’s energy. An interior disc, mounted to the wheel bearings, contains a series of independently controlled electromagnets, which emit a magnetic ﬁeld in response to an electrical current. Around that, an outer ring contains permanent magnets. Step on the accelerator, and a computer in the interior ring begins to rapidly switch the polarity of the electromagnets, repelling or attracting the permanent magnets. The faster the polarity changes, the faster the motor spins the wheels. The challenge is controlling four independent motors—if one spins even slightly faster, the car could veer violently. The ReCharge team’s next big hurdle is reﬁning the software that maintains precise control. As for performance, the car will have permanent all-wheel drive with no gearbox standing between your foot and the motors—in other words, it should go like a rocket.

TIRES must be as thin as possible since the motor makes each wheel bigger. The ReCharge uses specially designed Michelin tires with a soft, resilient surface that also reduces rolling resistance.

Time to charge: 3 hrs.

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miles per gallon (est.): up to 160 D

ILLUSTRATION BY NICK kaloterakis

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how it works

WHEEL MOTORS

ENGINE charges the battery when the car isn’t plugged in. The concept design calls for either a 1.6-liter ﬂex-fuel or turbodiesel engine, but since the engine doesn’t have to actually spin a drive shaft, a fuel cell or a second battery could do the job just as well. It would kick in to recharge the battery only after the battery was at 30 percent capacity, so the ReCharge could travel 160 miles on a single gallon of gas. CHARGER feeds power to the battery when the car is plugged in at home. Eventually, the ReCharge will be equipped with an intelligent version that can automatically sense strain in your area’s electrical grid and either cut back its power consumption or feed electricity from its battery back into the system.

Interior disc Outer ring Electromagnets Permanent magnets Battery range: 60 miles

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THE TOY THAT THINKS

TWEETER produces high-pitched sounds

SKELETON modeled after the fossilized bones of a real Camarasaurus

Full-color camera

VISION: An infrared transceiver in the nostrils constantly bounces beams off surfaces to tell Pleo what’s ahead (and to keep him from walking off a table). The full-color camera above his nostrils provides more detail on an object’s shape. Pleo sees up to 15 feet away and notices light changes (he sometimes cries in the dark). HEARING: Pleo has microphones on both sides of his head. He can identify the direction of a noise by determining in which ear the sound is loudest or, as we do, by sensing in which ear a sound arrives ﬁrst.

MOTION: Pleo’s main processor sends data to four less-powerful processors, each of which runs up to four motors simultaneously and controls movements in Pleo’s 15 joints.

Infrared transceiver

MAIN PROCESSOR controls behavior and memory

PAWS contain sensor pads that detect surface texture

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how it works

ROBOT DINO PIVOT in the twopart spine allows Pleo to wiggle his torso

Rechargeable nickel hydride battery

FEELING: Eight capacitive sensors, which look like pieces of foil, detect the electrical charge from your fingers. (The iPhone works the same way.) Pleo distinguishes among touches by measuring the duration and location rather than the force. That data goes to the main processor, which can receive messages from several sensors at the same time, so Pleo can respond to multiple touches. LEARNING: Pleo’s main processor triggers actions based on physical input—put his plastic leaf in his mouth, for instance, and if he’s hungry, he’ll chew on it—as well as information stored on internal flash memory. The episodic, or short-term, memory stores a limited number of events that the processor determines to be significant, like the time Pleo sensed being held up by his tail. But he can also record cumulative memories, like

WOOFER produces low growls

how many times you touch each sensor, and act accordingly. If he knows that you typically scratch him under the chin, he’ll crane his neck out and coo for it.

Motors

SNOOZING: To prevent Pleo from overheating, an internal thermostat tells the processor to make him less active as his temperature rises.

CAPACITIVE SENSORS recognize human touch

SKIN is made of soft rubber designed to feel lifelike

memory: 2 MB flash D battery life: 1 hr. D Cost: $350 D info: ugobe.com VISITTHE THENEW NEWPOPSCI.COM POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 53 VISIT POPULAR SCIENCE 53

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BEARING SYSTEM keeps parts spinning freely

FAN-HUB FRAME slides over the fan disk and holds the engine in place

COURTESY GENERAL ELECTRIC

FAN BLADES are curved to move air more efﬁciently, and are made from carbon ﬁber instead of metal, saving 500 pounds

length: 192 in. D weight: 12,500 lbs. D fan diameter: 111 in. D blades in fan: 18 54 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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how it works

ACCESSORY GEARBOX turns generators to make electricity for the airplane

HIGH PRESSURE TURBINE moves air from combustor to low-pressure turbine

EXHAUST NOZZLE vents air out the back of the engine

LOW-PRESSURE TURBINE receives the superheated air, which rotates its blades. This spins a shaft, which turns the fan blades in front, drawing in more air and keeping the engine going.

D thrust: 57,000–75,000 lbs. D cost: $16 million per engine D info: geae.com VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 55

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SHOT IN THE GUT Pop this pill, and eight hours later, doctors can examine a high-resolution video of your intestines for tumors and other problems, thanks to a new spinning camera that captures images in 360 degrees. Developed by the Japanese RF System Lab, the Sayaka endoscope capsule enters clinical trials in the U.S. this month By Gregory Mone

HOW the pill films YOUR innards

3. START SNAPPING When it reaches the intestines, the Sayaka cam begins capturing 30 two-megapixel images per second (twice the resolution of other pill cams). Fluorescent and white LEDs in the pill illuminate the tissue walls.

The Sayaka is 40 percent smaller than previous endoscope cameras.

5. OFFLOAD DATA Instead of storing each two-megapixel image internally, Sayaka continually transmits shots wirelessly to an antenna in the vest, where they are saved to a standard SD memory card. 6. DELIVER VIDEO Doctors pop the SD card into a PC, and software compiles thousands of overlapping images into a ﬂat map of the intestines that can be as large as 1,175 megapixels. Doctors can replay the ride as video and magnify a problem area up to 75-fold to study details.

ILLUSTRATION: MEDI-MATION; PHOTOGRAPH: LUIS BRUNO

actual size

7. LEAVE THE BODY At around $100, the cam is disposable, so patients can simply ﬂush it away.

Size: 0.91 in. long; 0.35 in. wide D Image resolution: 2 megapixels D Frame rate: 30 shots per

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how it works

PILL CAM Permanent magnet Electromagnet WHITE LEDS illuminate tissue walls

Fluorescent LED

Outer capsule INNER CAPSULE spins 360 degrees

IMAGE SENSOR captures 30 images per second

Computer processor second D Shots captured per patient: ~870,000 D Cost: $100 D info: rfamerica.com

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THE MICRO MOVIEMAKER This HD camcorder packs 12 lenses in a barrel the size of your thumb for vivid, jitter-free video in a pocket-friendly package By Séan Captain photographs by john b. carnett

Optical image stabilizer

Image sensors

Zoom-lens motor

Gyrosensors

Zoom lens

IRIS automatically regulates the amount of incoming light.

FOCUS LENS moves back and forth in less than a second, keeping images sharp.

1. COLLECT THE LIGHT Light enters the front of the camcorder and passes through a series of aspherical lenses and so-called low-dispersion lenses, which are made of ultra-pure glass. Together, these bend the light to magnify the images but don’t spread out colors the way a prism or cheap lens would. (That can lead to green or red smears in the footage.) A motor-driven zoom lens slides back and forth to change the view from slightly wider than the naked eye’s to an 8.5fold magniﬁcation. With a large aperture (f/1.8), the camera captures enough light to record clear action in a candlelit room.

2. STABILIZE IT Light then passes to an optical image stabilizer that smoothes out jitters from shaky handheld shooting. Gyrosensors below the lens barrel measure the camcorder’s minute movements up and down and left and right. A processor analyzes the data and sends signals to the stabilizer, where a lens ﬂoats in a magnetic ﬁeld. Adjusting the electromagnets nudges the lens in the opposite direction of the camera jitter, as frequently as 4,000 times per second, to compensate for the movement and deliver a steady beam of light to the image sensors.

3. SPLIT IT Before the image can be recorded, the light beam has to be divided into the red, green and blue components that your TV will later use to reassemble the video. Most camcorders split the light with alternating color ﬁlters over the individual pixels on a single imaging chip. But those ﬁlters absorb much of the light and dull the colors. Panasonic instead uses a series of prisms to separate the beam into three color streams. Each stream strikes a separate image sensor that measures its intensity on 560,000 pixels to produce more-vivid video than single-sensor cameras can.

INSET PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY PANASONIC; ILLUSTRATION: KRIS HOLLAND

how to create color-rich, steady-handed video

SIZE: 2.6 X 2.6 X 5.3 in. D weight: 14 oz. D resolution: 1,920 X 1,080 pixels D cost: $1,000 D

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how it works

CAMCORDER

BATTERY holds lithium-ion cells that can power about an hour of shooting.

Prisms

LCD receives live video from the processor in real time. SD MEMORY CARD records up to ﬁve hours of high-def video on a 32-gigabyte card.

creating better color

JACKS provide video and audio outputs and a computer connection.

info: panasonic.com

STEADY NOW Electromagnets in the camcorder’s image stabilizer adjust the lens to counteract jittery hands. Then prisms direct each primary color of light to a dedicated image sensor.

