http://discovermagazine.com Science, Technology, and The Future http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/02-how-did-lego-lose-its-mojo http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/02-how-did-lego-lose-its-mojo <p class="imgcapright"><img title="Hogwarts LEGO set" src="hogwarts-lego-set.jpg/" alt="Hogwarts LEGO set" kupu-src="http://72.32.204.61/2012/jan-feb/02-how-did-lego-lose-its-mojo/hogwarts-lego-set.jpg/">No matter what you do with it, it'll still look like Hogwarts.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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 <i>particular</i> thing (a <a class="external-link" href="http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Geonosian-Starfighter-7959">Geonosian Starfighter</a>, a <a class="external-link" href="http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Triceratops-Trapper-5885">Triceratops Trapper</a>, etc.), and you—the parent—can look forward to spending hours helping them through the thorough yet thoroughly exhausting pages.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>In fact, as I was bemoaning my kids’ LEGOs with the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/roger-highfield/9019760/Life-is-like-Lego-only-better.html">Guardian's Roger Highfield</a>&nbsp;(and later with&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/the-mathematics-of-lego/">WIRED's Samuel Arbesman</a>), it struck me that <i>I</i> have such data on LEGOs...</p> Mark Changizi http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/02-how-did-lego-lose-its-mojo/key_image Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:30:00 -0500 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:30:00 -0500 Web Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-idea-seeing-crime-before-it-happens http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-idea-seeing-crime-before-it-happens <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-idea-seeing-crime-before-it-happens/airplane.jpg" align="right" alt=""> <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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...</p> Joseph A. Bernstein http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-big-idea-seeing-crime-before-it-happens/key_image Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0500 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/09-mind-over-motor-controlling-robots-with-your-thoughts http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/09-mind-over-motor-controlling-robots-with-your-thoughts <p><img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/09-mind-over-motor-controlling-robots-with-your-thoughts/robot.jpg"></p> <p>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.</p> <p>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...</p> <p><i>Image courtesy of José Millán</i></p> Jason Daley http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/09-mind-over-motor-controlling-robots-with-your-thoughts/key_image Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:20:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/05 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/05 <p>Faced with blazing streets and rioting youth, the representatives of a struggling government convened an emergency meeting one day last summer to figure out how to quash the unrest and reassert authority. In his opening remarks to the assembled lawmakers, a powerful political leader suggested the suppression of popular communication, not by arresting publishers or shuttering radio stations but by blocking online social networks.</p> <p>The politician was Prime Minister David Cameron; the government, Britain’s.</p> <p>While Cameron’s suggestion underscored the explosive influence of new media on social movements from London to Cairo, it was also a jolting reminder of another pronounced trend in 2011: governments’ push for greater control of the Internet. When political protesters across the Middle East used new media to organize gatherings, memorialize murdered citizens, and keep the wider world aware of their struggle, repressive regimes shut down access to Twitter in Egypt and to Facebook in Libya. Even in the United States, a bill giving the president emergency powers to curtail Internet access surfaced for the second time in two years...</p> <p><b><i>The full text of this article is available only to DISCOVER subscribers. Click through to the article to subscribe, log in, or buy a digital version of this issue.</i></b></p> Joseph Bernstein http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/05/key_image Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:40:00 -0500 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:40:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/44 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/44 This year, acknowledging the growing threat of digital attacks on American infrastructure and networks, the Defense Department announced its first strategy for cyber warfare. Introducing the new document in July, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III stated that under this plan, “the Defense Department is treating cyberspace as an operational domain, like land, air, sea, and space.” Kurt Bertone, vice president at Fidelis Security Systems, explains, “Designating cyberspace an operational domain allows them to do things preemptively, such as organizing, training, and investing [for cyber war], just as they would for an air war.”... Sharon Weinberger http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/44/key_image Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:30:00 -0500 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:30:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/97 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/97 After Osama bin Laden was killed last May, reports emerged that months earlier, the Central Intelligence Agency had held a vaccination drive in an attempt to collect DNA from his relatives and help confirm his whereabouts in Abbottabad, where he was thought to be hiding. The CIA would not confirm or deny the reports, but officials at the World Health Organization and UNICEF were concerned. Rumors could be just as damaging as actual CIA involvement, sowing mistrust of immunization efforts in Pakistan, where polio is endemic and some 150,000 children die annually of vaccine-preventable diseases... Mara Grunbaum http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/97/key_image Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:15:00 -0500 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:15:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/03 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/03 <p>February’s epic, three-day matchup between IBM’s Watson computer and <i>Jeopardy!</i> grand champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter was billed as a contest of man versus machine. But as a former Jeopardy! champion keenly aware of Watson’s speed and vast memory, I suspected this contest was about something bigger: Rosie versus Hal...</p> <p><b><i>The full text of this article is available only to DISCOVER subscribers. Click through to the article to subscribe, log in, or buy a digital version of this issue.</i></b></p> Leeaundra Keany http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/03/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:30:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:30:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/08 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/08 <p>I was front row center when Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh to the world in 1984 in 
