It was all smooth sailing for seafaring extremist Ken-ichi Horie. That wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for when he set sail for Japan from Hawaii in the world’s most sophisticated wave-powered boat, named the Suntory Mermaid II

Just when we were coming back around to the idea of drinking good old fashioned tap water, the Associated Press today announced that it has found traces of dozens of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water of an estimated 41 million Americans.

Nanocomp Technologies Inc. of Concord, New Hampshire has managed to make the largest sheet of carbon nanotubing ever, rekindling the long-standing dream of a fantastical space elevator that lifts us into orbit along an ultra-light yet ultra-strong carbon nanotube cable. Sure, at 18 square feet, the sheet is smaller than a beach blanket but it contains a billion billion nanotubes, which makes it 200 times as strong as steel and 30 times less dense.

Check out our inaugural episode of Cocktail Party Science, in which host Chuck Cage, senior editor Nicole Dyer and Web editor Megan Miller talk to Eric Hagerman, author of Your Sewer on Drugs. Youll get a behind-the-scenes account of what it was really like to dive into the manholes of San Diego in the name of science.

Funding for the majority of federal science and technology programs in the United States has declined or remained flat during the past seven years. And dont assume that will change with the next administration. Politicians simply dont know jack about science and technology, says former Congressman John Porter, a moderate Republican from Illinois. In fact, fewer than 3 percent of our Congressional representatives have any science background. By comparison, 8 out 9 top officials in China are scientists.

Given that Americans drink billions of gallons of diet soda every year, it comes as little surprise that one of the most popular articles abuzz on the New York Times Web site is about the potentially waist-thickening effects of diet soda. The article highlights a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota who scrutinized the dietary intake of 9,514 volunteers ages 45 to 64 over the course of nine years. The Times honed in on the effects of diet soda: specifically, drinking one can of the stuff each day can increase the risk of developing metabolic disorder, a scary collection of risk factors including increased waist circumference, high blood pressure and low levels of good cholesterol, by 34 percent.

But the same study also came to an even more depressing conclusion: that consuming a healthy diet dominated by fruits and vegetables does nothing to reduce the risk of contracting chronic disease.

Nineteen-year-old expert skier Janne van Enckevort was told that
this cap would harden when his head struck the ice. To make sure, he removed the spongy pads lining the hat, crumpled them into a ball, and then smashed them against the floor. The ball stiffened upon impact, then quickly softened again.

The protective pads morph because they are made of a material called d3o. Engineered by a British company of the same name, d3o is an elastic polymer that tenses in response to quick movements.