Electromagnet

Lens Prisms

Image sensors

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2/12/08 4:12:27 PM

THE FLYING LASER GUN Boeing’s new laser cannon can melt a hole in a tank from five miles away and 10,000 feet up—and it’s ready to fly this year By Eric Adams Last December, Boeing, under contract from the Department of Defense, installed a $200-million prototype of the laser into a C-130 at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico in preparation for test flights this year. From there it will go to the Air Force for more testing, and it could be in battle within five years. Precise control over the beam’s aim allows it to hit a moving target a few inches wide and confine the damage to that space. The Pentagon hopes such precision will translate into less collateral damage than even today’s most accurate missiles. Future versions using different types of lasers could be mounted on smaller vehicles, such as fighter jets, helicopters and trucks.

BEAM EXPANDER widens laser to 20 inches across TURRET aims beam

BEAM CONTROL stabilizes laser beam

OPTICAL BENCH reﬁnes beam with mirrors

LASER BEAM travels in pipe above crew

OPTICAL RESONATOR creates the light pulse

BOB SAULS

CREATING A LASER that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

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how it works

AIRBORNE LASER How to Melt a Tank in Three Seconds or Less 1. FIND YOUR TARGET

3. AMPLIFY THE BEAM

FAQ

SEALED EXHAUST holds spent chemicals

PRESSURIZED NITROGEN forces oxygen and iodine together to create the laser

D beam size: 20 in. D range: 5 miles D test ﬂight: this year D info: boeing.com VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 61

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It’s Post Time...and you’ll win every race with Pro-Trim

4 1/2” 4 1/2”

A 10 foot Pro-Trim Post was perfectly bent in under 2 minutes... Of course, this could only be done that fast on an Alum-A-Brake®

Pro-Trim Tape

Virtually no dents

28 years and over 1,000,000 Alum-A-Poles later...still improving the industry.

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1/7/08 4:26:48 PM

how it works

IN-EAR CONCERT

EARBUDS

Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pro custom earphones pack in four separate speakers—including a subwoofer—to create sound as realistic as if you were hearing it live By mike kobrin CROSSOVER divides the audio signal

DIAPHRAGM vibrates to create sound waves

Combined low-frequency speaker and subwoofer

Mid-range speaker Magnets Rod SOUND TUBE carries audio deep into ear

Coil Armature

ACOUSTIC FILTER keeps frequencies separated

High-frequency speaker

XRAY ILLUSTRATION: DAVID ARKY

HOW to deliver pristine sound 1. SEPARATE THE SIGNAL A circuit called a crossover divides the audio signal into different frequency ranges and routes each batch to one of four speakers in the earphone.

3. MOVE THE AIR When the armature moves, it pushes a small rod connected to a diaphragm, which in turn pushes the surrounding air and generates sound waves.

Size: custom-fit D frequency range: 10 HZ–16,500 HZ D Price: $1,150 D info: ultimateears.com

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how it works

FLASH MEMORY

THE STURDIEST STORAGE Next-generation laptops won’t have hard drives. Instead, they’ll use flash memory—the same found in camera memory cards and iPhones. Flashbased drives are thinner, faster and nearly indestructible By Lauren Aaronson flash-based drive stores information in the computer-readable language of 0s and 1s. But instead of writing data by flipping magnetic poles on a spinning disk, flash memory

Magniﬁed 10,000 times Magniﬁed 110,000 times 1 0 1

B e-

e- e-

SAVE SMALL These scanning electron microscope images zoom in on a ﬂash drive [above left]. Made by Micron Technology, the 64-gigabyte, three-bytwo-inch drive is destined for notebook computers.

COURTESY MICRON

LIKE A TRADITIONAL hard drive, a

Size: 3 X 2 in. D capacity: up to 64 gB D speed: can save 35 MB per second D info: micron.com

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2/7/08 11:33:46 PM

From the Publishers of P OPULAR S CIENCE Ape School

HOW TO REGROW A LIMB THE SECRET LIVES OF CELLS

Rescuers Train Orangutans to Return to the Wild P.54

Penguins in Peril

With Populations Plummeting Toward Extinction, Scientists Race to Stem the Tide P.34

The Volcano That Lied

How Santorini Is Changing History 3,600 Years Later P.46

Earth

From Above An Awe-Inspiring Photo Gallery P.46 March/April 2008

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how it works

IMAGING SATELLITE

THE BEST VIEW YET FROM SPACE When the GeoEye-1 surveillance satellite comes online this spring, its advanced optics will produce more-detailed images than any commercial satellite, capturing objects as small as home plate on a baseball diamond and ﬁlling in the fuzzy spots on Google Earth By bjorn carey

How to Capture Images from 425 miles up The 4,400-pound GeoEye-1 will travel 425 miles into space on the back of a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. Over the satellite’s planned seven-year life, it will be able to adjust its orbital altitude by 60 miles, which it will need to do to maintain a consistent view of Earth: Atmospheric drag and pressure from solar winds will gradually push the satellite down.

3. GET IN POSITION GeoEye-1 is the ﬁrst non-military satellite to use military-grade GPS units,

varying temperatures of space. The tube’s door opens only when the camera is ready to take an image.

ILLUSTRATIONS: KEVIN HAND; PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY GEO-EYE

1. GET INTO ORBIT

body length: 14 ft. D Weight: 4,300 lbs. D Altitude: 425 miles D Orbit: 98 min. around poles

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DATA ANTENNA beams images back to Earth

STAR TRACKERS calculate the satellite’s position based on star coordinates

GPS units D

Solar panels SOLID-STATE DRIVE stores images

Thermal blanket REACTION WHEELS help orient satellite DOOR opens to reveal camera

D velocity: 17,000 mph D Resolution: 16 in. D project Cost: $502 million D info: geoeye.com

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THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS

BREEDING THE OIL BUG Biologists can now create organisms that have never before existedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; including designer bugs that turn sugar into green fuels. But what fuel to make? At least one company is betting on a new, clean form of old-fashioned gasoline BY AMANDA SCHAFFER

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMIE KRIPKE

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THE PETRI DISH REFINERY Genetically modiﬁed E. coli [small rods] turn sugar into blobs of a hydrocarbon that is similar to gasoline.

T COULD BE an aerial photo of an oil spill: liquid spheres pooling, oozing, dwarﬁng a bedraggled landscape. I half expect to zoom in on poisoned seal pups or waterbirds dragging their oil-soaked feathers. But the scene is microscopic. The “landscape” is made of E. coli. And what’s happening is exactly the opposite of what it seems. The little bugs aren’t drowning in fuel. They’re making it. I’m watching this image on a computer screen at Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, California, where one of the founders, biologist Jack Newman, is giving me a tour. The genetically manipulated E. coli before me are highly crafted units of industrial production, which Amyris is using to turn sugar into novel versions of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel—in other words, the fuels on which the world already runs. Amyris is one of a handful of young biofuel companies putting a brilliant and weird twist on the future of green. It’s betting that, with the help of bacteria, the longterm answer to our gasoline woes will actually be . . . gasoline. Because as it stands, the main alternative to petroleum, ethanol (a type of alcohol), is fraught with problems. It can’t be pumped through current infrastructure because it tends to corrode pipelines. And according to University of Minnesota economist Jason Hill, even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted to ethanol, it would replace only some 12 percent of the 146 billion gallons of gasoline we use every year. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel produced from the cellulosic matter contained in plant stalks and stems rather than from seeds—would solve that problem, but the technology to produce it on a large scale is still a way off. Plus, ethanol simply isn’t as energy dense as petroleum-based fuels. This is why a growing number of scientists have begun to look to the microbial world for new, environmentally sound ways to make good old-fashioned gasoline. If microbes can be manipulated to turn, say, sugarcane into hydrocarbon fuel—and each new sugarcane crop absorbs most

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of the carbon dioxide that’s emitted by burning the fuel made from the previous crop—then you’ve got oilfree, nearly carbon-neutral gasoline. It may sound far-fetched, but the evidence is in this picture; oily blobs of hydrocarbons pool around the cells in a pattern that looks like a lava-lamp screensaver. “So this is how you’re gonna save the world?” I ask Newman. “Help save the world,” he corrects.

Newman’s answer is telling. He and his colleagues understand that no single technology is going to solve our energy woes. And joining the army of scientists working on ethanol would be, in the words of their mentor, Jay Keasling, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, “like adding another digit to pi.” Instead, Amyris is coming at our petroleum addiction from a different direction: by using synthetic biology—an emerging form of genetic engineering in which microbes are implanted with genes from different organisms—to turn glucose from plant matter into hydrocarbon fuel. The project rests on a pragmatic realization: Gasoline isn’t going anywhere

ILLUSTRATION: KRIS HOLLAND; PRECEDING PAGES: COURTESY AMYRIS

RADICAL, BUT PRACTICAL

THE IDEALIST Amyris research guru and co-founder Jack Newman

TURNING SUGAR INTO GASOLINE Modiﬁed E. coli

1. TWEAKING THE MICROBES Scientists add genes from a variety of organisms to E. coli and then test each strain to determine which is the most efﬁcient at turning glucose into fuel.

E. coli

2.BREEDING THE BUGS In a fermenter, scientists grow a large colony of the best strains.

