Scientific American

Scientific American Topic - Defense Technology Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:25:17 +0100 Seeking Transformational Energy Technologies [ This special issue podcast is longer than the usual 60 seconds. ] Last week, the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for energy held its inaugural conference in Washington, D.C.--a direct response to a growing sense that the U.S. is losing its technology lead when it comes to the race for cleaner ways to produce and use energy. "We have a Sputnik moment right now. We are losing our technology leadership and we are falling behind." [More] Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:01:08 EST Want TV in 3-D? Then You'll Still Have to Wear Silly Glasses--At Least for Another Decade Hold onto your remote control: 3-D television is on the way . By the end of the year, most of the major TV manufacturers, including LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, will be selling displays capable of showing 3-D movies and other programming. Unfortunately, none of the models going on sale this year will eliminate the least pleasant aspect of the 3-D viewing experience--those often uncomfortable and frequently silly-looking spectacles. 3-D TV for the naked eye does not exist--at least not yet. [More] Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:15:00 EST Is ARPA-E Enough to Keep the U.S. on the Cutting-Edge of a Clean Energy Revolution? WASHINGTON, D.C.--At the inaugural summit of ARPA–E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy , no less an august personage than Norman Augustine declared that we were possibly witnessing an inflection point--a turn from old thinking to new. As an aerospace business pioneer, Augustine certainly knows when trajectories change and escape velocities are attained. Indeed, a host of speakers regarded ARPA–E's effort as an Apollo project, a Manhattan project, and Mike Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials, even called for ARPA–E to be part of a potential Marshall Plan for energy--a road map to a future of clean power, complete with the Hoover Dam of solar, or the like. [More] Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:01:00 EST Next-Gen Scientists Honored for Evolving Medicine and Renewables [Slide Show] The more mysteries that scientists unlock, the more opportunities emerge for the next generation of researchers to transform newfound knowledge into tomorrow's breakthroughs that serve society. The Lemelson–M.I.T. Program recognized several potential breakthroughs Wednesday in awarding four of its $30,000 Lemelson–M.I.T. Student Prizes to those from California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.), and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U.I.U.C.). [More] Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST Could Mini Labs and Plant-Based Vaccines Stop the Next Pandemic? The H1N1 virus's rapid spread worldwide last year exposed the weaknesses in the global system for swiftly developing, manufacturing and distributing vaccines for newly identified strains of influenza. In Texas, researchers are attacking the first two of these problems through Project GreenVax , which will use a plant-based approach to vaccine development and a modular manufacturing environment that can scale quickly as vaccine demand grows. [More] Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST Can greener gadgets save us from e-waste? One laptop per child seems a simple slogan, chock full of benefit. What could go wrong when you put the power of the Internet and solar cells into the hands of children in the developing world? After all, not only does it train the global underclass in the tools of modern production, it also unleashes a creativity that may allow them to leapfrog the old, dirty, industrial development that has fouled the planet. [More] Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST Early Humans Used Brain Power, Innovation and Teamwork to Dominate the Planet TEMPE, Arizona--As a species of seeming feeble, naked apes, we humans are unlikely candidates for power in a natural world where dominant adaptations can boil down to speed, agility, jaws and claws. Why we rose to rule, while our hominin relatives died out, has long been a curiosity for scientists. The study of our human nature encompasses a variety of fields ranging from anthropology, primatology, cognitive science and psychology to paleontology, archaeology, evolutionary biology and genetics. [More] Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST MIND Reviews: The Perfect Swarm The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life by Len Fisher. Basic Books, 2009 [More] Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST Surviving Death on Larry King Live Have you ever died and come back to life? Me neither. No one has. But plenty of people say that they have, and their experiences were the subject of an episode of Larry King Live last December on which I appeared as the token skeptic among a tableful of believers, including CNN’s medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, New Age author Deepak Chopra, a football referee who “died” on the playing field, and an 11-year-old boy named James Leininger who believes he is the reincarnation of a World War II fighter pilot. Dr. Gupta started us off by recalling that when he was in medical school the residents were taught to mark the time of death to the minute, when death can often take anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours to occur, depending on the conditions. As Gupta noted, people who have fallen into freezing lakes and “died” were not quite dead, and their core body temperatures dropped so rapidly that their vital tissues were preserved long enough for subsequent resusci­tation. In other words, people who have near-death experiences (NDEs) are not actually dead! [More] Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST Internet Ideology War: Google's Spat with China Could Reshape Traditional Online Freedoms Editor's note: We are posting this story from the April 2010 issue early. [More] Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:20:00 EST