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The article reports on the emergence of startups that focus on using fusion to generate clean energy. Topics discussed include the major fusion projects that have failed to generate the needed energy, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and ITER, the reasons why scientists believe that smaller startups, such as Alpha Energy and General Fusion, may have a better chance at success than NIF and ITER, and the environmental and capacity advantages of fusion energy over other energy forms.

The article reports on the progress of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study conducted by physician and economist Doctor Christopher Murray and his team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. Topics discussed include the development of a comprehensive macroscope and efforts to rank the comparative performance of health care systems around the world. Philanthropic support is mentioned.

This article discusses the development of high technology cameras that can read information reflected from a computer screen onto surfaces including eyeglasses, coffee cups, of plastic cups. Strategies for reading light emitting diodes in network switches or monitoring the radio frequencies emitted by computer monitors in order to determine the information inputted by computer users are described.

This article discusses improvements in 3-D animation technology. Advances in graphics processing units, microchips which transform 3-D scenes into 2-D frames at extremely high speeds, have rendered these technologies serviceable to fields such as medical imaging, engineering, and architecture, in addition to the videogame industry. Further developments into ray tracing technology may enable designers to create even more realistic graphics with ease.

This article focuses on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge race intended to test innovations in autonomous ground vehicles. Five out of the 23 competing robots successfully navigated the 132-mile course through the Mojave Desert in Oct. 2005. To qualify for a $2 million prize, the driverless vehicles had to finish in less than 10 hours. The robotic entrants to the race demonstrated advances in location tracking, road and obstacle perception, and high-speed path planning that may be used in future military, agricultural, industrial, and even consumer vehicles.

Focuses on our preparedness to fight an influenza epidemic of global proportions. Warnings from scientists that newly evolved strains of influenza is inevitable and poses a large threat to public health; Deaths caused by the H5N1 bird flu in Asia, which some fear could spread; Importance of a global surveillance network to remain alert to other threatening strains of virus; Observation that flu vaccinations matched to a new virus would not arrive quick enough to prevent the early stages of a pandemic.

Discusses international cooperation in economic, political, and environmental policy. Discussion of the challenges to solving economic, political, and social problems on the global scale; Potential use of international economic relations in cooperation toward humanitarian and political goals; Discussion of government regulation of environmental pollution in the U.S.; International cooperation in preventing global warming; Positive aspects of market-based regulation of environmental policy. INSETS: CROSSROADS FOR GLOBAL PRIORITIES;MAKING MARKETS ON THE ENVIRONMENT.

Focuses on Ablynx, a small company in Belgium where scientists and bioengineers are trying to discover a new class of nanobodies that can be used to fight cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and maybe even Alzheimer's disease; How despite the sophistication of the human immune system, people get sick; Development of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs); Use of antibodies from llamas; Concerns of viruses infecting antibodies; Way in which antibody fragments can be used to treat illnesses by binding to toxins, or alternatively to cell receptors; Differences between antibodies and nanobodies.

Discusses how California has decided to spend money on embryonic stem cell research. Risks involved with such research; Assertion that all the embryonic stem cell lines that were available to researchers have become contaminated by nonhuman molecules; Regulations created by United States President George W. Bush in regards to stem cells; Efforts of California to create a policy for stem cell research; Description of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine; Speculation on whether California's efforts will be beneficial in the future.

The article discusses whether the health consequences of obesity are as dire as some health officials claim. Could it be that excess fat is not, by itself, a serious health risk for the vast majority of people who are overweight or obese--categories that in the U.S. include about six of every 10 adults? An increasing number of scholars have begun accusing obesity experts, public health officials and the media of exaggerating the health effects of the epidemic of overweight and obesity. The charges appear in a recent flurry of scholarly books, including "The Obesity Myth," by Paul F. Campos; "The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality and Ideology," by Michael Gard and Jan Wright; and "Obesity: The Making of an American Epidemic," by J. Eric Oliver. All can agree that severe obesity greatly increases the risk of numerous diseases, but that form of obesity, in which the body mass index exceeds 40, affects only about one in 12 of the roughly 130 million American adults who set scales spinning above the "healthy" range. It is through type 2 diabetes that obesity seems to pose the biggest threat to public health. Yet the critics dispute claims that diabetes is soaring, that obesity is the cause, and that weight loss is the solution. INSET: Mortal Mistakes.

