may 2008

Here’s a radical idea: Put down that PSP for a while. Give your tired fingers a break from its complex configurations of buttons and action controls, and try a whole different kind of game machine, one that uses just a single button and can be built and modified at home. At the core of this simple yet elegant retro game platform is a device called a ScreenKey, a small LCD screen built on top of a pushbutton. Couple it with a tiny programmable microcontroller, and you have a complete portable DIY “GameKey” system.

Putting food back in the freezer after it thaws causes ice crystals to grow, imparting the unwelcome crunchy texture and mildew-like taste of freezer burn. Now food chemist Srinivasan Damodaran of the University of WisconsinMadison has derived an edible antifreeze from papaya enzymes and gelatin. His concoction, which stunts ice-crystal growth, promises always-creamy ice cream and juicier T-bones, even after their third trip between icebox and table.

If you want a super-light laptop, you have to pay for it, and you have to use Windows. Thats been the (frustrating) conventional wisdom—at least until late last year, when the Taiwanese company Asus rolled out the Eee PC (pronounced as though it were a single long e), a two-pound, seven-inch laptop starting at a mere $300. The tradeoff: It comes with just two to eight gigabytes of flash memory instead of a conventional, larger hard drive, and a simplified Linux operating system that essentially is usable only for e-mail, Web browsing and typing.

The device is a cylinder a bit smaller than a pinky finger, filled with helium and cooled to just above absolute zero. Inside, a young universe—or something very much like one—evolves. As the helium sloshes about, it mimics a process that may have powered our own universe a few moments after the big bang. And once the fluid settles down, the little whirlpools that remain may be akin to the defects in early spacetime that ultimately gave rise to galaxies, stars and planets.

With Big Pharma spending upward of $1 billion to bring a single drug to pharmacy shelves, its little wonder that unprofitable afflictions like malaria and African sleeping sickness go largely ignored. Curtis Chong witnessed this neglect firsthand in 2001 as a third-year medical student working in an emergency room in Mozambique. Day and night, malaria patients lined up for treatment, but Chongs medication stockpile was often too low or too antiquated to treat drug-resistant strains of the disease, and people were dying.

Six years later, the 31-year-old pharmacologist is spearheading an innovative way to bring better drugs, and more of them, to the developing world.

Australian artist Chris Poole was driving around his native Perth recently, when some curbside garbage caught his eye. Unlike the average scavenger, Poole wasnt searching for couches or chairs. He had his eye on an old slide viewer—a key component for his next project, a laser-based projector that could display family photos (albeit with a green hue) to the entire town.

Ducati upped the ante, unleashing a bike with an 849cc engine that weighs no more than competitors in the 600cc range. In fact, the Superbike 848 weighs 44 pounds less than its 749cc predecessor. To shed pounds, Ducati uses vacural molding, a fabrication process that inhales molten alloy directly into die casts to create a seamless piece of aluminum. This eliminates the need to fasten multiple pieces with welds and bolts that weaken a structure and add weight.

Like previous digital ink pens, the Livescribe Pulse converts your writing to searchable computer files. The Pulse, though, adds audio recording synchronized to your handwriting. Point the pen to a spot in your notes (or click on your computer screen), and hear what was said when you wrote it. That sounds good on paper, but will it work, er, on paper?

Soon youll be able to ditch your game pad and Wiimote. A new camera system for computers and consoles will track your movements in three dimensions—essentially turning your body into the game controller. For example, play Rock Band by waving your hands at imaginary drums, or dodge punches in a fighting game.

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/environment/What_causes_monster_waves';
Over the past 1,300 years, the Nankai Trough, the 500-mile-long boundary between two tectonic plates off the southwestern coast of Japan, has been one of the worlds most active tsunami hotspots. Now an international team of scientists has embarked on a multiyear project to drill four miles down into the heart of this subterranean wave machine. The Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment, called Nantroseize, will be the first attempt to penetrate a tsunami-generating hotspot and could help scientists understand the source of the huge swells. We can monitor the ocean all we want, but well never understand why some earthquakes produce tsunamis and why others do not until we understand how faults work, says geophysicist Nathan Bangs of the University of Texas.