Marc Norman is standing ice-side in the new skating rink in Salt Lake City, Utah-the site of this year's Winter Olympics. It's noisy in here: Workers are installing a high-tech dehumidifying system. Speaking over the persistent clanging, Norman makes a prediction. "Once that's completed," he says, "we will be able to control just about everything that happens in this building."

It's called dielectrophoresis, a new technique for growing microwires. Alternating electrical currents are passed through a solution of water and microscopic gold particles, producing a wire that is one-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. As the wire bridges the gap from one electrical terminal to the other, it gives off thousands of tiny branches, much like a vine climbing a brick wall.

When Steve Woodmore was 7 years old, a teacher chose him to recite an 8-minute speech. It took only 2. "That's when I realized I had a gift," he says.




The 42-year-old electronics salesman from London is the world's fastest talker, owning the title for the past 12 years. On a good day, he can spout off 637 words per minute-more than 10 a second. Having impressed my family and friends over the years with some quick turns of the tongue (it's inherited from Mom, Dad says), I challenged Woodmore to a talk-off.

Walk down the street, look at the world. This is reality. Now repeat, but wearing an odd-looking, bulky pair of glasses that place into your line of vision selective, relevant bits of data about the world; the data hovers in sight like virtual Post-it Notes, annotating your view. This is augmented reality. Glasses on, you glance to the right, at a vaguely familiar restaurant, and click a small button in your hand.

Genetically, the two are virtually the same. Your identical twin and your clone would each share your exact nuclear DNA-the type of molecules that account for more than 99.9 percent of an individual's genetic makeup. The remaining genetic material, known as mitochondrial DNA, comes from the egg from which you've been conceived.

It's no secret that the average American knows very little about science. But according to new research, many women are more likely to know the difference between a Libra and an Aquarius than whether the Earth revolves around the sun.

From the days of Les Paul and Charlie Christian to those of Eric Clapton and Metallica, the electric guitar has remained basically the same. A "pickup" consisting of a magnet surrounded by a coil of wire is placed close to a metal string. The string's vibration changes the magnetic field, which transmits an electric signal through the coil. This signal is then broadcast through an amplifier.

But California's Lightwave Systems is about to introduce something new: an optical system that uses infrared light to cast a shadow of the string onto a series of photodetectors. As the string vibrates, the shadow does too, modulating a current and producing a signal much like a magnetic pickuponly a lot better.

TIMELINE


January 1977: In 1977, the United States signs a treaty prohibiting international commerce in endangered species; balloon angioplasty is introduced as a treatment for heart disease; Tandy Corp. and Commodore introduce personal computers with built-in monitors; the first linked automated teller machines appear; Roots is broadcast on television.

Now that scientists can analyze the DNA of any species, they are discovering that many animals that look indistinguishable are actually quite different at the genetic level-different enough to be classified as separate species. That means there may be a lot more biological diversity on Earth than meets the eye.

For example, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, recently reported the discovery of a new species of Mexican salamander, Lineatriton, that looks identical to another species living several hundred miles away. Only DNA testing can tell them apart.

Martian Chess is played on an ordinary chessboard using a standard set of chess pieces, a standard deck of 52 playing cards, and a six-sided die. The pieces are set up in the usual fashion, and each player is dealt 13 cards. White goes first.