The article focuses on the development of technology that senses when a person is busy and spares them from distraction. Increasingly, it is not just our kids pulling us three ways at once; it is also a relentless barrage of e-mail, alerts, alarms, calls, instant messages and automated notifications, none of them coordinated and all of them oblivious to whether we are busy--or even present. There is a small but growing number of researchers trying to teach computers, telephones, cars and other gadgets to behave less like egocentric oafs and more like considerate colleagues. To do this, the machines need new skills of three kinds: sensing, reasoning and communicating. Each of these pushes the limits of computer science and raises issues of privacy, complexity or reliability. An attentive system, by definition, is one that is always watching. That considerate computer may come to know more about your work habits than you do. Bestcom/Enhanced Telephony, a Microsoft prototype, digs a little deeper into each user's computer to find clues about what they are up to. Gaze detection can endow quotidian machines with seemingly magical behavior. INSETS: Overview/Sensing Attention;Attentive Autos;WATCHING THE EYES TO FOLLOW THE MIND.

The article discusses how emerging methods to make photonic connections to electronic microchips may dramatically change the shape of computers in the decade ahead. The stage thus appears set for photonic connections, which exchange data via laser light, to take over for copper wiring in the next decade. Data already often move between electronic and photonic forms at the periphery of a computer system, on their way to or from a CD or DVD, display monitor, mouse, camera, stereo amplifier or fiber-optic network. But the core of most computers--the processor, the main memory, and the motherboard that connects those to the various peripheral devices--remains an all-electron show. The reason for this is simple: optical interconnections, though often many times faster than copper wires and traces, tend to be 10 to 100 times more expensive. For some applications, such as switching thousands of telephone calls or shuttling billions of Internet packets, capacity trumps cost. If that happens, computers may look and operate very differently a decade from now. Some changes will be of the "faster, smaller" variety. Video cameras and portable video players might plug their fiber-optic cables into the photonic successors to USB ports. Many of the components of a computer that are now crammed into a two-foot-high rectangular box could in principle be spread across a car, throughout a building or all over a city, with data flowing among them on pulses of light. At first glance, III-V chips might seem ideal for photonics. Electrons move faster in them than in silicon, so III-V processors can operate at much higher frequencies. Using indium phosphide, for example, a group led by Daniel Blumenthal and Larry Coldren at the University of California at Santa Barbara last year constructed a "photon copier." INSETS: THE PHOTONIC PC: WHAT'S HERE AND WHAT'S AHEAD;FROM WIRES TO WAVEGUIDES;CHANGING THE SHAPE.

The article discusses how aspects of physics is forcing the microchip industry to redesign its most lucrative products. Production difficulties bedeviled almost every major semiconductor firm this year, but none were more apparent than the travails of Intel, the flagship of the microchip business. The company delayed the release of "Prescott," a faster version of its Pentium 4 processor, by more than six months as it worked out glitches in the fabrication of the 125 million-transistor chip. When Prescott did finally arrive, analysts were generally unimpressed by its performance, which was only marginally superior to the previous, 55-million-transistor Pentium 4. Beginning next year, all new Intel microprocessor designs for desktop and server computers will have not one but two "cores," or computational engines, on the same chip. Engineers have been able to continue shrinking the smallest logic gates, albeit with difficulty and some delays. The next generation of processors, expected in 2006, will knock the length of logic gates down from 50 nanometers (billionths of a meter) to 35. The peak energy consumption of a microprocessor has soared to well over 110 watts in recent years as chipmakers have cranked up the clock frequencies at which processors run. Intel could require computer makers to switch from air-cooled to liquid cooled machines. Apple Computer took that approach this year with its Power Mac G5 systems. But it adds to the cost. Intel sells roughly 50 times as many Pentium 4 systems as Apple sells G5s, in large part because Apple demands a premium price. Microprocessor architects have used on-chip memory caches and a technique called instruction-level parallelism to keep the processor busy working on instructions B and C while instruction A is waiting for its data to arrive. But that technique is nearly exhausted.

