Discover Magazine | Nanotechnology

Impatient Futurist: Your Domestic Robot Servant Has Finally Arrived (in a Fashion)

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:30:00 -0400

Like many people with limited social skills, i’ve always wanted a robot. And I’ve never been the least put off by the strict movie rule that having a robot can only result in its owner being pushed down the stairs, sucked into the vacuum of outer space, or enslaved with what’s left of humanity. I’m well aware that movie rules are hardly ever wrong, but it hasn’t been fear of betrayal that’s kept me from having a robot helper. It’s been the lack of their existence, in spite of a century of big talk. And this has left me not only without the sort of non–emotion-experiencing companion who could really understand me but also with a lot more laundry, cooking, dirty dishes, and child care than a technophilic citizen of the 21st century should have to put up with.

Useful home robots have always been about 20 years in the future, according to experts—a discouraging estimate, since the same experts assure me every other exciting technology under development is only 5 years away. Yes, I know, you can drive over to Walmart and pick up a carpet-vacuuming “robot” to keep your lawn-mowing “robot” company. While you’re there, why don’t you also grab a “house” in the camping department? I’ve got no interest in keeping company with hundreds of dumb, whirring little things. Scampering scrubbers and pot-stirrers are way too small and stupid to push me down the stairs when I’m not looking.

I’m hardly more impressed with the current small crop of machines that fall into the category of sticking a laptop on a wheeled dress mannequin and calling it a robot. The best you’re going to do there is Luna, a human-size “robot” that will soon be widely available from a company called RoboDynamics in Santa Monica, California, for $3,000—incredibly cheap for a humanoid, but incredibly expensive for a device that can’t do much more than try not to bump into furniture and senior citizens as it desultorily wheels itself around your home, toting a tray of drinks you’ve carefully placed on its precarious, pipe-like arms...

Image: Humanoid robots can dance and play Ping Pong. But folding towels
and catering a party are proving to be trickier tasks. By David Plunkert

Big Idea: Physicists Carve a Niche in Time

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:30:00 -0400

Physicists routinely baffle reporters, but for once things went the other way. Alexander Gaeta was sitting in his Cornell University office in the fall of 2010 when a reporter called to ask his opinion of a strange new paper in the Journal of Optics: What did he think about the claim that it might be possible to create a time cloak, a device that would render events undetectable?

Gaeta was caught off guard. He was still grappling with the invisibility cloak, a wild idea that turned into reality in 2006, when physicists demonstrated that a class of synthetic materials could bend light completely around an object. (Think of water in a stream flowing around a rock.) Without light bouncing off the object, it would essentially disappear.

But creating a time cloak–something that could hide not just an object but an event–is even more ambitious. Rather than just rerouting the rays of light striking an object, a time cloak would have to deflect all the light beams influenced by the object as it moves through space. The time cloak would, in essence, create an interval during which all information about what an object is doing disappears.

Although Gaeta had not heard of the time-cloak study until that phone call, he dove into it as soon as the reporter sent it over. The author, theoretical physicist Martin McCall of Imperial College London, proposed splitting a light beam into two segments moving at different speeds. As one fragment built a lead on the other, a gap of complete darkness would open up between them. Anything happening within that gap, McCall reasoned, would be impossible to detect, since there would be no light to scatter. Then, to complete the trick, McCall proposed bringing those two segments back together so that by the time the beam of light reached an observer, there would be no way to detect that the gap ever existed...

Hot Science: Real-World Technology That Approaches "The Avengers"

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:50:00 -0400

After a series of solo adventures, Marvel’s greatest superheroes will finally join forces on the big screen this Friday, May 4. In anticipation of the Avengers’ suiting up to save the day, we took a look at how today’s technology stacks up against the best weapons wielded by our favorite superhumans.

Iron Man 
Super Tech: A bespoke high-tech exoskeleton not only protects billionaire Tony Stark from supervillains, it also lets him fly faster than the speed of sound, lift up to 100 tons, and confirm dinner reservations through his AI assistant.

Real-World Tech: U.S. soldiers may soon have robotic exoskeletons of their own. Defense giant Lockheed Martin’s model, now in testing, supports soldiers as they run at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour while carrying 200 extra pounds.