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THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS

In many ways, gasoline works very well. so if we could make gasoline from plants— without burning oil or dumping carbon into the atmosphere—why wouldn’t we? anytime soon. And in a lot of ways, hydrocarbons work very well. They are easy to pump through pipelines and into gas stations. They’re rich in energy. And today’s gasoline engines are powerful machines ﬁnely tuned by decades of engineering and innovation. Why give them up if we don’t have to? The problem is that while nature is adept at turning sugar into ethanol through fermentation, it’s not so good at turning sugar into hydrocarbons. But as Keasling puts it, “we don’t have to rely on what nature gave us.” He believes we can build something better. And so Amyris has altered nature to carry out fermentation with a twist. By adding genes to bacteria that cause the microbes to create different enzymes, Amyris builds a pathway to carry out the series of chemical conversions necessary to turn sugar into hydrocarbon. They turn a common microbe into a miniature gas pump. Amyris has done this on an experimental basis. But scaling up these experiments into a partial replacement for the 20 million barrels of oil the U.S. imports each day is a different matter.

THE BREWERY Amyris is a distinctly cheery operation. On this afternoon in late November, amid the gene sequencers, microarrays, microscopes, ﬂasks, pipettes and humming refrigerators, rows of miniature pumpkins decorated with smiley faces sit atop tables. Lab coats are embroidered with nicknames like “Soybean” and “Wild Type.” Newman points out that Amyris is almost like a university lab but not quite—“everyone’s too happy.” As one might expect from a startup, whose entire net worth is pretty much based on its intellectual property, the Amyris guys won’t go into detail about their technical manipulations. Nor will they say what molecules, exactly, they are making. In fact, on the day of my visit, they’re downright cagey. When Newman and I walk through a lab room containing nuclear magnetic resonance machines—which are used to determine chemical structure—and I mention I once worked in a chemistry lab, he gets a little nervous and quickly ushers me into the next room. But this much we know: Using a device called an electroporator, which

3. IN GOES SUGAR. . .

Hydrocarbon

The specialized E. coli digest glucose found in plant matter such as sugarcane.

Glucose

uses a brief electrical current to zap temporary holes in a cell wall, it’s possible to add genes from any number of organisms to a cell. Create bacteria with the right genes, and they’ll churn out chemical precursors for everything from pharmaceuticals to food additives to fuel. So to turn these bacteria into tiny fuel factories, Amyris adds genes to E. coli and other microbes that cause them to secrete hydrocarbons after digesting the glucose found in biomass such as sugarcane. This, of course, is easier said than done. In the Amyris lab I see dozens of young scientists “interrogating” microbes—testing modiﬁed organisms to see how well they convert sugar into fuel, then tweaking them some more. The drill, Newman says, is to “think of a bug, build a bug, and test a lot of bugs.” The testing and tweaking are done mostly through computer analysis of the microbes. As I stand over the shoulder of a biologist named Lance Kizer, he points to his screen and shows me which genes in each bug are switched on, and to what extent. Each gene’s activity appears onscreen as a rising

4. . . .OUT COMES GASOLINE The bacteria excrete hydrocarbons as waste. Depending on which hydrocarbon molecule was produced, the compound may require further reﬁning.

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THE REALIST Kinkead Reiling, the Amyris co-founder who focuses most on the business details

FROM PHARMA TO FUEL

The secret to creating the perfect microbe: think of a bug, build a bug, test a lot of bugs. and falling curve. “This is a big part of de-bottlenecking,” Newman says. To make fuel efficiently, you need a microbe that will eagerly convert sugar into the chemicals you want, but that won’t produce unwanted by-products and toxins that could build up and kill the cell. Kizer’s analysis helps determine what genetic alterations can get Amyris closer to its ideal microbe. Next we move into a large, open room where a small group of scientists is working with flasks that contain modified microbes and sugar. They stir the contents and wait until greasy droplets of fuel float to the surface. Researchers at Amyris perform hundreds of experiments like this every day. Finally, we reach the “brewery,” a room with exposed copper piping,

several steel fermenters and a large vat towering on one side. “Once you’ve got something that works, you come here,” he says. This is where they work on the trickiest part of the process—gauging how the microbes will function on a larger scale. Making the bugs hardy enough to survive the brutal life of a fuelmanufacturing microbe is key. On an industrial scale, microbes are subjected to extreme pressure and high temperatures because so many of the heat-producing bugs are packed together. “When you grow microbes for the production of pharmaceuticals that are high-cost, you can baby them,” says Kinkead Reiling, another co-founder. “With fuel, it’s rough. It’s an old fermenter. You don’t even want to clean the thing because it adds cost. It’s a different world.”

Amyris began in 2001, when Newman, Renninger and Reiling were postdocs together in Keasling’s Berkeley lab. At the time, Newman was working in the lab on biosensors, devices that detect the presence of specific molecules. Renninger, who had also done his Ph.D. with Keasling, was focused on bioremediation—using microorganisms to clean up the environment. In the evenings, Renninger, Newman and Reiling would go over to Keasling’s house to brainstorm start-up ideas. (Also present was another postdoc named Vince Martin, whom Renninger calls “the fifth Beatle.”) “We’d bring a bottle of wine apiece and order some bad pizza or Chinese food and drink a fair load,” Renninger says. Over the course of an evening, “the productivity of those meetings went up and up and then slammed to the ground.” At first, the group considered using algae to make biodiesel. Soon, though, their attention shifted to a project already under way in Keasling’s lab—using synthetic biology to make a cheaper version of a malaria drug called artemisinin. “That technology was just on fire,” Newman recalls. “It was beyond our wildest dreams how well it was working out.” Still, they weren’t sure how to scale up production or bring the drug to market. “That’s where we came up with the idea of a mega-grant from the Gates Foundation,” he says. The plan worked. In 2003, U.C. Berkeley filed a proposal in conjunction with Amyris and a nonprofit called the Institute for OneWorld Health. A year later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave the coalition a $42.6-million grant for work on artemisinin. Amyris agreed to develop the technology on a not-for-profit basis. “For the first year and a half, we just had our heads down, thinking about how we were going to make good on” artemisinin, Newman says. (Amyris expects to deliver its artemisinin-manufacturing technology to a pharmaceutical company this year.) With artemisinin in progress, the team started thinking about project number two—and this time, they wanted a moneymaker. Amyris’s core technology

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THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS could be used to make thousands of different molecules, including cheap vitamins, flavors and fragrances. For a while, the group flirted with making cut-rate strawberry flavoring, but the idea failed to really inspire. That’s when they came back around to biofuels. It was a few months before the movie An Inconvenient Truth came out. Venture capitalists were newly interested in biofuels. So the Amyris team sat down in the office, pulled out scrap paper, and began drawing chemical structures. The goal was to dream up “perfect fuel” molecules—stable compounds that wouldn’t freeze easily and that packed enough energy per molecule to make cost-effective fuels. Some of these molecules happened to look a bit like artemisinin. With candidate structures in hand, they started testing and further modifying bugs to make the new molecules. Suddenly, Amyris was in the energy business.

“I didn’t get thrown in any dumpsters,” Renninger says. “I got backroomed a couple of times. But my attitude was, if they break my legs, I’m going to sue and make a lot more money than I ever would playing blackjack.” I ask him whether he thinks his aptitude for gambling is relevant to Amyris. Newman interjects, “That’s the only reason I joined the group. I was like, ‘Well, at least somebody knows something about money.’ ” Renninger laughs. “It’s calculated risk-taking, right? It certainly makes you more comfortable with risk.” Vegas has plenty of lessons to teach scientists, he says. “The concept of getting back up when you’ve just been beaten down because you know you’re on the right track. There’s plenty of $10,000 bets I lost and

followed up with $15,000 or $20,000 bets. It’s that sort of drive that’s pretty common in science. Because sometimes things don’t work.”

RACING THE “GENE KING” The number of companies using synthetic biology to produce fuel is still relatively small, but the competition is growing. Oil giant BP, along with DuPont, has begun producing butanol, an alcohol, on a small scale using genetically engineered microbes. J. Craig Venter, the renegade biologist who in 1998 announced his intention to sequence the human genome using private funds, is also in the game. In 2005 Venter and Nobel laureate microbiologist Hamilton Smith founded [continued ON page 95]

at mit, neil renninger dreamed of starting an energy company. but he paid the bills playing blackjack.

IT HELPS TO BE A GAMBLER Perhaps more than any member of the team, Renninger embodies the collision of environmentalist and capitalist necessary for a project like this—one that’s idealistic, risky and potentially very lucrative. As an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he studied combustion engines and air-pollution control. He researched bioremediation and dreamed about someday starting an energy company. But in the meantime, he paid his bills playing blackjack. In 1994, Renninger joined the notorious MIT blackjack team, which throughout the 1990s took Vegas for millions by counting cards and using statistical analysis. Recruited by one of his fraternity brothers, he began ﬂying to Vegas on the weekends and gambling into the wee hours, sometimes in disguise. On some weekends, Renninger brought in more than $100,000 for the team. Newman likes to prod Renninger about his days as a card shark. “Ask him how many dumpsters he got thrown in,” says Newman, over dinner at a place called Rubicon in San Francisco.