This article discusses how a new generation of technologies aims to put Einstein's theories to work. Einstein's abstract ideas are still inspiring new technologies. His theory of special relativity, for example, is a key ingredient in fast and efficient microchips that manipulate the spin of electrons. In 1905 Albert Einstein was 26 and struggling to finish his doctoral dissertation on the size of molecules. over the course of the 20th century, others built an impressive range of technologies on Einstein's radical notions that light comes in individual packets, that those photons always obey a universal speed limit c, and that energy and matter can be interconverted: E mc2 in mathematical shorthand. INSETS: Magnetic Magic;Computing beyond Binary;Buffeted by Chaos;Better Sieves and Sorters

The article focuses on the development of new technology that combines genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Scientists are designing and building living systems that behave in predictable ways, that use interchangeable parts, and in some cases that operate with an expanded genetic code. This nascent field has three major goals: One, learn about life by building it, rather than by tearing it apart. Two, make genetic engineering worthy of its name. And three, stretch the boundaries of life and of machines until the two overlap to yield truly programmable organisms. The recent buzz growing around synthetic biology arises from its technological promise as a way to design and build machines that work inside cells. Two such devices, reported simultaneously in 2000, inspired much of the work that has happened since. Both devices were constructed by inserting selected DNA sequences into Escherichia coli, a normally innocuous bacterium in the human gut. The two performed very different functions, however. Michael Elowitz and Stanislaus Leibler, then at Princeton University, assembled three interacting genes in a way that made the E. coli blink predictably, like microscopic Christmas tree lights. Meanwhile James J. Collins, Charles R. Cantor and Timothy S. Gardner of Boston University made a genetic toggle switch. A negative feedback loop--two genes that interfere with each other--allows the toggle circuit to flip between two stable states. It effectively endows each modified bacterium with a rudimentary digital memory. Synthetic biologists have so far built living genetic systems as experiments and demonstrations. But a number of research laboratories are already working on applications. Martin Fussenegger and his colleagues at ETH Zurich have graduated from bacteria to mammals. But synthetic biologists are mainly interested in building genetic devices within living cells, so that the systems can move, reproduce and interact with the real world. INSET: Life, but Not (Exactly) as We Know It.

This article focuses on the development of personal robots which may become as affordable as personal computers. To Thomas J. Burick, form is function and it is very important that he get the design right the first time. These robots run on Windows XP, so they can do anything a personal computer can do.

This article discusses efforts by U.S. engineers to create one-year crash projects to create robots able to dash 200 miles through the Mojave Desert in a day, unaided by humans. It seemed a reasonable goal at the time: after all, 150 miles on relatively smooth, level ground would be but a baby step toward the 200-mile, high-speed desert crossing that the robot must be ready for on March 13, 2004, if it is to win the U.S. Department of Defense's Grand Challenge race, as well as the$ 1-million prize and the prestige that accompanies an extraordinary leap in mobile robotics. But after 20 hours of nonstop debugging, Sandstorm's navigational system is still failing in mystifying ways. Two days ago the machine was driving itself for miles at a time. Director of the Fields Robotics Center, Red Whittaker, attended the conference last February at which officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced their first-ever prize contest, a robot race from Barstow, Calif., to Las Vegas see box on opposite page.

A genome, the sum of heritable information that is held in the chromosomes and that governs how an organism develops, is not a static text passed from one generation to the next. Geneticists have yet to decipher the complex code by which epigenetic marks interact with the other components of the genome. In working out some of the critical mechanisms, researchers have noticed that the epigenetic part of the genome seems to play crucial roles in growth, aging and cancer. Epigenetics may suggest new ways to treat these diseases. Whereas cells doggedly protect their DNA against mutation, they routinely add or erase epigenetic marks. Epigenetic variations "could explain the odd discordance of diseases among identical twins," Emma Whitelaw of the University of Sydney suggests. Special-purpose enzymes take methyl molecules derived from basic nutrients, such as folic acid and vitamin B12, and stick them onto certain C bases throughout the genome. Researchers suspect that methyl-poor chromosomes are more likely to malfunction during cell division, taking a step toward malignancy. The idea that a lack of methyl on the DNA can lead to human cancer is still just a hypothesis, and in any case oncologists have no drugs that can correct genome-wide undermethylation. Noncoding DNA, chemical attachments to DNA and to the histones, and the shape of chromatin are all subject to manipulation. INSETS: TWISTS AND TURNS IN A FAMILY TREE;VOLUME CONTROLS FOR GENES.