Captain America 
Super Tech: The Captain’s shield, made of an alloy with the alien metal vibranium, absorbs kinetic energy—so the strain of battle only makes it stronger.

Real-World Tech: Scientists have yet to find a material that gets tougher from taking a hit. But in 2011 researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab unveiled the strongest, toughest substance ever: a microalloy of glass and the rare metal palladium...

Impatient Futurist: Your Personal, Automated Mass Transit Vehicle Is on Its Way

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Despite my mania for all manner of irresponsible personal vehicles, I’m actually a public-transportation nut. A few of the reasons:
• I can read, check email, send text messages, or catch a few winks while I’m zipping to my destination
• I have built-in motivation for walking, given that I have to get to and from the bus or train stop
• I feel good that my ride isn’t fueled by the conversion of fossilized sea life into impending climate catastrophe
• I get to trade small talk and occasional newspaper sections with fellow transit riders.

But I know you have your very good reasons for being among the 98 percent of the population that shuns public transportation:
• You can read, check email, send text messages, or catch a few winks while you’re swerving into oncoming traffic and pedestrians
• You have built-in motivation for stopping at Wendy’s for celebration takeout, given that you haven’t had to walk more than nine consecutive steps the entire day
• You feel good about the copious burning of hydrocarbons, which is creating valuable new beachfront property
• You get to trade hand gestures and occasional gunfire with fellow traffic jammers.

Ok, go ahead and sneer at my bus through the windshield of your Range Rollover. Thanks to some snazzy high-tech upgrades coming to public transit over the next several years, I’ll have the last laugh. Surely you’d envy me, for example, were my bus to suddenly lower four large metal wheels next to its tires and jump onto nearby rail tracks to go roaring off past your Toyota Highballer and all the other traffic. Or were my bus to pass over the roof of your Porsche Careen, supported on giant stilts with wheels that ran on either side of the road. Or, perhaps most impressive, were my commuter train to fly by you—really, actually fly by, lifted a few feet in the air by side-mounted wings.

Well, get ready to gawk. The next time you’re in Asia, that is, because the track-riding bus and the flying train are Japanese projects in prototypes (at Toyota and Tohoku University, respectively), and a stilted bus has been developed in China...

Gallery | Our Wonderful Age of Abundance, in 9 Striking Infographics

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:40:00 -0400

Click through to view gallery

Spy on the Inside: Underground Control Center for Texas' Power Grid

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:50:00 -0400

This room may look unfamiliar, but it is one of the most  important places in your life. Without it, you could not count on your house being warm and bright, your food staying safe in the fridge, or your ability to charge your iPad or cell phone. Behind the modern world is a vast wired network transmitting electricity to consumers. We call it the grid, but it is not as neat and orderly as the name implies. The hodgepodge of connections evolved over 100 years from a patchwork of local networks, interstate transmission lines, and ad hoc fixes. It is divided into three parts—the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and Texas. Pictured here is the grid control center for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Generators and distributors of electricity depend on it to communicate and to prevent leaving customers with too much or too little power. The result would be a blackout. Even with control centers, the grid still flounders. Texas experienced blackouts in February 2011, as colder-than-average winter weather simultaneously increased demand for electricity and damaged coal-fired power plants and wind turbines. During the summer, demand for air-conditioning threatened a series of near blackouts. Operators in the control room can adjust some conditions, but eliminating the grid’s instability would require big change.

The Spy: Maggie Koerth-Baker, author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about the electric grid and the future of energy in the United States...

Photograph: Marjorie Kamys Cotera

Does Rain Come From Life in the Clouds?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:05:00 -0400

The plane pitches violently as it plows through the milky innards of a cloud bank. A commercial pilot would fly high above these clouds over California’s Sierra Nevada Range, but this 63-foot Gulfstream-1 seems to invite the turbulence. Updrafts grab hold of the aircraft and shove it up even as the pilot noses it down. In the back of the plane, atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather wears headphones to muffle the roar of the propellers. She steadies herself with a hand on an instrument rack and focuses on the bobbing screen of her laptop. Readings from the clouds spool across it.