Boston. While the crowd cheered and clapped 
and squealed, I was scratching my head. What did this pretty beige box offer that a hundred other computers didn’t already offer, besides a higher price, much less choice in software, and no 
compatibility with the rest of the world’s devices? ...</p> David H. Freedman; illustration by Charis Tsevis http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/08/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:25:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:25:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/31 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/31 <p>
On May 2, a team of navy seals managed to sneak past Pakistani air defenses aboard two helicopters bound for the town of Abbottabad. Although its mission to find and kill Osama bin Laden was a hugely celebrated success, one of the helicopters crashed during the operation, giving the world its first look at a stealth helicopter deployed in a live military operation...</p> Clay Dillow http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/31/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:20:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:20:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/34 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/34 <p>A record-setting electric motor, which debuted last year, pushes superlatives to the limit: It consists of a single molecule, measuring just 1 nanometer across, 1/60,000 the width of a human hair. The motor is about as small as a mechanical device can be, and yet it actually works...</p> Elizabeth Svoboda http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/34/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:15:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:15:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/40 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/40 <p>Artificial intelligence has become very accomplished at doing things like sifting through huge databases to answer questions (see page 19), but computers still struggle with simple commonsense tasks like looking at a scene and anticipating what will happen next. So it was with some satisfaction that a group of mit cognitive scientists described a computational model that simulates some of the reasoning abilities of a 1-year-old...</p> Linda Marsa http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/40/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:10:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/50 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/50 <p>In 1992 a 22-year-old hacker named Jeff Moss set out to throw a farewell party for an online bulletin board that was shutting down. Word spread quickly and the invitation list ballooned. By the time all the guests arrived, Moss’s party had transformed into the first DEF CON, now the biggest hacker convention in the world. Soon after, though, Moss gave up hacking for a professional gig, helping companies safeguard their computer systems, and in 1997 he founded Black Hat, a series of conferences that serve as the security professionals’ counterpart to DEF CON. Even the U.S. government looked to him for security tips, naming him a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council in 2009. In April Moss stepped up his responsibilities, becoming the chief security officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the international group that keeps Internet addresses up and running...</p> Valerie Ross; photograph by Mackenzie Stroh http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/50/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:00:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 12:00:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/57 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/57 <p>Engineers have found ways to endow ordinary materials with intricate microstructures, creating “metamaterials” that can curve light around very small objects and make them invisible. But metamaterials have bent light too weakly to conceal larger objects. Even an item as small as a penny was impossible to cloak—until two big advances last year...</p> Gillian Conahan http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/57/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:55:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:55:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/71 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/71 <p>Point. Shoot. Then focus.</p> <p>That is the improbable-sounding achievement of a Silicon Valley start-up called Lytro. In October the company introduced a camera that eliminates the need to focus before taking a photograph. The device is the first commercial camera to capture light fields—the amount and direction of all the light making up a given scene. It collects vastly more data than standard digital cameras can, by using sensors and software that once would have required a supercomputer to support...</p> Harry McCracken http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/71/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:50:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:50:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/72 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/72 <p>In the early 2000s, arguably the smartest things about smartphones were the contact books and calendars. Peter Vesterbacka, then a business development executive at Hewlett-Packard in Finland, had a different vision. He saw the smartphone not just as a perfunctory work accessory but also as a powerful gaming platform. In 2003, wanting to expand HP’s mobile gaming offerings beyond standards like solitaire, he began a contest for the best multiplayer smartphone game; three Finnish college students won with a whack-a-mole-like game. The students went on to found a mobile gaming company, Rovio, near Helsinki...