Discusses scientific research on DNA and human chromosomes that affect inheritance, development, and disease. Focus on the Human Genome Project and the influence of dark matter on parts of the genome; Malleability of the layers of information in chromosomes; Investigation of the relationship between DNA, RNA, and the epigenetic machinery; Consideration of DNA sequences of the mouse genome; Observations about MicroRNAs in roundworms; Discovery of the first functional pseudogene by Shinji Hirotsune and a team of Japanese geneticists. INSETS: A BESTIARY OF UNCONVENTIONAL GENES;Moving Genetics Forward.

What causes cancer? In the 1990s geneticists were confident that science was homing in on a final answer: cancer is the result of cumulative mutations that alter specific locations in a cell's DNA and thus change the particular proteins encoded by cancer-related genes at those spots. No one questions that cancer is ultimately a disease of the DNA. But as biologists trace tumors to their roots, they have discovered many other abnormalities at work that, though not yet cancerous, are headed that way. A workable theory of cancer has to explain both why it is predominantly a disease of old age and why we do not all die from it. Doctors could catch incipient tumors sooner if scientists could trace the steps that cells take down the road to cancer after the initial assault to their DNA by a carcinogen or some random biochemical mishap. Researchers are looking more closely at other phenomena, besides errors in a gene's DNA sequence, that can dramatically alter the dosage of a protein in a cell. German biologist Theodor Boveri noticed the strange imbalance in cancer cells between the numbers of maternal versus paternal chromosomes. He suggested that aneuploid cells might cause the disease. Cristoph Lengauer and Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins, both colon cancer specialists, have proposed a theory in which chromosomal instability can occur early on. The genetic flux then combines forces with natural selection to produce a benign growth that may later be converted to an invasive malignancy and life-threatening metastases. INSETS: Overview/How Cancer Arises;SIX DIABOLICAL SUPERPOWERS OF CANCER;MALIGNANT MUTATIONS: A PARTIAL MAP;THE GENESIS OF CANCER: FOUR THEORIES

Reports on efforts to develop more accurate clocks. Precision of cesium based clocks; Impact of the relativity of time on attempts to build more accurate clocks; Use of seconds to measure other units besides time; Introduction of cesium-based fountain clocks which decreased the uncertainty of international atomic time; Plans to replace cesium with rubidium.

Focuses on the efforts of linguists to preserve dying languages. Warnings made by linguist Michael Krauss and others that several languages may pass into extinction unless efforts are made to prevent this from happening; Importance of language preservation; Lack of organization among linguists; Operations of the Endangered Languages Fund and other organizations dedicated to language preservation; Need for a discipline of conservation linguistics.

Discusses the efforts of physicists to analyze gravitational waves at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave (LIGO) Hanford Observatory. Information about the universe which is carried by gravitational waves; Sensitivity of the instruments at LIGO which are used to measure the intensity of the waves; Thermal noise which can drown out certain gravitational waves, and which presents a challenge to scientists. INSETS: GLOBAL GRAVITY OBSERVATORY;A Photon's Journey through LIGO;Next-Generation Detectors.

Focuses on technology that allows information to be communicated at high speeds using the electrical wiring already existing in a building. Details of so-called power-line networking technology; How engineers developed this technology; Application of power-line technology for use in computer networks and other communication between systems. INSETS: Power, Gas and Web;PLUGGING INTO A HOME NETWORK: JUST ADD POWER;DEALING WITH NOISE: ADAPT AND EVADE.

Discusses the role of humans in the extinction of species. Speakers at the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology; Comments of zoologist Robert May concerning extinction rates and the effects of humans on the environment; Outlook for species conservation. INSETS: The Portfolio of Life;Why Biodiversity Doesn't (Yet) Pay.