Those numbers tell Prather that these winter clouds are cold and heavy, –30 degrees Fahrenheit and just over 100 percent relative humidity. Yet despite being 62 degrees below the freezing point of water, the cloud droplets remain stubbornly liquid. As long as they don’t form ice crystals, these clouds won’t shed more than a few flakes of snow over the Sierras’ 13,000-foot peaks. They are typical clouds, teasers that won’t drop much of anything.

After two hours of flying, though, something changes. The voice of another researcher crackles over Prather’s headset: “Ice!” The plane has entered a cloud layer where suddenly every droplet is frozen. Prather’s instrument—a tangle of metal tubes, wires, and airtight chambers nicknamed Shirley—tick-tick-ticks as its laser blasts apart hundreds of microscopic cloud particles, one by one, that are drawn in from the air outside. The size and composition of each particle flash across Prather’s monitor. The specks at the heart of those ice crystals are high in aluminum, iron, silicon, and titanium, the chemical signatures of dust not from California but from faraway deserts in Asia or even Africa. There’s something else in the crystals too: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, telltale signs of biological cells...

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Image: A high-altitude balloon is readied for a 2011 launch at a NASA facility in New Mexico. It carried microbe collectors up to 120,000 feet.

Gallery | 7 Animals That Harnessed Nanotechnology Long Before Humans

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:20:00 -0400

Click through to view gallery

Engineers  Concoct the World's Lightest Material

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 10:35:00 -0400

In November researchers showed off the lightest material ever created:  a strong metal mesh about 25 percent less dense than the wispiest aerogel, a foamlike material that was the  old record holder. A brick-size piece of the new mesh would weigh less than a paper clip.

Faced with a U.S. Department of  Defense charge to manipulate well-known materials in new ways, Alan Jacobsen, a research scientist at HRL Laboratories in California, constructed delicate lattices of polymer fibers  less than a millimeter thick. He then coated the lattices with nickel and dissolved the polymer, leaving behind the spindly metal mesh...

Image: Dan Little Photography/HRL Laboratories LLC

Tools of the Trade: Fierce Old Warplane Has a New Mission: Flying Into the Hearts of Thunderstorms

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:40:00 -0400

The National Science Foundation provided $10.9 million to convert an old military A-10 Thunderbolt into the world’s most formidable storm-chasing research vessel, outfitted to withstand the lightning, turbulence, and hail that big clouds unleash. “The A-10 was designed to be shot at,” says Paul Smith, an atmospheric scientist at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, who helped acquire the aircraft.

The A-10 will replace the T-28 Trojan, which retired from chasing storms in 2005...

Illustration: Steve Karp

3-D Printers Spit Out Fancy Food, Green Cars, and Replacement Bones

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:00:00 -0400

Machines that can instantly  produce everything from food to flowers are a staple of science fiction. Today do-it-yourselfers have brought the fantasy to life with 3-D printers that lay down thin layers of material, be it plastic or cookie dough, that accumulate atop each other to create any desired shape. The printers, which cost about $1,000, work much like their ink-jet counterparts: A reservoir of material serves as a cartridge, and digital blueprints programmed in advance control the output. The printers can produce objects from model planes to robot toys in layers, in some cases spitting out glue to affix each new layer like frosting on a tiered cake. The technique has been used since the 1980s by manufacturers for rapid prototyping of models and parts.

Now 3-D printing is also finding creative applications in the lab, where scientists are using the advancing technology to help design gourmet snacks, set broken bones, and build cars.

Design Nutritious Cuisine 

After the Fab@Home Project at Cornell University put 3-D printing instructions online, amateur craftsmen began writing in about their creations. Some had tried using materials like cake frosting and asked Cornell for help. So in 2010 Fab@Home teamed with the French Culinary Institute to fill their printer’s syringes with goopy foods that could serve as cartridge ink for shapely snacks and started making rocket ship cookies and turkey cubes. The product could then be fried, baked, or flambéed. To maintain the design, cookies were chilled before baking, and meat was coated in tasteless glue. Researchers aim to use 3-D printing to improve nutrition by precisely controlling ingredients and making healthy food more palatable for picky eaters...