</p> Valerie Ross photography by Mackenzie Stroh http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/72/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:45:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:45:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/86 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/86 <p>Electronics engineers are constantly seeking the next great thing, the supermaterial that will allow for devices even smaller and faster than are possible with silicon chips. But research from this year has convinced some people that silicon’s successor may be none other than silicon itself—reinvented for the 21st century...</p> Stephen Ornes http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/86/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:40:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:40:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/92 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/92 <p>The inexorable trend in electronics for the past four decades has been to do more with less—to make transistors ever smaller in order to squeeze more processing power into a given space on a microchip. Chip designers are now running into a real-estate crunch, however, so Intel is doing what any densely settled city would do if it needed to accommodate more people in the same area: building upward...</p> Harry Mccracken http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/92/key_image Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/37 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/37 <p>The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that a major solar storm could cause $2 trillion in damages, frying GPS satellites and short-circuiting electrical grids. Many of those storms originate at sunspots, dark blemishes on the sun’s surface that are wellsprings of magnetic activity. But help is on the way: Last August scientists reported the first successful predictions of individual sunspots days before they appeared, opening up the possibility of accurately forecasting severe space weather...</p> Adam Hadhazy http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/37/key_image Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:20:00 -0500 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:20:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07 http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07 <p>Last March, after the 
Sendai earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the aftershocks of the disaster seemed to put the worldwide nuclear power industry on shaky ground. News of multiple core meltdowns and radiation releases spurred governments to drop nuke projects like radioactive hot potatoes. In Japan Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced his support for a phaseout of the country’s dependence on nuclear power and proposed scrapping plans to have nuclear plants supply 50 percent of Japan’s electricity by 2030 (up from 30 percent in 2010).</p> <p>In the United States financing for two new reactors in Texas evaporated a month after the quake. Germany and Switzerland took the disaster as a cue to announce phaseouts of their entire nuclear sectors, and a referendum in Italy put the brakes on Silvio Berlusconi’s plans to revive nuclear power in that country. It felt as if the end of the atomic age were upon us...</p> Jason Daley http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/07/key_image Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-computer-program-draws-realistic-exoplanets http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-computer-program-draws-realistic-exoplanets <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-computer-program-draws-realistic-exoplanets/85512b.jpg" align="right" alt=""> <p>When astronomers discover a planet orbiting another star, they can easily deduce its size, temperature, and chemical makeup. But even the most powerful telescope cannot relate what the planet truly looks like. For that, scientists have historically relied on artistic interpretations. Now physicist Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo has developed a more accurate resource: software that transforms a constellation of data points into a realistic planetary portrait.</p> <p>The program, called the Scientific Exoplanet Renderer, or SER, takes in observational information about the planet and its parent star, crunches the numbers in various physical models, and spits out an approx­imate likeness...</p> Valerie Ross http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/02-computer-program-draws-realistic-exoplanets/key_image Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:10:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich <p align="left"><i>This interview with Newt Gingrich originally ran in the October, 2006 issue of DISCOVER. We're re-publishing it now because of its renewed relevance: Gingrich is pegged by many observers as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, after his recent and dramatic surge in national polls.&nbsp;</i></p> <p><img align="left" src="http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich/newt.jpg" alt="Newt Gingrich"></p> <p align="left">Newt Gingrich hasn't been Speaker of the House for a while. He was chased out of office in November 1998, trailed by a vague but persistent ethical cloud. Depending upon your political views, you most likely recall Gingrich in one of two ways: either as the brilliant revolutionary who overturned a complacent, morally bankrupt Democratic order in the House of Representatives or as the power-hungry backbencher who unleashed the attack dogs of partisanship on the Capitol. Of course, Gingrich is a large enough personality to warrant a bit of both descriptions and then some.</p> <p align="left">The former Speaker is still entrenched in Washington, D.C., and what he does and says still matters. He is active on the lecture circuit, writes regularly, and has instant access to a wide array of top-tier policymakers. Most are Republican, but lately Gingrich has found common cause on an issue or two with, to use one notable example, Democratic senator Hillary Clinton. It's a pairing that serves them both. Gingrich, too, is rumored to be considering a run for president in 2008. He is well aware of the benefits of a bipartisan stroll down the middle of the road.