THE GAMBLER Amyris co-founder, chemical engineer, and blackjack whiz Neil Renninger

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CONCEPTS & PROTOTYPES I N N O V A T I O N

B E G I N S

H E R E

STOP, DROP, AND ROLL This autonomous firefighting robot gets its self-preservation instinct from its (very distant) insect cousins BY MICHAEL DUMIAK ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN M ACNEILL SHIFTING THROUGH the mossy

HARD CASE A segmented shell of heatresistant ceramic-fiber compounds would protect the guidance system, onboard sensors and power source from harm.

pure fantasy

already on patrol

odds of production roboticist’s perspective, six legs is the perfect number, providing stability and making it easy to calculate movement points. The designers have suggested two different ways for OLE to do its job. One idea is to place the robots in potential hotspots near towns and campgrounds, where they would remain balled-up, waiting for their sensors to pick up fire within a half-mile radius. Another idea is for the ’bot to patrol

the woods, actively searching for blazes, although battery life and forest obstacles would limit its range. Wohlgemuth says a working OLE would be made from fire-resistant ceramic-fiber compounds that could withstand temperatures up to 1,850°F. Each one might cost between $125,000 and $200,000 and weigh 150 to 200 pounds. And in case pranksters

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

undergrowth of Germany’s Black Forest, antennae raised and leg joints quietly clicking forward, OLE (pronounced “oh-luh”) is a St. Bernard–size bug on the prowl. But this mechanized insect isn’t a scavenger— it’s a guardian. Only a concept now, OLE (short for “Off-road Loescheinheit,” which means “off-road extinguishing apparatus” in German) is a product of the industrial-design studio at the University of MagdeburgStendal, about an hour and a half west of Berlin. A robot equipped with tanks of water and powdered fire-extinguishing agents, OLE would be autonomous and guided by GPS, intelligent feelers, and infrared and heat sensors. Design professor Ulrich Wohlgemuth, along with biologist and robot-systems manager Oliver Lange, students, and members of the design firm Transluszent, collaborated on the concept, inspired by the interlinking armor of the common pill bug, Armadillidium vulgare. That armor is OLE’s fireproof suit. The six legs have a similar protective purpose. “Walking can be nice, but it is generally useless for robots,” Lange points out. “Nature invented walking because it cannot invent the wheel from flesh and blood. In this case, though, if you have wheels, you always have contact with the forest. The concept behind OLE is that he’s digging, and he’s near heat. Legs don’t always have contact with heat.” And from a 74 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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IT’S GOT LEGS OLE would be propelled by hardened segmented legs rather than wheels, minimizing the firefighting robot’s contact with hot ground and cinders. Six legs is an ideal number: It’s stable, and it makes it easier for roboticists to calculate movements.

SIMMER DOWN Weight constraints would keep the tank small, but OLE would be able to carry enough water, foam or dry chemical agents to extinguish hotspots.

FEEL THE HEAT Infrared sensors guide OLE to fires within half a mile. Experts suggest that the robot would be most effective as a spotter; it would scout out fires that an airdropped crew would then extinguish.

wanted to steal one of them from the forest, a GPS beacon on board could be used to track it down. Forest-fire experts are open to OLE, though many believe that it would be a better scout than firefighter. Margaret Simonson, a fire researcher at the SP Technical Research Institute in Sweden, says the robot would be best used to direct air-dropped firefighting crews. And Henrik

Bygbjerg of the Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology doubts that it could put out anything other than the smallest fires. There’s no current plan to put OLE into production, but its designers believe that it’s more practical than it might sound. Forest fires in Europe burn approximately 1.25 million acres every year. At that rate, an effective force of fire-controlling robots starts to sound attractive at nearly any price.

OLE FIREFIGHTING ROBOT PURPOSE: Fighting forest fires DESIGNER: University of Magdeburg-Stendal DIMENSIONS: 4 ft. long x 2 ft. wide WEIGHT: 150–200 lbs. RANGE: One-half mile TEMPERATURE RATING: 1,850°F COST: $125,000–$200,000

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UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

SCIENCE CONFIRMS

THE OBVIOUS

2008 The ﬁndings may be no-brainers (yes, you do get sick in winter), but these studies uncover hidden truths in conventional wisdom BY JASON DALEY illustrations by kevin february

ROCK STARS LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG THE STUDY: “Elvis to Eminem: Quantifying the Price of Fame through Early Mortality of European and North American Rock and Pop Stars,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, October 2007 THE FINDINGS: Killjoy Mark Bellis and his colleagues at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University in England examined the lives of 1,064 North American and European musicians written up in the book All-Time Top 1,000 Albums, comparing their post-fame death rates against the general population. It turns out that between 2 and 25 years after hitting it big, the rocker mortality rate is two to three times that of their non-rocker peers. WHY BOTHER? Bellis says they did this study for the kids. “Stars are important role models for young people,” he writes. “Consequently, the behavior and resultant morbidity and mortality associated with rock and pop stardom may have a disproportionate inﬂuence.” His solution isn’t very rock ‘n’ roll: Encourage healthier habits.

STANDING IS BETTER FOR YOU THAN SITTING THE STUDY: “Role of Low Energy Expenditure and Sitting in Obesity, Metabolic Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Disease,” Diabetes, November 2007 THE FINDINGS: Marc Hamilton and his team at the University of Missouri-Columbia found that the recommended 30 minutes of exercise per day may not be enough to counteract health problems caused by sitting and sleeping the other 23.5 hours. Their research on the metabolism of rats, pigs and humans suggests that after several hours on our butts, our bodies shut down fat- and cholesterolburning mechanisms, but

standing switches those metabolic functions back on, and calorie-burning is effectively doubled. WHY BOTHER? Hamilton argues that since only 5 percent of Americans exercise regularly, simply staying upright by working at a standing desk or pacing while taking the occasional phone call may be a more practical ﬁrst step toward good health for most Americans than asking them to go jogging on their lunch break. “We need to focus on the fact that if sitting is a cause of disease in most people,” Hamilton says, “then avoiding sitting is the most direct and simple recommendation to start with.”

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UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

LONG AMBULANCE RIDES MAKE YOU MORE LIKELY TO DIE THE STUDY: “The Relationship between Distance to Hospital and Patient Mortality in Emergencies: An Observational Study,” Emergency Medicine Journal, September 2007 THE FINDINGS: Looking at four British ambulance services carrying 10,315 patients between 1997 and 2001, researchers determined that every six miles between patient and hospital increased the risk of death by 1 per-

cent. The risks were even greater for patients with severe respiratory ailments: They had a 20 percent greater chance of death if the hospital was more than 12 miles away. WHY BOTHER? Because emergency rooms could become more scarce. A scheme by the British National Health Service could close several ERs in favor of big central ones. But Jon Nicholl, director of the Medical

Care Research Unit at the University of Sheffield and the study’s lead researcher, says his findings suggest that a diversity of emergency services might help survival rates. “The ‘one size fits all’ approach is absurd,” he says. “I’m in favor of a mix of large high-quality centers and local immediate-care centers. We need to get the right patient to the right place at the right time.”

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UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

YOU CATCH THE FLU IN WINTER THE STUDY: “Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature,” PLoS Pathogens, October 2007 THE FINDINGS: Experiments on fluafflicted guinea pigs revealed that the bug spreads most easily at low relative humidities and cold temperatures, with the highest transmissions at 41ºF and a humidity of 35 percent or less. WHY BOTHER? Because the flu may be easy to avoid. Scientists have long assumed that indoor crowding in winter was what spread it. But this study suggests that the flu just lives longest in dry, cold conditions. So close the window. The flu, writes Anice Lowen of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, could be fought off “by simply maintaining room air at warm temperatures and either intermediate or high relative humidities.”

LONELINESS SUCKS THE STUDY: “Aging and Loneliness: Downhill Quickly?” Current Directions in Psychological Science, August 2007 THE FINDINGS: University of Chicago researchers investigated the physical effects of loneliness on the overall health of young, middle-aged and older people. Sustained loneliness found in the 50- to 68-year-old subjects correlated with increased blood pressure,

MATERIALISTIC TEENAGERS ARE JUST INSECURE THE STUDY: “Growing Up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents,” Journal of Consumer Research, December 2007 THE FINDINGS: Why are kids so concerned with having a cool cellphone? Lan Nguyen Chaplin of the University of Illinois and Deborah Roedder John of the University of Minnesota looked for a connection between self-esteem and materialism in children aged 8 to 18. They observed a big drop in self-esteem in kids aged 12 and 13 that accompanied the “use of material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth.” But even a small boost in self-esteem, in this case kind words from acquaintances written on paper plates, caused them to forget their insecurity—and material obsessions— for the day. WHY BOTHER?

as well as a spike in epinephrine levels, both health-risk factors for older adults. WHY BOTHER? Because the U.S. is becoming lonelier, with 25 percent of Americans unable to name a trusted conﬁdante, according to the American Sociological Review. Understanding how this trend affects health is becoming more important as aging baby boomers come to dominate the population.

Because, as Chaplin points out, her study could have practical beneﬁts for material girls and boys. Keep kids’ self-esteem high, and they’ll be happier. They might also stop bugging you for a Wii.