Image courtesy Daniel Cohen/Cornell University

Tools of the Trade: Curiosity, NASA’s Laser-Blasting Mars Robot

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:25:00 -0400

Sometime this August, a six-wheeled, sedan-size mars  rover named Curiosity should begin rolling across the surface of the Red Planet. The vehicle, carried to its destination  aboard the Mars Science Laboratory, will start its journey  on the floor of Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide depression marked with channels suggesting a watery past. But scientists have not yet decided exactly what Curiosity and its versatile suite of instruments, including the ChemCam, will explore first.

Mounted atop the rover’s mast, ChemCam’s infrared laser can focus a pulse of energy equivalent to the output of a million lightbulbs on a target as far as 25 feet away. At the beginning of each Martian day, scientists will choose a zone of interest, such as an intriguing rock outcrop, and instruct the rover to fire pulses around the area. Each time the laser hits rock, the impact point will erupt into a tiny ball of plasma, explains principal investigator Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico...

Gallery | Where Earth Is Unearthly: Exotic Places That Resemble Alien Planets

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:13:28 -0400

Click through to view gallery

Impatient Futurist: Good News, Spock—We're Getting Closer to a Universal Translator

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:45:00 -0500

Those of us for whom Star Trek serves as a benchmark for technological progress can only bemoan the fact that hopes for faster-than-light travel to other galaxies seem to be receding at warp speed, given that we no longer even have faster-than-sound travel to France. But I would prefer to focus on the bright side: We’re rapidly closing in on the Universal Translator, which means that when I do finally arrive in France, I’ll be able to communicate as easily as if I were on Earth.

The Universal Translator, of course, was a handheld device that  instantly converted Captain Kirk’s futuristically clipped English into the language of whichever vaguely humanoid alien was offering to buy him a blue drink. It is impossible to overemphasize the potential usefulness of such a device on a visit to France, whose vaguely humanoid populace turns Klingon when confronted by a nonspeaker of their primitive but pretty language. Imagine the delight of the garçon when I mumble into my translator, “Can you bring me a good California chardonnay to drown the stench of this cheese?” and out comes flawless French. And back from the device will come a translation of the waiter’s enthusiastic response.

In fact, I already have something surprisingly close to a Universal Translator in my pocket, courtesy of a growing number of automated spoken-language-translating services that run on smartphones. I’m not counting on getting my favorite blue drink in any bar in the world just yet: “These systems still make mistakes that a 4-year-old wouldn’t make,” says Ashish Venugopal, a researcher at Google who works on the company’s Google Translate service. But unlike most 4-year-olds, Google has about a googol million dollars to throw at the problem, and more computing power, too.

Some of that power is spent prowling the web 24/7 to find examples of text—on websites, in email, or anywhere else—that can be paired with translations of that text into another language. The pairs of documents are digested by Google’s computers in chunks of three or so words, with each chunk analyzed and matched to its best translation. Having built in this way a constantly growing database of millions of translation chunks, Google Translate is armed to take on any sentence, find the set of phrases that most closely matches it, and spit back the translation into any of 64 languages. You can go to www.translate.google.com to try the results. Go ahead, do it now. I’ll wait right here...

How I Dismantled the World’s Deadliest Weapon

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:05:00 -0500

In October Sandia National Laboratories engineer Phil Hoover dismantled the U.S. arsenal’s last B53, a 9-megaton bomb 600 times as powerful as the one dropped on Hiroshima. Hoover talked to DISCOVER about taking apart America’s most powerful weapon.

The B53 was big and heavy, about the size of a minivan and 10,000 pounds. We needed 130 engineers and scientists from across the nuclear weapons enterprise to take it apart. Even though the B53 was designed to be rather easily disassembled, it still took us about two weeks per bomb.

All of the nuclear explosive disassembly was done in one well-lit, clean, and orderly room large enough to hold a Volkswagen van. We wore coveralls, safety glasses, gloves, safety shoes, and dosimeters to track radiation exposure. Typically three or four people at a time actually did the work. There wasn’t much small talk—the operation required focus...

4 Bold Ideas to Make America’s Energy Supply  Safer, Cleaner &  Virtually Inexhaustible

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:50:00 -0500

Greenhouse-gas emissions produced by each economic sector in the United States. Source: EPA; numbers rounded.

