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When Harley McAdams was a few years shy of 60, he became a biologist. He had spent two decades of his working life as a systems engineer at AT&T's Bell […]

On announcing her birth in 1997, embryologists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell, who had engineered her, noted that she had been named in honor of the entertainer Dolly Parton. Wilmut […]

Electric ovens are not generally known for energy conservation. Researchers at England's Cranfield University have built one that consumes 35 to 60 percent less electricity than those now available. Mechanical […]

NOW THAT THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT IS DONE, PROTEINS ARE SET TO DISPLACE GENES AS THE NEW DARLINGS OF DRUG DISCOVERY. BUT ARE BIOLOGISTS UP TO THE TASK? On June […]

Individual sequencing could be around the corner BIOTECH / The Human Genome Project's working draft sequence, which was completed to much fanfare in June 2000, took about a dozen years […]

TELECOM \ For many people in rural areas of the developing world, just making a phone call from home is a distant dream. That's because building conventional phone infrastructure costs […]

A shift in strategy could help broaden the firm's horizons Bring up the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in technology circles, and most people will think of the […]

Taking a vigorous walk tones the muscles; soon it could recharge your personal electronics too. Researchers at SRI International say they've built a boot that can convert 2.5 hours of […]

Researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, are developing a device that could consolidate all of our digital media in a single 150-gigabyte box. You'll be able […]

Bush to reevaluate federal dollars for high-tech program I As President George W. Bush and Congress battled over tax cuts, an element of the president's budget that some believe could […]

New microarrays show how proteins interact THE COMPLETION OF THE Human Genome Project last year marked a milestone in medicine. The detailed mapping of the entire set of human genes […]

OPTICAL NETWORKS I Make particles of semiconductars small enough--just a few nanometers across--and they glow in a dazzling range of colors. These nano particles are known as quantum dots, because […]

CANCER I Brain tumors called glioblastomas are among the most vicious of cancers. So when Harvard University pediatrician Evan Snyder's best friend, Jim Galambos, developed a glioblastoma in 1996, Snyder […]

Until recently, concert recordings were made in stereo, with only left and right audio channels. The advent of digital-videodisc audio technology makes richer, six-channel reproductions possible, but only for musical […]

Incandescent bulbs offer warm, but inefficient, illumination. Fluorescent lights save energy and last longer but cast a greenish glow. With the help of researchers at Brown University, engineers at Sandia […]

Proponents of genetically modified forests could seek the regulatory green light in four years AGRICULTURE I First there were herbicide-tolerant soybeans and worm-resistant corn. Despite the controversy swirling around such […]

AS I STEPPED ON THE BATHroom scale, my life flashed before my eyes. I looked into the mirror and saw a graph, magically overlaid on my reflection. The red line […]

The more finely you can slice the optical spectrum into distinct signal-carrying channels, the more data you can send through an optical fiber. That's the idea behind wavelength division multiplexing, […]

AUTOMOTIVE I Under growing pressure to improve energy efficiency, automakers around the world have already spent approximately $2 billion to develop electric cars powered by fuel cells. The technology involved, […]

In the semiconductor world, one of the biggest performance bottlenecks is the link between separate chips on a circuit board. The more circuitry you can stuff onto a single chip, […]

One of the largest bandwidth bottlenecks on the Internet occurs in the modulators and switches that translate the electrons used by computers into the photons that speed data through long-distance […]

A medical probe under development at NASA promises to identify cancerous tumors without requiring surgical biopsies. San Jose, CA-based BioLuminate recently obtained a license from NASA to produce a disposable […]

About a third of heart disease patients undergoing angioplasty to open up blocked arteries develop complications and even new blockages caused by stents--the tiny metal scaffolds inserted to hold the […]

THE TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TEN What if you had a crystal ball that foretold the future of technology? Imagine, for example, if you had known in 1990 just how big the […]

THE OLD WAY--One size of drug fits all. THE NEW WAY--Each medicine will be adapted to the genetic makeup of individuals or subgroups of the population. THE GOAL--Better treatments, better […]

Spintronics' initial payoff could be instant-on RAM I MAGINEA COMPUTER AS powerful as the one sitting on your desktop--but small enough to fit into your shirt pocket. Or try a […]

Could new research end the embryo debate? BIOTECH : Ever since human embryonic stem (ES) cells were first isolated in 1998, a debate over their use has raged. Proponents of […]

As computer chips get smaller and faster, they become little electronic furnaces--and a lot of research goes into finding better ways to carry away the heat so the chip can […]

Recent studies have shown that pigs could donate hearts and kidneys for people. But livers, which rely on enzymes specific to each species, are more difficult. Now comes a promising […]

A few years ago, researchers kicked up controversy by proposing to create frost-resistant strawberries by spiking the plants with fish genes--specifically, with the gene for making a protein that helps […]

A new gene therapy technique to grow bone from gum tissue may make life easier for patients who need bone grafts, by eliminating painful removal of bone from a donor's […]

The AIDS virus's ability to quickly mutate and become resistant to new drugs makes it difficult for doctors to choose medications that will work. Researchers at Virco Group in Oxford, […]

Silicon is at the heart of today's computer microchips. Making faster and cheaper computers means carving vanishingly small transistors into silicon chips--a task that is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive. […]

You're sitting at your desk in deep thought, fingers poised above the keyboard to record your next flash of brilliance. In mid-thought, the lights go out, forcing you to wave […]

Surveillance cameras often capture a criminal act but produce pictures too fuzzy for the perpetrator to be identified. New software developed by doctoral student James Robinson at Staffordshire University in […]

If biologists can learn to use devices only a few billionths of a meter across, they could get a far better view of life's processes. They may even find ways […]

Take a standard computer keyboard, chop it in half, and stand each half on end. Now, put one hand on each side, palms facing in-and type. It might feel strange, […]

The need for information storage is exploding. Now some Harvard University researchers are taking that idea literally. They are using an extremely fast laser to trigger tiny explosions that create […]

Thomas B. Okarma POSITION: President and CEO, Geron ISSUE: Embryonic-stem-cell and cloning research. The U.S. political climate is proving inhospitable to biomedical research that could benefit millions, and other nations […]

Sometimes it's not what you say, but how you say it. That's a truism most people can relate to--but computers can't. While speech recognition software has gotten quite good at […]

Every few years experts proclaim the imminent end of advances in magnetic media, the technology behind most computer data storage. But engineers keep finding new tricks to cram more data […]

The producers of the 1999 sci-fi martial-arts extravaganza The Matrix used elaborate and costly movie camera technology to circle around characters frozen mid-kung-fu kick. Such vertiginous visual effects can now […]

Neville at the warehouse calls Sophie at the factory to tell her that surging demand has almost depleted the company's stock of microchips. Alarmed, Sophie orders piles of raw materials […]

BIOTECH Doctors commonly diagnose infectious diseases by checking patients' blood for evidence of proteins or genes unique to different bacteria and viruses. Soon, they may be able to look instead […]

Many genes that exist naturally in the body turn on and off when needed; otherwise they would crank out superfluous proteins nonstop. But the artificial genes that are injected to […]

BIOTECH Adult stem cells, found in the liver, bone marrow and elsewhere, are the biological workhorses that repair injuries and form new tissue. Researchers hope to use them to cure […]