Science

Scenic lookouts like this one are the privilege of an elite few, including astronaut Mike Mullane, who was on board the shuttle Discovery in September 1984 when a crewmate snapped this photo 184 miles above Earth. The orbiter's tailfin points to the Pacific Ocean. "Since the autopilot was holding the shuttle with its top to the Earth, I now had the planet in my face," writes Mullane in his memoir, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, due out this month. "In all my other life experiences speed meant noise.

Scenic lookouts like this one are the privilege of an elite few, including astronaut Mike Mullane, who was on board the shuttle Discovery in September 1984 when a crewmate snapped this photo 184 miles above Earth. The orbiter's tailfin points to the Pacific Ocean. "Since the autopilot was holding the shuttle with its top to the Earth, I now had the planet in my face," writes Mullane in his memoir, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, due out this month. "In all my other life experiences speed meant noise.

Sand castles are ephemeral by natur—a good swift kick will destroy the sturdiest silicon-dioxide fortress in seconds—but scientists have learned that there are ways to maximize your creation's strength. Clark University physicist Arshad Kudrolli recently published a paper in the journal Nature Physics on just this topic, entitled"Maximum Angle of Stability of a Wet Granular Pile.â€

If the U.S. Army's LATEST field tests pan out, its future transport vehicle will be almost as self-sustaining as a space station, enabling soldiers to survive for at least three days without supply-line support. One crucial tactical advantage over an entrenched enemy would be to make drinking water out of engine exhaust.

The Wolf River Bridge in Crandon, Wisconsin, was once notorious for its treacherously slick pavement, which caused several accidents every winter. Workers routinely applied rock salt, but traffic quickly wore it away. So the city turned to civil engineer Russ Alger for help.

Armed with $2 million in federal grants, researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) are close to perfecting the first commercially viable "smart gun." The prototype pistol, unveiled last month, is designed to recognize specific people's grips. When seized by an unauthorized hand-say, that of a child or a criminal-the gun locks its shooting mechanism.

A few months AGO, when researchers analyzed the genome of the devastating 1918 influenza, they found it to be a direct descendant of a common bird-flu strain, with just a few disparate amino acids here and there. The finding cast a chilling new light on the most lethal modern bird flu, known as H5N1, which has already killed at least 70 people in Asia but isn't transmissible between humans-yet.

The squat, four-wheeled Robot driving itself through densely wooded terrain looks too macho to be cute, but it's too small to be threatening (picture a cross between R2-D2 and a Jeep). "You start to associate personalities with each of them," says Mark Del Giorno, of his 'bots. But still, Del Giorno, the vice president for engineering at General Dynamics Robotic Systems, which built this machine for the Army, insists that he doesn't anthropomorphize his robots: "You realize that the 'personality' comes from, say, the steering being a little loose.

Tired of flying coach?

Re-visit the life, accomplishments, and vision of Leonardo da Vinci with The History Channel special presentation.

DA VINCI & THE CODE HE LIVED BY, airing Sunday, December 4th at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.

You heard right. It seems that unusual species names aren't limited to scientists' favorite rock stars or Star Wars figures—now Internet search engines are in the game. Entomologist Brian Fisher named a new species of ant, Proceratium google, in honor of the mapping program Google Earth. Fisher, who chairs the entomology department at the California Academy of

Dartmouth College researchers have created a robot so small that 200 of them could fit on the tip of your finger. The tiny machine crawls like an inchworm across a grid at the breakneck speed of 200 microns per second. Its goal: to fix really little things. Dartmouth engineer Bruce Donald says swarms of such devices could one day repair circuitry in computer chips.

Wind power is the world´s fastest-growing energy source. Existing capacity worldwide is approaching 50,000 megawatts-roughly equivalent to that of 50 nuclear power plants. But there are problems with this seemingly benign wellspring of pollution-free electricity. Aside from being noisy, the whirling turbines interfere with television reception and are generally considered terrestrial eyesores rendered useless when the wind stops.

The way Robert Liden sees it, his company is simply building an odd-looking car. It's made mostly of steel and glass, after all, and it has an engine with a radiator and a water pump. It just doesn't have wheels, seats or a Blaupunkt.