Perhaps it is time to retire the term “energy crisis.” People have been talking about one crisis or another since at least the early 1970s, for so long that the term has nearly lost its meaning. At any rate, we are not about to run out of energy: We have enough fossil fuels on the planet to power civilization for another half century or more. It is more honest to say that we are in the midst of an energy transition, a wrenching change in the kinds of energy we use and the ways we produce them. If we continue to rely on coal to keep the lights burning and gasoline to keep our cars running, we are bound to pay a heavy price. Imported oil accounts for 42 percent of our trade imbalance. Fossil fuels collectively produce 95 percent of the carbon emissions that are heating the planet. And the need for reliable sources of energy becomes more evident with every geopolitical tremor.

To explore a future in which the United States powers itself both independently and cleanly, DISCOVER teamed up with the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers to organize a series of briefings on Capitol Hill. The presentations brought lawmakers together with eight leading energy scientists and policy experts to map out the road to a new energy economy. This is the way forward...

How Did LEGO Become More About Limits Than Possibilities?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:30:00 -0500

No matter what you do with it, it'll still look like Hogwarts.

Rip open that new LEGO set and your mind races at the possibilities! A simple repertoire of piece types, and yet you can build a ninja boat, a three-wheeled race car, a pineapple pizza, a spotted lion… The possibilities are limited only by your creativity and imagination. “Combine and create!”—that was the implicit war cry for LEGOs.

So how, I wonder, did LEGO so severely lose its way? LEGO now fills the niche that model airplanes once did when I was a kid, an activity whose motto would be better described as “Follow the instructions!” The sets kids receive as gifts today are replete with made-to-order piece types special to each set, useful in one particular spot, and often useless elsewhere. And the sets are designed for constructing some particular thing (a Geonosian Starfighter, a Triceratops Trapper, etc.), and you—the parent—can look forward to spending hours helping them through the thorough yet thoroughly exhausting pages.

LEGO appears to be doing very well for itself, and there’s no shame in helping to revolutionize model-building (and there’s an elegance to snapping together one’s models rather than gluing them together). But one has to wonder whether, at some deep philosophical level, the new LEGOs really are LEGOs at all, as they’re no longer the paragon of creative construction they once were and with which they’re still associated.

In fact, as I was bemoaning my kids’ LEGOs with the Guardian's Roger Highfield (and later with WIRED's Samuel Arbesman), it struck me that I have such data on LEGOs...

Big Idea: Seeing Crime Before It Happens

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0500

This past summer, at an undisclosed location in a northeastern metropolis, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was trying to predict the future. There were no psychics or crystal balls, just a battery of sensors designed to determine human intention through the subtlest of changes in heart rate, gaze, and other physiological markers.

Together, the sensors are called Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, a $20 million federal project that aims to highlight airport passengers whose bodies betray hostile intentions. In theory, fast has the potential to detect terrorists in the final minutes before they act, but critics warn that the system may have other consequences, such as flagging innocent travelers through false positives while letting some with ill intent sneak by through false negatives. The DHS, for its part, maintains that fast is merely improving on a far older and more fallible crime predictor: human judgment.

About 3,000 DHS officers already roam the nation’s airports scanning for suspicious behavior and facial expressions in a program called Screening of Passengers by Observational Techniques, or SPOT. The automated fast system is intended to supplement SPOT by catching signals that are undetectable to the naked eye. fast is not designed to replace the decision-making of human screeners, but government officials hope it will eventually be able to passively scan airport passengers and single out those worth pulling aside for additional screening...

Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your Thoughts

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500

Over recent months, in José del R. Millán’s computer science lab in Switzerland, a little round robot, similar to a Roomba with a laptop mounted on it (right), bumped its way through an office space filled with furniture and people. Nothing special, except the robot was being controlled from a clinic more than 60 miles away—and not with a joystick or keyboard, but with the brain waves of a paralyzed patient.

The robot’s journey was an experiment in shared control, a type of brain-machine interface that merges conscious thought and algorithms to give disabled patients finer mental control over devices that help them communicate or retrieve objects. If the user experiences a mental misfire, Millán’s software can step in to help. Instead of crashing down the stairs, for instance, the robot would recalculate to find the door...