Focuses on the use of computers to create computer models of cells. How computers cannot accurately predict how a cell will behave; Discussion of the state of microbiology; Need to understand how genes and proteins interact dynamically.

Reports on oil drilling in Alaska. Dispute regarding the status of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); Efforts of environmentalists to protect the area from oil exploration; Opinion that scientists and engineers should offer only facts regarding ANWR, instead of offering opinion; The need to conduct a seismic survey of the area in order to determine if ANWR is economically worth drilling. INSETS: The Debate/Oil vs. Wildlife;A Model of a Modern Major Oil Field;Facts/Forecasting the Flow.

Focuses on trends in science education in the United States. Test scores of America's high school seniors in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS); Responses; The educational crisis as a cyclical ritual; Experiments in education; Comparison of the coverage of topics in textbooks of United States with other countries; Outlook. INSETS: Dumb but not Dumber by D.F.;U.S. Research Feels No Crisis by D.F.;Wanted: Strong Thinkers by W.W.G. and D.F.;A Day in the Life of Three Schools by W. Wayt Gibbs

Recounts efforts of medical researchers Lam Sai Kit and Chua Kaw Bing to identify a virus outbreak in Malaysia. Viral connection to pig farming; Symptoms fitting the profile of Japanese encephalitis; The deadly virus having a DNA sequence similar to an Australian virus called Hendra; Confirmation of Lam's hunch that the pathogen was part of the Pramyxoviridae family; Treatment with ribavirin; How the virus attacks the body; Impact on the pork industry and Malay economy.

Focuses on the discoveries and theories that won the 1998 Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology, and economics. How electrons split; The prediction of chemical reactions by computer; The role of nitric oxide in blood vessel dilation; Ethical dimensions of economics in terms of famine and welfare.

Reports on the search for a meteor which hit in a region of Greenland known as Kangilia. When the meteor struck the surface; Efforts of a team of astronomers and geophysicists including Holger Pedersen and Torber Risbo; Use of videotape which filmed the meteor as it flew across the sky.

Looks at transportation systems worldwide, addressing problems affecting transportation. Origin and history of transportation; Failure of technology to solve major transportation problems; Impact of wide spread use of automobiles and supporting infrastructure on the environment; Mention of safety issues.

Focuses on trends in computing technology. Discussion about the importance of computing technology in businesses; Perception of economists about computer technology. INSETS: Beyond the desktop.;Four innovations that (might) improve work..

Examines the factors that contribute to the increase in the number of obesity cases. Evolutionary biology explanation; Genetic factor; Characteristics of fat cells in adults. INSET: A shifting scale..

Discusses the conditions of scientific publishing in developing nations. Obstacles and prejudices faced by researchers; Thwarting of efforts to strengthen indigenous science journals; United Nations' sponsorship of commercial indexes of Third World journals; Lack of representation in the Science Citation Index (SCI). INSET: Editing science, by Brenda DeKoker..

Discusses the social and biological risk factors responsible for the criminal behavior of humans. History of studies regarding the prediction of the human behavior; Prevention of criminal involvement of juveniles; Delinquency; Importance of preventive intervention; Biological basis of criminal behavior; Identification of predictors of violence. INSETS: The tangled roots of.., by Steven Vames & W. Wayt Gibbs.;For biological studies, minorities need not apply..

Deals with the problems in software development which can affect other industries and the actions taken by the industry to improve the software they produce. Acceptance in the production of defective softwares; Release of faulty `beta' versions; Research on promising approaches.

Looks at the external liver-assist devices (ELAD) for patients threatened with liver failure. Alternative to a human liver transplant; Design based on kidney dialysis machines; Problems in the in vitro growth of hepatocytes; Obstacles posed by blood clotting.

Reports on the National Institutes of Health's approval of two protocols for the human testing of chemoprotection. Protection from the side effects of chemotherapy; Genetic modification of bone marrow cells; Molecular surgery to make tumor cells susceptible to a normally harmless medicine; Tests on Taxol, the drug used for ovarian cancer.