SLEEP AND CAFFEINE COMBAT SLEEPINESS THE STUDY: “Aging and Nocturnal Driving: Better with Coffee or a Nap? d i d St d ” Sleep, Sl D b 2007 AR Randomized Study,” December THE FINDINGS: French scientists gave 12 participants in their early 20s and 12 in their 40s either coffee, decaf or a 30-minute nap in the car and then tested their wakefulness during a 125-mile highway drive. Coffee was the overall winner, perking up almost all the drivers. The nap refreshed the young, but it didn’t do much for the older group. WHY BOTHER? Because late-night and early-morning hours see an unusually high number of fatal car crashes, and understanding why is one key to avoiding road fatalities. “Many young drivers are involved in sleep-related accidents, and up to now people thought it was related to a behavior, like nightclubbing,” explains Pierre Philip of the Sleep Clinic in Bordeaux, France. But the victims may be young shift workers relying on the wrong pick-me-ups. Taking note of age may be key in developing effective strategies for keeping late-night workers, such as truck drivers and doctors, alert. Bosses might send 20-somethings off for quick Zs and (envious) middle-aged workers to the coffee shop. 78 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

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UNATHLETIC KIDS ARE UNPOPULAR AT SCHOOL

UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE

THE T TH HE E STUDY: ST S T “Perceived Athletic Competence, ten ncee Sociometric So ociometric Status, oc Status and Loneliness in Elementary School Children,” Journal of Sport Behavior, September 2007 THE FINDINGS: Janice Causgrove Dunn of the University of Alberta studied 99 boys and 109 girls in Western Canada in grades four through six, finding that those students who were perceived by others as having good athletic skills were more popular, while the seemingly uncoordinated often felt dissatisfaction and isolation. WHY BOTHER? Because no one had thought to study the phenomenon before, yet it’s crucial to understanding how social strata form among students. “We knew there was a common-sense link between lack of athletic skill and loneliness,” Dunn says. Although much research relied on that assumed link, she couldn’t find a single study to back it up, so she undertook it herself. “It’s funny how many colleagues have said ‘thank you’ for finally having something to cite.”

TEENAGERS DRINK TO HAVE FUN THE STUDY: “Why Do High School Seniors Drink? Implications for a Targeted Approach to Intervention,” Prevention Science, December 2007 THE FINDINGS: A survey of 1,877 high-school seniors determined that underage drinkers imbibe for four main reasons: to experiment, to thrill-seek, to relax, and for “mixed reasons,” which is the category that yielded the most problematic drinkers. “Members of all four proﬁles,” the study reports, “indicated that they drink to have a good time with friends.” WHY BOTHER? “It is our hope that the categories we found will help clinicians to tailor their interventions” to individual teens, explains Donna Coffman, who conducted the study for the Prevention Research Center and the Methodology Center at Penn State University. That knowledge could help identify and treat problem drinkers before they graduate and become professional barﬂies.

VACATIONS ARE BETTER WITHOUT YOUR CELLPHONE THE STUDY: Ongoing research THE FINDINGS: Organizational psypsy chologist Dov Eden and his team at Tel Aviv University studied 800 college professors in the U.S., New Zealand and Israel, ﬁnding that those who stayed connected to work through devices like their cellphone don’t get the psychological “respite relief” from chronic job stress that a vacation is supposed to provide. WHY BOTHER? Because time off is as important to productivity as work itself. Ongoing job stress can lead to burnout and chronic diseases, so effectively refreshing workers is a plus for employers and employees. (Eden’s research indicates that within three weeks of a 14-day vacation, for example, stress levels rise back to pre-vacation levels. He suspects that frequent short vacations may be more productive than an occasional long hiatus.) Bring the phone, however, and

you’re still at work. “Work cellphones e mail at the pool is not a and company e-mail vacation,” says Eden, who reserves his phone for emergencies. “People who do this are shackled to electronic tethers.”

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how 2.0

t ip s , t r i c k s , h a c k s a n d d o - i t-y o u r s e l f p r o j E C T S

See the explosive power of liquid oxygen

STEPHEN KARLISCH; INSET: COURTESY CHUCK CAGE

YOU BUILT what ?!

Write reminders on a digital notepad

Find any replacement part for your electronics

HAVE A BLAST Using some fancy welding and software skills, a sci-ﬁ lover builds a ﬂight simulator to transport himself into his favorite TV show

I ADMIT IT: I’m completely addicted to Battlestar Galactica. And after watching countless episodes, I was convinced I could bank and spin a Viper, the show’s signature spaceship, like a pro. So to prove it, some friends and I built a full-cockpit flight simulator to enable total immersion in the BSG universe. The key for our team was to make a structure that would truly give the feeling of being at the fighter’s helm. We started by MIG-welding a steel frame to position the controls and enclose the player, who sits in a leather seat recycled from a junked Mazda 929. Sealed and painted plywood covers the frame, while a yellow steel “gantry” provides a step to simplify entry—and holds a 42-inch Vizio LCD television. A separate box houses a PC running Beyond the Red Line, a simulation game designed by BSG fans that lets you pilot the Viper. Since the game accepts only one input device, we had to use extra software to make it read the joystick, throttle and pedals as a single controller. Now it easily handles all the ship’s crazy X-, Y- and Z-axis twists and turns. It’s a joy to fly, but wannabe hot dogs take note: It turns out blasting Cylon raiders is a lot harder than it looks on TV.—Chuck Cage

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE The ﬂight simulator runs the Battlestar Galactica game on a souped-up Dell gaming PC.

[see how it works on next PAGE]

INSIDE JOB The cockpit is built on a 29-by-42-by-78-inch steel frame.

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HOW 2.0 [continued from preceding page]

INSIDE THE BSG FLIGHT SIMULATOR

5 THINGS . . . THE WEB CAN FIND FOR YOUR NEXT TRIP

TAKING FLIGHT Less than three feet from the seat, Vizio’s 42-inch TV puts the pilot (here, the author) right in the middle of the action.

1 A VIRTUAL TOUR

Head to chokti.com for free travel-related video and podcast feeds from around the Web. Museum tours, neighborhood guides, and tips from the locals are yours for the downloading—from a survivor’s take on Ground Zero to a beer-centric survey of Munich’s Oktoberfest.

2 SPEED TRAPS

Before a road trip, check out thousands of user-submitted speed-trap locations at copspy.com and Njection’s Speed Trap Exchange (njection.com/speedtrap). Soon you’ll be able to upload Njection maps to cellphones for early warnings on the go.

3 YOUR WAITING TIME

Don’t miss your flight or get stuck at the airport—go to waittime.tsa.dhs.gov to see based on past TSA data how long it might take to get through security. Also be sure to check flightstats.com to see if your plane is on time and to scan other travelers’ real-time posts about customs lines and other airport slowdowns.

4 A COUCH

HOW IT WORKS

SEAT: The pilot’s chair is still attached to its original seat rails to accommodate players of different heights.

time: 2 weeks

cost: $850

STRUCTURE

CONTROLLERS

BUTTONS

Cage and his team welded pieces of one-inch-square tubing to form the three boxes that make up the sim’s shape, connecting the narrower top box with angle steel. The plywood shell is attached with screws, and fiberglass-laced body filler closes up any gaps.

Cage used PPJoy, an opensource application, to mix multiple controls—Saitek’s X52 joystick, throttle and Pro Flight pedal set—into what appears to the game as a single input device. The joystick controls roll and pitch, while the pedals control yaw, just like a real aircraft.

The flight controller’s more than 30 buttons and switches map to the Viper’s guns, missiles, afterburners and various navigation options. The joystick buttons let you target enemies, look side to side and backward, and fire thrusters to move the Viper sideways or vertically.

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5 A COMPANION

Need someone to travel with? Travbuddy .com finds users headed to your destination—along with their photos and reviews—and matches you up with those who have similar interests. For the working stiff, dopplr.com keeps tabs on friends’ and colleagues’ itineraries to let you know if an upcoming business trip puts you in proximity.—Eric Mika

STEPHEN KARLISCH

FOOT PEDALS: The center wheel adjusts the force of the feedback.

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Turning the Odds in Your Favor Probability Has Never Been More Interesting and Accessible Than in These 12 Lectures from The Teaching Company

very time you buy stock or make plans based on a weather forecast, you are consigning your fate to probability. What Are the Chances? Probability Made Clear helps you understand the random factors behind almost everything—from the combinations of genes that produced you to the high odds that the waiting time at a bus stop will be longer than the average time between buses. Probability as a Reasoning Tool Professor Michael Starbird knows the secret of making numbers come alive to nonmathematicians. He picks intriguing, useful, and entertaining examples, with questions such as: When did the most recent common ancestor of all humans live? How much should you pay for a stock option? What do you do on third down with long yardage? After an introduction to the fundamental concepts of probability, you delve into a wealth of applications. Lectures 5 and 6 show that randomness and probability are central to physics and biology. Lecture 7 investigates the world of finance, particularly probabilistic models of stock and option behavior. Lecture 8 explores some unexpected applications of probability, and Lecture 9 examines two famous probability puzzles guaranteed to cause a stir: the birthday problem and the Let’s Make a Deal® Monty Hall question. Finally, Lectures 10 through 12 cover increasingly sophisticated and surprising results of probabilistic reasoning associated with Bayes theorem. The course concludes with probability paradoxes, including the notorious St. Petersburg paradox, involving a simple lottery in which the expected value is infinity; something has to be wrong, but can you guess what it is? About Our Sale Price Policy Why is the sale price for this course so much lower than its standard price? Every course we make goes on sale at least once a year. Producing large quantities of only the sale courses keeps costs down and allows us to pass the savings on to you. This approach also enables us to fill your order immediately: 99% of all orders placed by 2:00 pm eastern time ship that same day. Order before May 8, 2008, to receive these savings.