Image courtesy of José Millán

Discover Magazine | Nanotechnology

Impatient Futurist: Your Domestic Robot Servant Has Finally Arrived (in a Fashion)

Big Idea: Physicists Carve a Niche in Time

Hot Science: Real-World Technology That Approaches "The Avengers"

Impatient Futurist: Your Personal, Automated Mass Transit Vehicle Is on Its Way

Gallery | Our Wonderful Age of Abundance, in 9 Striking Infographics

Spy on the Inside: Underground Control Center for Texas' Power Grid

Does Rain Come From Life in the Clouds?

Gallery | 7 Animals That Harnessed Nanotechnology Long Before Humans

Engineers  Concoct the World's Lightest Material

Tools of the Trade: Fierce Old Warplane Has a New Mission: Flying Into the Hearts of Thunderstorms

3-D Printers Spit Out Fancy Food, Green Cars, and Replacement Bones

Tools of the Trade: Curiosity, NASA’s Laser-Blasting Mars Robot

Gallery | Where Earth Is Unearthly: Exotic Places That Resemble Alien Planets

Impatient Futurist: Good News, Spock—We're Getting Closer to a Universal Translator

How I Dismantled the World’s Deadliest Weapon

4 Bold Ideas to Make America’s Energy Supply  Safer, Cleaner &  Virtually Inexhaustible

How Did LEGO Become More About Limits Than Possibilities?

Big Idea: Seeing Crime Before It Happens

Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your Thoughts

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #5: Social Media Stoke Unrest and Ignite  Web-Rights Debate

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #44: New Pentagon Rules Blur Line Between Digital and Physical Warfare

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #97: CIA Said to Exploit Vaccine Drive in Pakistan

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #3: A Supercomputer Wins Jeopardy!

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #8: The Man Who Gave Us Less for More

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #31: First Stealth  Helicopter Crashes Into Public View

Discover Magazine | Nanotechnology

Impatient Futurist: Your Domestic Robot Servant Has Finally Arrived (in a Fashion)

Big Idea: Physicists Carve a Niche in Time

Hot Science: Real-World Technology That Approaches "The Avengers"

Impatient Futurist: Your Personal, Automated Mass Transit Vehicle Is on Its Way

Gallery | Our Wonderful Age of Abundance, in 9 Striking Infographics

Spy on the Inside: Underground Control Center for Texas' Power Grid

Does Rain Come From Life in the Clouds?

Gallery | 7 Animals That Harnessed Nanotechnology Long Before Humans

Engineers Concoct the World's Lightest Material

Tools of the Trade: Fierce Old Warplane Has a New Mission: Flying Into the Hearts of Thunderstorms

3-D Printers Spit Out Fancy Food, Green Cars, and Replacement Bones

Tools of the Trade: Curiosity, NASA’s Laser-Blasting Mars Robot

Gallery | Where Earth Is Unearthly: Exotic Places That Resemble Alien Planets

Impatient Futurist: Good News, Spock—We're Getting Closer to a Universal Translator

How I Dismantled the World’s Deadliest Weapon

4 Bold Ideas to Make America’s Energy Supply Safer, Cleaner & Virtually Inexhaustible

How Did LEGO Become More About Limits Than Possibilities?

Big Idea: Seeing Crime Before It Happens

Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your Thoughts

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #5: Social Media Stoke Unrest and Ignite Web-Rights Debate

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #44: New Pentagon Rules Blur Line Between Digital and Physical Warfare

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #97: CIA Said to Exploit Vaccine Drive in Pakistan

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #3: A Supercomputer Wins Jeopardy!

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #8: The Man Who Gave Us Less for More

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #31: First Stealth Helicopter Crashes Into Public View

Engineers  Concoct the World's Lightest Material

4 Bold Ideas to Make America’s Energy Supply  Safer, Cleaner &  Virtually Inexhaustible

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #5: Social Media Stoke Unrest and Ignite  Web-Rights Debate

Top 100 Stories of 2011: #31: First Stealth  Helicopter Crashes Into Public View