Pediatric brain surgeon Peter Dirks of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto remembers well the cancers that have evaded his knife, withstood chemotherapy and radiation, and somehow reemerged to end a patient’s life. Now he and Michael Clarke of the University of Michigan Medical School say they have learned the secret to cancer’s tenacity: a cluster of mutant stem cells that continuously regenerates tumors.

I love the Internet because I can plug anything I want into it. No ISP tells me what computer I can use or what software it can run. Contrast that with the phone networks. Until 1968, it was illegal to even attach a non-Bell phone. Even today, phone companies charge for services like Caller ID. Imagine if your ISP charged you for seeing the “From” line in your e-mail.

A: Short answer? Yes. Long answer: Yes, but the road may get bumpy. The underworld of game emulation is ruled by cliquish bands of code geeks loyal to beta-at-best homebrew applications. That said, the process is fairly straightforward.


First, back up your games on your PC with Game Copy Pro (dvdwizardpro.com). You can burn a title to another CD or DVD, or just keep the ripped file on your hard drive. The handy utility tackles Xbox, PSOne, PS2, Dreamcast, Gameboy and GBA.

Dept.: Tech Lesson
Tech: GPS drawing
Tools: GPS receiver, free software
Cost: $100 and up
Dabbler | | | | | Master

Slideshow:
� Crop Circler� Dinger Ringer� Gear Lifter

� Slideshow: How Roll Stability Control works

� Samsung's SlimFit HDTV� LG's Direct-View Slim CRT HDTV

Both man and machine are approaching the future at an ever-accelerating clip. Almost every year, our vehicles break speed records. This past fall, the X-43A scramjet-powered aircraft reached a speed of nearly Mach 10, beating a record of Mach 6.8 set only six months before. Today’s fastest supercomputer, IBM’s Blue Gene, is about 450,000 times as speedy as the ruling machine of 30 years ago and twice as fleet as the fastest machine of just one year ago. We build passenger trains that travel 267 miles an hour and rocket cars that break the speed of sound.

After exuberantly declaring himself king of the world at the 1998 Oscars, you'd think James Cameron might sit back, relax, and survey his kingdom. Instead, having conquered Hollywood, the Terminator/Titanic auteur has been busily turning his passion, salesmanship and eye for the spectacular to the worthy end of securing nothing less than the future of science and exploration.

Element: Indium
Project: Prank spoons
Time: 6 hours
Dabbler | | | | | Master