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literature, fine arts, the sciences, and mathematics for intelligent, engaged, adult lifelong learners. If a course is ever less than completely satisfying, you may exchange it for another, or we will refund your money promptly. Lecture Titles 1. Our Random World— Probability Defined 2. The Nature of Randomness 3. Expected Value—You Can Bet on It 4. Random Thoughts on Random Walks 5. Probability Phenomena of Physics 6. Probability Is in Our Genes 7. Options and Our Financial Future 8. Probability Where We Don’t Expect It 9. Probability Surprises 10. Conundrums of Conditional Probability 11. Believe It or Not— Bayesian Probability 12. Probability Everywhere

Surprisingly, probability can be used to make a variety of decisions—one example is football. Here, p is the probability of the offensive team passing the football on 3rd and long yards.

About Your Professor Professor Michael Starbird is a distinguished and highly popular teacher with an uncommon talent for making the wonders of mathematics clear. He is Professor of Mathematics and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has received the President’s Associates Teaching Award, the Jean Holloway Award for Teaching Excellence, and the Friar Society Centennial Teaching Fellowship. About The Teaching Company We review hundreds of top-rated professors from America’s best colleges and universities each year. From this extraordinary group we choose only those rated highest by panels of our customers. Fewer than 10% of these worldclass scholar-teachers are selected to make The Great Courses. We’ve been doing this since 1990, producing more than 3,000 hours of material in modern and ancient history, philosophy,

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HOW 2.0

GRAY

MATTER

Liquid nitrogen boiling at –320°F

FLAMING OXYGEN DROPS

In large quantities, pure liquid oxygen is powerful enough to launch rockets. But even a tiny bit packs a wallop too OXYGEN IS A GOOD THING. Oxygen is life. But if it were much more than one fifth of our air, we’d be in serious trouble. The other four fifths is nitrogen, an almost completely inert, obstructionist gas whose main effect is to get in the way of the oxygen, especially where flame is involved. For every bit of oxygen a fire consumes, it has to heat up and push away four times as much useless nitrogen. With pure oxygen, that damper is gone, and things that merely smolder in plain air go up like dry tinder. In 1967 three Apollo 1 astronauts died in a raging fire when Velcro lit up in their pure-oxygen pressurized space capsule. Oxygen in gas form is used for welding and cutting: There’s no way to get a flame hot enough to melt steel using plain air. And in liquid form, oxygen is truly ferocious. For example, kerosene burning in air can power a camping lantern; kerosene burning with liquid oxygen powered the Saturn V moon rocket (yes, we made it to the moon on kerosene). It’s not enough for space travel, but it’s possible to make small, controllable amounts of liquid oxygen using much more readily available liquid nitrogen. When a very thin aluminum container such as a beverage can is filled with boiling liquid nitrogen, dewdrops form on the outside and drip off the bottom. This is pure oxygen condensing out of the air (because the boiling point of oxygen is higher than that of nitrogen), just as water vapor condenses on a cold windowpane. How can you be sure that the drops are oxygen and not just water? For one thing, if they were water they would freeze on the can. But the real test is to let the droplets fall onto some smoldering wood or paper. Believe me, there is no mistaking the effect of liquid oxygen on a fire.

Beverage can ﬁlled with liquid nitrogen

Liquid oxygen condensing and dripping off at –297°F Fireballs erupt when drops of liquid oxygen hit

AIR SUPPLY Velcro burning in air smokes and smells but doesn’t burn much, because air is only 21 percent O2.

ACHTUNG! Do not attempt this unless you are trained in the safe handling of liquefied gases, because they are dangerous and unpredictable. Larger quantities of liquid oxygen should be avoided.

84 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

PS0408H2_GrayMatter.indd 84

Paper towel

CATCH A FIRE Velcro with pure oxygen ﬂowing over it erupts in ﬂame. Apollo 1 was full of Velcro—and full of pure oxygen.

MIKE WALKER

—Theodore Gray

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Would you believe a lawn could be perfect when watered just once? In Iowa, the state’s biggest Men’s Garden club picked a zoysia lawn as “top lawn – nearly perfect.” Yet, this lawn had been watered only once all summer to August! In PA, Mrs. M.R. Mitter wrote “I’ve never watered it, only when I put the plugs in...Last summer we had it mowed 2 times...When everybody’s lawns here are brown from drought, ours stays as green as ever.” That’s how zoysia lawns cut water bills and mowing! Now read on!

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HOW 2.0

LCD screen

Trackpad

buildIT

THE ELECTRONIC POST-IT NOTE “PICK UP MILK.” “Feed dog.” “Finish homemade nuclear sub.” Like many people, I can’t function without writing little reminders to myself. But using one paper sticky note after another causes a lot of clutter and can be pretty wasteful. Instead, assemble a bunch of surplus parts into a digital note system for your kitchen or ofﬁce. Just write out your message with your ﬁngertip on a computer trackpad, and it appears on an LCD screen. When you’re done, press a button and the screen is erased. Add a rechargeable battery and an enclosure, and you have unlimited (and ecofriendly) note-making capability. The project does require some computer code to drive the LCD, but we’ve already posted it for you at popsci.com/notepad. If you can just remember to copy it, you’ll be good to go.—Dave Prochnow

7 HOURS easy

For more details, go to popsci.com/notepad.

Solder wires to the trackpad’s [A] PS/2 connector. Connect them to the mouse coprocessor, which translates finger movements on the trackpad. Connect the coprocessor to the microcontroller [B] so the program code can generate an image on the LCD screen [C].

Follow the data sheet instructions on sparkfun .com to attach the voltage regulator and electrolytic capacitor to the screen. This adapts the screen’s power to the right level.

Plug the screen into the carrier board. Solder resistors to the board, and connect them to the microcontroller. Power the board by connecting pins to the voltage regulator.

Download our code for the screen at popsci.com or, if you substitute other components, from sparkfun.com.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR NOTEPAD It’s possible to use a number of different parts for this project. If you want to cut down on the cost, try substituting a cheaper screen for the Nokia LCD we used—just be sure to get suitable software for it before you start (try sparkfun.com). Alternatively, you can swap in a larger screen and increase the speed and performance with a better microcontroller.

$175 hard

Install a nine-volt battery. Program the microcontroller with the code from your PC. Test the device’s operation, put it in a custom-built box, and forget about those sticky notes.

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: ERIC HEINTZ; PHOTOGRAPHS: LUIS BRUNO

Who needs pen and paper? Jot down reminders on a digital screen, using only your ﬁnger

MAKE A DIGITAL NOTEPAD

A 86 POPULAR SCIENCE APRIL 2008

PS0408H2_Build It.indd 86

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2/7/08 3:39:14 AM

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www.FiveMinuteFence.com POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 87

HOW 2.0 ASK A

GEEK

HOW CAN I BACK UP MY CELLPHONE CONTACTS? WISE QUESTION. I wish I had asked it before leaving my phone and two yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; worth of numbers in a taxi. Fortunately, backup systems abound. If you go through cellphones like toilet paper, try the Universal Pro kit ($80; datapilot.com). It includes cables that let you transfer data to your computer from just about any phone, and it syncs with Microsoft Outlook. A less direct but cheaper choice for most phones is a plug-in device called CellStik ($40; sparktech.com), which uploads your numbers to its built-in memory for safekeeping. You can later move them from the CellStik to a PC. If thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too much money, most carriers will let you store your contacts on their servers for $2 to $4 a month. (Verizon will even do it free if you sign up for the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s online billing plan.) Finally, if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re dead-broke, you can use software called BitPim (bitpim.org) to transfer your contacts to your desktop for free. Or nearly freeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;trying to use BitPim via Bluetooth crashed my computer, so I had to buy a $30 cable to do the job. Of course, any of these options beats spamming your friends and family for their phone numbers, not to mention the tedium of data entry. Trust me.

PETER HOEY

NICOLE DYER is a senior editor at POPULAR SCIENCE. GOT A QUESTION FOR OUR GEEK CHORUS? Send it to us at h20@bonniercorp.com.

" ! # $

HOW 2.0

TRICK OF THE MONTH

A LASER POINTER– CONTROLLED MOUSE WHO SAYS you need to be near your computer in order to use it? Ian Cinnamon discovered that he could turn over his optical mouse to expose the sensor (the Sensor little black bubble located on the underside) and aim a laser pointer at it to move the cursor around the screen from up to 20 feet away. Then he hacked the mouse so he could use the laser for clicking as well. Search for “Ian Cinnamon” at instructables.com to learn how to do it.