</p> <p align="left">Love him or hate him, Gingrich is never dull. In Congress, he was passionate about science and technology in a way that politicians rarely are. And in books like <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Future-Century-Contract-America/dp/0895260425" class="external-link">Winning the Future</a></i> (Regnery Publishing, 2005), he has used his great talent for communication to convey not only passion but also new and interesting directions in policy. His influence was once enormous. It may be yet again.</p> <p align="left"><b>Where did you get your passion for science?<br></b>It started as a passion for animals and grew into an interest in paleontology and how life evolved. I began to realize how much science and technology change everything around us. The pure beauty of the natural world and the intellectual elegance of understanding how things work, combined with the power of science and technology to dramatically expand our opportunities, has kept me enthralled...</p> <p><i>Image: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/4392543159/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Gage Skidmore</a> via Flickr</p></i> Francis Wilkinson, photography by Grant Delin http://discovermagazine.com/2006/oct/discover-interview-newt-gingrich/key_image Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:00:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/16-our-data-ourselves http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/16-our-data-ourselves <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/16-our-data-ourselves/data1.jpg" align="right" alt=""> <p>Bob Evans has spent most of his life obsessing over how to track data. When the Google software engineer was a boy in Louisville, Kentucky, he collected star stickers to show that he had done his chores. In college, where he studied philosophy and classical guitar, Evans logged the hours he spent playing music. Later, as an engineer for a Silicon Valley software company, he defended his dog, Paco, against a neighbor’s noise complaints by logging barks on a spreadsheet (the numbers vindicated Paco, showing he was not the source of the public disturbance). For Evans, collecting data has always been a way to keep tabs on his habits, track his goals, and confirm or dispel hunches about his daily existence.</p> <p>Last May, Evans reminisced about those early days in data collection as we sat in a large-windowed conference room in Building 47 of the Google campus, near San Jose, California. His personal fixation is shared by a growing number of self-trackers, a movement that is spreading far beyond data-obsessed engineers. Taking advantage of new wearable wireless devices that can measure things like sleep patterns, walking speeds, heart rates, and even calories consumed and expended, more and more people are signing up to download and analyze their personal data. Nearly 10 million such devices will be sold in North America in 2011, according to the market forecasting company abi Research.</p> <p>Most self-trackers are extreme fitness buffs or—like Evans—technology pioneers inherently interested in novel software applications. But Evans believes that personal data collecting could have stunning payoffs that go beyond just taking a better measure of everyday behavior. Already, some proponents claim personal benefits from logging their habits—eliminating foods that trigger migraines or upset stomachs, for instance, or saving certain tasks for their most productive time of day. Applied more broadly, data collected by self-trackers could help them find better treatments for diseases and even predict illness before symptoms become obvious...</p> Kate Greene; Illustrations by ilovedust http://discovermagazine.com/2011/dec/16-our-data-ourselves/key_image Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/06-bridge-too-far-impressively-far http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/06-bridge-too-far-impressively-far <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/06-bridge-too-far-impressively-far/bridge.jpg" align="right" alt="">Wikimedia Commons</p> <p>The <a style="" class="external-link" href="http://freshome.com/2011/01/13/worlds-longest-sea-bridge-in-china-the-qingdao-haiwan-bridge-video/">Qingdao Haiwan Bridge</a> in northeast China can handle 30,000 cars a day, but on a recent Thursday morning the six-lane road was impassable: Too many motorists were stopping to pose for pictures. Gawker gridlock is commonplace at the world’s longest bridge over water, a 26.4-mile thoroughfare that outspans the <a style="" class="external-link" href="http://www.history.com/videos/lake-pontchartrain-causeway-modern-marvel">Lake Pontchartrain Causeway</a> in Louisiana by more than two miles. (China is also home to the longest bridge system of all: the 102-mile <a style="" class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danyang%E2%80%93Kunshan_Grand_Bridge">Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge</a>, which spans land and water.) The arced bridge, which opened in June, cost an estimated $2.3 billion and required enough steel to build seven Empire State Buildings... Lauren Hilgers http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/06-bridge-too-far-impressively-far/key_image Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:05:00 -0500 Thu, 24 Nov 2011 05:05:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-how-to-fix-problems-mosquitoes-potholes-corpses http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-how-to-fix-problems-mosquitoes-potholes-corpses <p>Researchers have spent three decades trying to solve the riddle of HIV, an endeavor that infectious disease expert <a class="external-link" href="http://www.med.unc.edu/infdis/faculty/david-margolis-md/">David Margolis</a> calls “as difficult as inventing a warp drive to travel to other stars.” A total AIDS cure is still not quite here, but researchers are getting remarkably close—and the quest has upended our understanding of the immune system and laid the groundwork for solutions to hundreds of other diseases. This process repeats again and again: Cures rarely happen with a flash of brilliance and cries of eureka, but their methodical unfolding fuels the dreams and enterprise of science. In this way, the world’s endless supply of problems becomes a valuable resource. <br></p> <p>The list of ailments ripe for better treatments stretches far beyond AIDS, even far beyond medicine: traffic jams, radioactive fallout, and unsolved murders, to name a few. We all have someone or something we would like to cure, and big universities aren’t the only ones leading the charge. These days a growing do-it-yourself movement seeks solutions in garages and community labs. The only thing really needed to solve problems is tenacity. “When a scientist gets an idea in his head, he won’t stop until it’s tested,” says Robert Sabin, one of the leading DIYers. 