The article describes Australia's Kakadu National Park. I watch the ocher rays of a setting sun add meaty color to skeletal figures painted eons ago on a giant rock called Ubirr in Kakadu National Park, a primeval jumble of wetlands, cliffs and forests punctuated by huge boulders that bear some of the oldest and most impressive Aboriginal artworks known. At the bridge over the South Alligator River, signs warn travelers to beware the crocs that stalk its banks. Most of Kakadu's almost 20,000 square kilometers (nearly five million acres) are inaccessible by car--especially during the rainy summer months from November through April--and even the landscape near the roads seems virtually untouched by humanity. That is an illusion, ranger Alex Dudley points out the next afternoon as he guides a walking tour at the base of Nourlangie Rock. "This is not a wilderness," Dudley asserts. "This place has been home to people for 50,000 years." The local culture holds that Nayuhyunggi, the "first people," arrived in Kakadu during the Dreamtime, a creation period when supernatural beings emerged from deep in the earth. Some of these creation ancestors, Dudley explains, ended their journeys by transferring themselves onto rock walls, leaving impressions that perceptive artists enhanced with natural pigments. Out on a 300-meter-long catwalk over the Yellow Water Billabong, an excited gaggle of birdwatchers track a sea eagle circling overhead with a fish in its beak, with another eagle in hot pursuit.

Provides observations about the rocket launch of a spacecraft at Jetty Park at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Consideration of problems that delay the launch; Launch of the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF); Tour of the spaceport; Research by NASA's Great Observatories program and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory; Efforts of space chaser Bill Hughes to witness space shuttle launches.

The article focuses on MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator software project that enables a PC to mimic dozens of microchips used in arcade games. An arcade machine consists of custom-built controls and a PC inside running software, called MAME, that allows it to play more than 2,200 classic video games with almost perfect fidelity. Legal rights to use the ROM files for each of the dozens of arcade games. MAME ROM files can be downloaded from various places on the Internet. AdvanceMAME shrinks and rotates games that are designed for wide screens so that they appear normal on narrow monitors. The MAME machine, with its brighter colors, clearer sound and more responsive joysticks, makes video games more enjoyable. Since the MAME ROMs mimic the original hardware, one can change the secret settings that arcade operators twiddled to make games harder or easier. An industry has sprung up that sells prewired control panels for $150 and a full machine cabinet (minus PC) for $1,100.

Convergence--the notion that computers, televisions, stereos and telephones would all become one--was the buzzword du jour a decade ago. Media and computer executives were quite taken with the 'multimedia PCs' that had just come out, and many fancied that computers would soon be so capable that they would become the natural hub of communications and entertainment in the home. But the technology was actually not that capable, and the executives were soon distracted by a new fad called the Internet.And each receiver comes with software that allows your computers to act as 'servers,' streaming photographs, music and other digital media to the receivers. To watch 'A River Runs Through It' on the television, I had to connect long cables from my computer to the stereo and TV, then fuss with Windows for half an hour to get the player software to show the movie on the correct screen.

Presents the author's experiences in searching for every form of insect life living in the Great Smoky Mountains. Others he worked with on the project; Different types of traps set to capture insects; Number of species captured in a 24 hour period.

Presents the experiences of the author in visiting the Hoover Dam. Electricity provided by the dam; Power generator at the dam; Tour of the dam; History of the dam; Facts concerning the dam, the Colorado River and Lake Mead.

Reviews the speech-recognition software, IBM ViaVoice Pro USB Release 9. Indication that the program improves with use and reduces mouse use; Features and price.

Discusses the construction of a better wake-up machine using Internet technology. Thoughts on creating a lamp-clock which could be programmed to turn itself on in the morning and brighten gradually; Mention of the company NetMedia, which makes a small Ethernet Web server called a SitePlayer.

Discusses the Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Development of space probes by the company; Role of Mark Razze as a tour guide for the company; Models of probes at the facility.

Reviews the Web browsers Adobe Atmosphere, TerraVision by SRI International, and G-Vista by Geonova.

Profiles scientist Peter Duesberg. His view that HIV is not the cause of AIDS; His research on the causes of cancer; His belief that cancer is caused by mutations to the genes and chromosomes.