𰁳𰀀𰀭𰁁𰁋𰁅𰀀𰀡𰁒𰁔𰁉𰁓𰁔𰁉𰁃𰀀𰀰𰁒𰁏𰁊𰁅𰁃𰁔𰁓𰀀𰁁𰁎𰁄𰀀𰀭𰁅𰁃𰁈𰁁𰁎𰁉𰁃𰁁𰁌𰀀𰀰𰁁𰁒𰁔𰁓𰁳𰀀𰀣𰁕𰁔𰀀𰀤𰁅𰁔𰁁𰁉𰁌𰁅𰁄𰀀𰀣𰁕𰁓𰁔𰁏𰁍𰀀𰀷𰁏𰁒𰁋𰀀𰁏𰁒𰀀𰀭𰁁𰁓𰁓𰀀𰀰𰁒𰁏𰁄𰁕𰁃𰁔𰁉𰁏𰁎𰁳𰀀𰀩𰁎𰁃𰁌𰁕𰁄𰁅𰁓𰀀𰀩𰁎𰁄𰁕𰁓𰁔𰁒𰁙𰀍𰀬𰁅𰁁𰁄𰁉𰁎𰁇𰀀𰀳𰁏𰁆𰁔𰁗𰁁𰁒𰁅𰀀𰁳𰀀𰀳𰁉𰁍𰁐𰁌𰁅𰀀𰁔𰁏𰀀𰀯𰁐𰁅𰁒𰁁𰁔𰁅𰀀𰀍𰀀𰀲𰁕𰁎𰁓𰀀𰀯𰁆𰁆𰀀𰀹𰁏𰁕𰁒𰀀𰀣𰁏𰁍𰁐𰁕𰁔𰁅𰁒

PROCUREMENT

ANY PART YOU CAN IMAGINE

THE

𰀣𰁁𰁌𰁌𰀀𰁔𰁏𰁄𰁁𰁙𰀀𰁆𰁏𰁒𰁙𰁏𰁕𰁒𰀀𰀦𰀲𰀥𰀥𰀀𰁄𰁅𰁍𰁏𰀀𰁖𰁉𰁄𰁅𰁏𰀁𰀀𰁗𰁗𰁗𰀎𰁐𰁌𰁁𰁓𰁍𰁁𰁃𰁁𰁍𰀎𰁃𰁏𰁍𰀈𰀗𰀑𰀙𰀉𰀀𰀖𰀗𰀖𰀍𰀒𰀗𰀐𰀐𰀀𰁳𰀀𰀰𰀯𰀀𰀢𰁏𰁘𰀀𰀑𰀙𰀘𰀑𰀘𰀀𰀣𰁏𰁌𰁏𰁒𰁁𰁄𰁏𰀀𰀣𰁉𰁔𰁙𰀌𰀀𰀣𰀯𰀀𰀘𰀑𰀐𰀑𰀙

MINUTE PROJECT

COLD DRINKS IN AN INSTANT* WHY: To chill a soda or beer in 20 seconds

DIY: 1. Poke a hole in a plastic container. 2. Place a soda or beer can inside, and snap on the lid. 3. Spray an air duster through the hole. After 20 seconds, the can will be down to about 30°F.

30°F

HAVE AN IDEA FOR A 5-MINUTE PROJECT? Send it to us at h20@bonniercorp.com. *originally posted on metacafe.com/channels/sonicintox

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APRIL 2008 POPULAR SCIENCE 89

ILLUSTRATION: PETER HOEY; PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM TOP: COURTESY IAN CINNAMON; COURTESY COPPER IMAGES; LUIS BRUNO (3)

Don’t throw out your old vacuum cleaner or digital watch just yet. First head to partstore .com, an enormous repository of replacement parts for electronics and appliances. There are plenty of cellphone chargers to be found, but what’s really remarkable is the obscure stuff: TV light engines [left], washingmachine knobs, an AC adapter for that keyboard you got for your 14th birthday. Of course, if you’re looking for an excuse to buy new equipment, just pretend you never read this.

HE SAID, SHE SAID Bottle your frustration â&#x20AC;&#x201D;youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re both right, you just canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand each other.

Y O U

J U S T

N E E D

T O

K N O W

WHOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BETTER AT GIVING DIRECTIONS, MEN OR WOMEN?

He says go straight for three miles and turn east. She says drive past the school and turn right at the green house. Both sets of directions will get you to the same grocery store just as easily, but they embody the language barrier between the sexes that lurks behind many a front-seat argument. Deborah Saucier, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge in Canada, examined the differences in phrasing in her 2003 study. She observed that, after studying a map and being asked how to get to various locations, women typically give directions that feature landmarks and

JIM NAUGHTEN/GETTY IMAGES; FACING PAGE: NASA

S O M E T I M E S

FYI

How spit nixes swimgoggle fog

ask

POPSCI

Send your questions to fyi@popsci.com.

left and right turns. Men, on the other hand, employ compass directions and distances measured in minutes or miles. Some animals, such as homing pigeons, have extra iron in their nose that helps them turn toward the magnetic north pole. But men’s internal maps, Saucier theorizes, most likely date back to our hunting ancestors. During a hunt, men would stray far from home and into unfamiliar territory to bring down wild animals. They may have relied on tracking the position of the sun and their innate orientation skills to ﬁnd the most direct route home. Meanwhile, prehistoric women, who gathered more-sedentary food, probably found their way to and from the most bountiful and nutritious plants with the help of landmarks. In a study last year at the University of California at Santa Barbara, evolutionary psychologist Joshua New tested this theory in a farmers’ market. After a single tasting tour of the market, women could more accurately point to food stalls they had visited, noting, in particular, the locations of foods with high energy content. With the beneﬁt of food stalls as landmarks, women knew their way around better than men. To compensate for the gender differences, Saucier suggests giving disoriented people both male- and female-oriented instructions. “People get a lot less lost that way,” she says.—Corey Binns

Q A

Why don’t moons have moons?

Astronomers can say with near certainty that there are no moons with moons in our solar system. But that doesn’t mean it’s physically impossible. After all, NASA has successfully put spacecraft into orbit around our moon. Although astronomers have spotted some asteroids with moons, a parent planet’s strong gravitational tug would make it difﬁcult for a moon to retain control of its own natural satellite, says Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the nonproﬁt SETI APRIL 2008 POPULAR SCIENCE 91

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to be a short-lived phenomenon.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D;James Norton

Why does spitting in my scuba mask keep it from fogging up?

Fog forms on the inside of your goggles because of the temperature difference between the cool outside water and your 98.6Â°F face. Just as water droplets condense on the outside of a glass of ice water, your chilly lenses cause water in the air trapped inside your goggles to condense into tiny, mist-like beads that gather on the inside surface of your lens and scatter light every which way. Unless youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re swimming in bodytemperature (or warmer) water, your best bet is to prevent the condensation

SPITTINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; IMAGE The mucus in your spit is key to keeping your view clear.

from forming beads. Most anti-fog goggle treatments coat the lens with hydrophilic (water-loving) chemicals that pull the water ďŹ&#x201A;at to the lensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; surface. Any condensation takes the form of a clear, thin, continuous ďŹ lm across the surface of the lens that doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t diffract light as much as the spherical beads, says Chris Ryser, president of Opto Chemicals, the maker of Zero Fog sprays and creams. The mucus in your saliva works much the same way, says Dennis Lopatin of the University of Michigan. u

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Institute. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You would need to have a wide space between the moon and planet,â&#x20AC;? he says. Orbiting far away from its parent planet, a relatively massive moon might be able to hold onto a moon of its own. Conditions like these might exist in far-off solar systems, but while some 250 exoplanets have been detected, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s almost no chance weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be able to spot exomoons, much less moons of exomoons, for decades to come. This is because our current methods for planet-huntingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; such as spotting one as it passes a large starâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;lend themselves to detecting mostly huge, Jupiter-like planets, not their moons. Even if astronomers spot a moon with a moon, it probably wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t last long. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tidal forces from the parent planet will tend, over time, to destabilize the orbit of the moonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moon, eventually pulling it out of orbit,â&#x20AC;? says Webster Cash, a professor at the University of Coloradoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A moonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s moon will tend

FYI

Scientists donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know for certain, but it probably also lowers the surface tension of the lens, making it even more difďŹ cult for water to form beads. Unfortunately, the spit treatment doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t last as long as the synthetic stuff, so you may need to reapply frequently.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;MELINDA WENNER

G.K. AND VIKKI HART/GETTY IMAGES

Q A

Can cockroaches really survive a nuclear holocaust?

First of all, nothing would live through the intense heat at ground zero. For instance, the 15-kiloton bomb that exploded over Hiroshima ignited a 1,800Â°F ďŹ restorm that incinerated everything in a 1.2-mile radius. A roach, however, stands a pretty good chance of surviving the subsequent fallout. The average cockroach can withstand a dose of about 6,400 rads (the standard measurement for radiation exposure). In comparison, the lethal dose for humans is only 500

radsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;roughly the equivalent of 42 simultaneous full-body CT scans. One theory on roachesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; resilience credits their weekly larval molt, during which their cells divide half as frequently. As adults, their cells divide even less often. Because radiation causes the most mutations in DNA that is replicatingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which occurs most frequently in dividing cellsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this slow replication protects roaches from radiation. But even roaches canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t hold a candle to Deinococcus radiodurans, a nearly radiation-invincible bacteria. In 1956 scientists discovered the organism thriving in a can of spoiled meat that they had zapped with gamma radiation, and subsequent studies have shown that it can survive 1.5 million rads. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s enough, presumably, to live through the fallout from a 1.2-megaton bomb, which experts speculate is the largest in the U.S. arsenal. Scientists are still at odds over just what DNA-repair mechanism allows

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COCKROACH KINGS A lowly cockroach stands a much better chance of surviving the fallout from a nuclear bomb than you do.