“Scientists are possessed by their ideas.”</p> <p class="imgcapright"><img kupu-src="http://72.32.204.61/2011/oct/21-the-cures/mosquito.png" class="inline" src="http://72.32.204.61/2011/oct/21-the-cures/mosquito.png" alt=""></p> <p><b><i>Aliment:</i> Mosquitos</b><br><b><i>Cure:</i> Chemical Invisibility Cloa</b>k</p> <p>Since the 1940s the leading defense against mosquitoes has been the chemical 
repellent <a class="external-link" href="http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/consultations/deet/health-effects.html">DEET</a>, but unless you remember to spritz yourself with it every few hours, you will eventually get chomped. Entomologist <a class="external-link" href="http://facultydirectory.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/pub/public_individual.pl?faculty=3342">Anandasankar Ray</a> and colleagues at the University of California, Riverside, aim to do better with bug sprays intended for bugs, not people. They are developing a set of chemicals that disrupt the mosquito’s sense of smell, effectively blinding the insects to humans.</p> <p>Ray started with 50 compounds thought to disrupt the ability of mosquito olfactory sensors to detect carbon dioxide, the telltale sign of a living, breathing blood meal. He then turned the tables and jabbed the mosquitoes, inserting tiny electrodes into their sensors. One chemical, 2-butanone, acted as a carbon dioxide imitator, which could be exploited to lure the bloodsuckers. Another, butanal, prevented the co2 sensors from working, while 2,3-butanedione functioned as a blinder, flooding mosquitoes’ sensors with signals, thereby rendering them useless.</p> <p>Ray has since teamed up with a group of investors to found <a class="external-link" href="http://olfactorlabs.com/">OlFactor Labs</a>, based in Southern California, to develop commercial mosquito deterrents...</p> Jason Daley, Adam Piore, Preston Lerner, Elizabeth Svoboda; illustrations by Jonathon Rosen http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/21-how-to-fix-problems-mosquitoes-potholes-corpses/key_image Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:35:00 -0500 Print Article http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-internet-looks-like-fractal-dandelion http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-internet-looks-like-fractal-dandelion <img src="http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-the-internet-envisioned/internets.png" align="right" alt=""> <p>In 2004 Barrett Lyon’s friends bet him $50 that he couldn’t map the entire Internet in a day. Within two weeks the self-described technologist and entrepreneur had created a program that could output a detailed visualization of Internet connectivity in a few hours. Seven years and billions more Internet-connected devices later, <a href="http://www.opte.org/">Lyon is still at it</a>. This cosmic-looking image, one of his newest creations, traces the millions of routes along which data can travel and pinpoints the hubs receiving the most traffic. Internet giants such as AT&amp;T and Google manage the most heavily used networks, which appear here as glowing yellow orbs; they tend to concentrate in the center of the sphere. The less popular local networks (red) sit on the periphery...</p> <p><i>Image: <a style="" class="external-link" href="http://www.blyon.com/">Barrett Lyon</a></i></p> http://discovermagazine.com/2011/nov/10-internet-looks-like-fractal-dandelion/key_image Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:15:00 -0500 Fri, 11 Nov 2011 09:15:00 -0500 Print Article