Arsenic is one of history's most infamous poisons. The Roman Emperor Nero used it to murder his rival to the throne, and some theorists hold that the deposed Napoleon Bonaparte was betrayed with a dose from trusted deputies. Yet, many Americans unwittingly drink toxic quantities of the stuff right from their taps.

You can't wear a gas chromatograph," says Nicholas Abbott, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's referring to a 50-pound device used to check air for chemical poisons. These days, when terrorism is a concern to all, there's considerable demand for a chemical sensor no larger than a badge.

If you think soy is good for nothing but tofu burgers, think again. The Princeton, Illinois-based Urethane Soy Systems Company (USSC) is determined to use soy in everything from cars to carpets, all through the magic of polyurethane.

There are 23,000 species of reptiles, birds, and mammals in the world and newly-discovered Sphaerodactylus ariasae is the smallest of all. The Jaragua Sphaero, or dwarf gecko, measures three-fourths of an inch from nose to tail tip and weighs just 0.00455 of an ounce (by contrast, the largest animal, the blue whale, is 1,600 times longer and more than 1 billion times heavier). The lizard lives on the island of Beata in the Dominican Republic where, according to its discoverers, biologists Blair Hedges and Richard Thomas, its habitat is threatened by logging.

The corporate jet has long been the ultimate status symbol, but Renaissance Research is out to challenge jet-powered primacy. The California-based company is bent on designing the fastest propeller plane in history and, ultimately, on producing an alternative to today's midsize jets.

Remember the Erector Set, those interlocking nuts, bolts, and metal strips that kids used to build things with? Well, the Nobel-prize-winning chemist Sir Harry Kroto does. "One of the disasters of modern life," he recently told startled listeners on BBC radio, is that it has been "displaced by Lego."

The most unusual aspect of a new headlight system being developed at DaimlerChrysler: Oncoming drivers can't see them. Well, sort of.

The system, recently demonstrated on a Jeep Grand Cherokee, combines conventional headlamps with invisible infrared lights. The result is a dramatically clearer picture of the road ahead.

It works like this: Two laser headlamps on the front of the vehicle illuminate the road with infrared light, then a digital camera records the reflected image. The image is projected in black and white to an LCD screen behind the instrument cluster.

Super-efficient light-truck engines are coming, but don't expect to notice.

That's the impression we came away with after driving General Motors' latest light truck concepts. The reason: something engineers call transparency, an effort to make new technology do its thing without anyone noticing.