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D. radiodurans to withstand such extremes. One possibility is that the moment the bacteriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s DNA strands break, a protein caps the ends and protects them long enough for the strands to reattach (think of a torn ropeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ends being immediately covered before they can fray uncontrollably). If this turns out to be the case, scientists might be able to introduce the same protein to human cells and give us a chance of outlasting those pesky cockroaches.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Abby Seiff p

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THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS

[continued from page 73]

BREEDING THE OIL BUG

Synthetic Genomics, a company that aims to create organisms that can turn plant matter into biofuels. Venter likes to say heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going from being â&#x20AC;&#x153;the gene king to the oil king.â&#x20AC;? His approach to fuels follows his drive to create synthetic life. (In January, he announced that he had produced the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ rst synthetic chromosome, which, when implanted in a cell, would yield the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ rst synthetic life form.) In Venterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better to build new fuel-producing organisms from scratch than it is to genetically manipulate existing microbes. His plan to make a so-called â&#x20AC;&#x153;minimalâ&#x20AC;? organism before putting it to practical use could slow his progress with fuels, however. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Even if he says heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s created a synthetic organism, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be many years until itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s usable,â&#x20AC;? Keasling notes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The microbes we are creating are usable now.â&#x20AC;? (Venter counters that he is also working on a jet fuel that uses a modiďŹ ed version of an existing microbe.) Modifying existing microbes is also the strategy of LS9, a small start-up in San Carlos, California. Founded in 2005, LS9 is, like Amyris, retooling bacteria to produce biodiesel and other fuels (but using different chemical pathways). In addition, it is working on a crude product that would need to be sent to a reďŹ nery before itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s usable. LS9â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vice president of research and development, Stephen del CardayrĂŠ, says that the company is â&#x20AC;&#x153;actively scaling upâ&#x20AC;? its diesel products and is building a pilot facility in its new lab space to test larger-scale production this year. Pilot plants will be a major test for all of these companies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The question of all biofuels is the question of scale,â&#x20AC;? Venter told me. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an overwhelming scale that we have to produce at. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be as much of an engineering challenge as a biology challenge.â&#x20AC;? For instance, when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re working on an industrial scale, how do you separate

VISIT THE NEW POPSCI.COM POPULAR SCIENCE 95

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2/7/08 11:37:27 PM

THE FUTURE OF BIOFUELS

BREEDING THE OIL BUG fuel from the microbes that created it? How do you keep the microbes from drowning in the fuel theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re producing? An even greater question of scale: How can a few small biofuel companies displace the billions of gallons of gasoline that Americans burn each year? LS9â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s CardayrĂŠ puts it bluntly: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Every one of the companies working in this area could be successful beyond their wildest ambitions, and Exxon would never know it.â&#x20AC;?

THE NEXT STEP

do you feel about â&#x20AC;&#x2122;80s hair bands?â&#x20AC;? he continues, slipping the CD into his computer. What follows is a sappy, moody song that could have been a MĂśtley CrĂźe reject and that, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the pilot plant. Before I leave, though, he shows me a painting he keeps in his ofďŹ ce. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s of a little boy leaping from one cliff to another across a chasm. The boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arms are stretched out. His head juts forward. â&#x20AC;&#x153;He isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even looking at the edge. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s looking beyond the edge,â&#x20AC;? Reiling says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 100 percent committed to that jump. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to do when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going after something.â&#x20AC;? Amanda Schaffer is a columnist for Slate magazine and a frequent contributor to the New York Times science section.

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Whether Exxon notices or not, this year Amyris will begin work on a pilot plant capable of producing industrial quantities of fuel. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in â&#x20AC;&#x153;advanced talksâ&#x20AC;? with a Brazilian sugar supplier that would give it access to large quantities of lowcost sugarcane and in early-stage talks

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I was the total skeptic. Not only had I lifted weights and run long distance for years, but I had major success under my belt, including a world kung fu championship and a national collegiate wrestling title. So I just didn’t want to believe what Karl, a 76year old man told me about exercising WITHOUT weights… and WITHOUT long-distance running. Most importantly, I didn’t want to hear that the hours I had spent running long distances, lifting weights and so-on could be replaced with three body-weight exercises that left me drenched in a pool of sweat within minutes. Hate to admit it, but I must. I felt like a complete weakling when I started doing theses exercises. At the same time, I was inspired and challenged Let me tell you, when I looked at this “76 year-old man’s” physique and watched him demonstrate his exercises, I was seeing a demonstration of the strength, endurance and flexibility that I’ve always wanted.

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Who is Combat Conditioning for? It’s for the hard-working man or woman who often finds it difficult to squeeze in a quick workout. It’s for the traveling executive who sleeps in hotel rooms more than at home. It’s for those who have trained their whole lives on weights. It’s for athletes, martial artists and the military. And .. IT’S FOR the man or woman who hasn’t done a lick of exercise in decades. Even One Minute a Day Brings Results! Unlike other exercise program where you are told you MUST do 30 minutes of cardio per day and an hour of weights, to get results, Combat Conditioning is totally different. 15 minutes is all it takes to whoop the hardcore trainee. But for the total beginner, he or she can get results starting with ONLY one minute a day. And no, this is not a joke. Time is not the issue! Forget all those workouts that take all day. With Combat Conditioning, all that’s required is your own Matt Furey won a national collegiate wrestling title in 1985 and a world shuai-chiao kung fu championship in 1997. Furey has a knack for taking the average and ordinary person and transforming him with his powerful programs. Furey was inducted into the Edinboro University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1998 and spends much time each year traveling throughout the world, searching for the very best information available to his world-wide audience. His website, www.mattfurey.com, is one of the finest in the world, giving valuable information that changes lives.

body and a tiny “get started NOW” decision to DO a little something each day. The key to your success is in the magical, transformative power of these exercises – not in your belief system about hard work. For many people, just one rep is all they can do at first, and they’re shaking like a leaf on a windy day in Chicago. And so, that’s all that person should do at first. Even if you think you’re not doing enough – the exercises work their magic anyway. Your body has it’s own intelligence and will work FOR YOU if you’ll simply get out of the way and let it. When you do, pretty soon you’ll be the type of person who can do 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 or 128 repetitions and feel no fatigue. Instead of tiredness you’ll feel exhilaration and ENERGY. You’re building strength and endurance from the INSIDE-OUT. And believe me, once you can do more than a few reps, inches of unsightly fat and pounds of excess flab will fly off your body at break-neck speed.

New Results from Forgotten Exercises Are the exercises in Combat Conditioning NEW? Well, not really. They go back about 5,000 years – but for the most part, they got lost in the shuffle when weights, gadgets and gyms came around. So although they aren’t NEW, they’re “New to YOU!” Before I learned these exercises, I read about the Great Gama of India, a wrestler who followed this program and was unbeaten in 5,000 matches. I also read that the legendary Bruce Lee did these exercises, too. And we all know about Lee’s incredible martial arts skills. Then there was the All-Pro NFL running back, Hershell Walker, who did bodyweight exercises each day. The list goes on and on. The key is in having a proven program with a track record, and Combat Conditioning is just that.

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burn excess body fat a lot, lot faster. This means fitting into the clothes you WANT to wear. 2. Packs attractive and healthy functional muscles (not grotesque) onto your entire body 3. Simultaneously doubles your strength and flexibility – and does so without needing separate workouts for each. 4. Quadruples your endurance inside of 30 days. Never get tired again. 5. Within a couple weeks, it often eliminates chronic back and shoulder pain from years of heavy squats, deadlifts and bench pressing – or other forms of abuse. 6. Sleep like a log. Eight hours of deep sleep is no longer a goal. It’s automatic. As soon as you hit the rack you’re out like a light. 7. Your self-confidence will have no bounds. Especially when you got compliments from people who hardly paid attention to you before. 8. You can train anywhere. You don’t need more than a few square feet of carpet or pavement and you’re all set. You don’t need equipment. Just your own bodyweight. 9. You get a kick-butt workout done in 15 minutes or less. 10. You’ll turn back the clock. Friends may tell you that you look 5–10 years younger. 11. You’ll have an explosive type of strength that weights cannot give you. Your every movement will be lively and full of vigor. 12. Your muscles will be pliable and powerful, like a tiger’s. Here’s How to Order Combat Conditioning: Functional Exercises for Fitness has 48 super effective bodyweight exercises along with seven different programs that will get you into kick-butt shape fast. Order NOW and you’ll receive 3 free Special Reports on how to eliminate knee, back and shoulder pain. Your total investment in this no-nonsense book is only $29.95 plus $6 S&H U.S. (foreign orders add $12). Order online at www.mattfurey.com. Or pick up the phone right now and call 1 813 994 8267 to order. You can also send a money order to Matt Furey Enterprises, Inc., 10339 Birdwatch Drive, Tampa, FL, 33647.

is because it targets all the weak links in your body. And when all those weak links are given a little attention, your entire body gets stronger, faster, more powerful and more energetic. Spend time each day doing a few functional exercises and the payoff is HUGE. You get functional strength, endurance and flexibility – all at the same time. Not to mention seeing the excess inches flying off your body, making it O Yes, Please Send Me Combat Conditioning: Functional Exercises for Fitness easy for you to fit into the for only $29.95 plus $6 S&H ($12 foreign S&H), and if I’m one of the first 25 to order, clothes you dream of wearI will also receive 3 Special Reports on eliminating knee, back and shoulder pain. ing again. Stop dreaming. Start DOING. And get NAME: _____________________________________________________________ results. ADDRESS: ___________________________________________________________

12 Ways Combat Conditioning Will Change Your Life!

Follow this program and your body is going to change big time. In fact, I’ve made a list of 12 of the most powerful benefits that hundreds of thousands of others all over the world have gotten from the Combat Conditioning program. Let’s take a look: 1. Cranks up your metabolism so you

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ALFRED PASIEKA/PHOTO RESEARCHERS; COURTESY APPLE; COURTESY NASA

As last winter’s Mitchell Report made clear, plenty of pro baseball players love their human growth hormone—particularly since there’s currently no good way to test for the stuff. But researchers have hinted that a working, if imperfect, blood test could become commercially available as early as this spring. Will it happen?

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