Science

The perfect cloak of Frodo Baggins is still far off, if not impossible, but DARPA-funded researchers are working on a new kind of camouflage that would fall only a few steps short of elvish magic. According to Philip Moynihan, a NASA engineer who published a paper on the subject in 2000, so-called adaptive camouflage would visually merge soldiers with their surroundings—whether that’s an urban backdrop or dense jungle brush. The basic principle is simple: Cameras would capture the scene behind the uniform while embedded displays would reproduce the image on its front.

In 1941, researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital made an unsettling discovery: Inhaled nanoscopic particles could travel into the brain. When chimps and rhesus monkeys breathed air laden with poliovirus cells, some of the particles followed the path normally reserved for smell signals, thwarting the protective blood-brain barrier.

Kids get cavities. Dentists fill them. It's a fairly old arrangement, but it may soon come to an end if cavities go the way of smallpox. Jeffrey Hillman's company, Oragenics, has patented a simple swab of bacteria that when wiped across a set of teeth will (allegedly) grant a lifetime of protection from tooth decay. By this fall, Hillman, a dental researcher at the University of Florida, will begin testing the new strain on 15 to 30 volunteers.

Whenever Maria Chudnovsky gets her car fixed, she feels uneasy. Did the mechanic really discern the problem, or did he just tinker until the symptoms vanished? “How do I know,” she says, “that in 15 minutes it won’t break again?”

Chudnovsky, 27, yearns to understand the world completely. Why do storm clouds appear before it rains? Why do we catch cold? What was really wrong with her car?

A note to the reader: Certain scenes in the following account have been dramatized, Hollywood-style—entirely made up—but the description of the film, the scientific information and all the quotes are real.

Act 1: HOLLYWOOD

INT. MOVIE THEATER—NIGHT OF MAY 28, 2004

Don’t call it cold fusion. Not yet. For the second time in two years, physicist Rusi Taleyarkhan and colleagues claim to have created a miniature sun in a jar, but this time skeptics are taking a closer look.

Water take heed: Liquids are now at the mercy of a breakthrough material from Bell Labs. Flip an electric switch and the material acts like a sponge. Flip again and it behaves like a rain slicker. Applications could turn up wherever liquids meet solids (read: practically everywhere). Lead researcher Tom Krupenkin envisions near-frictionless torpedoes, self-cleaning windshields and more efficient batteries.

If Behrokh Khoshnevis has his way, the on-demand world of movies, TV, Internet connections, you name it, will have a home under on-demand roofs. Khoshnevis, a University of Southern California professor, says he’s a year away from essentially printing out a house from computer-generated blueprints wired to an apparatus that works like a giant inkjet printer. In this case, the printout is 3-D: An overhead gantry moves back and forth while an attached robotic nozzle oozes layer after layer of cement shaped by two automated trowels.

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I have seen my future, and it was sharp and clear, which is pretty amazing since I wasn't wearing my contact lenses or glasses at the time. It's thanks to a new procedure that corrects low to medium nearsightedness (and astigmatism to -1.75 diopters) without scary lasers and their slight but real risk of permanent damage.

A reader inquires: Is the military developing uniforms that would make soldiers invisible?

I'm lying in my cage half amused, half depressed, mulling over my new title as world's oldest mouse. I turned four this April. In your world, that means about 136. That's right: ancient. Even my doctor, Richard Miller, a pathologist here at the University of Michigan Geriatrics Center, is amazed at my longevity. Naturally, the PR folks want to capitalize on my death-defying
existence, so they have nicknamed
me Yoda. Certainly catchier than my given lab name, D053, but look or speak like Yoda I do not.

Special agent Chris Trojan pulls into the parking lot of a convenience store in Ozone Park, Queens, and spots a half dozen colleagues lingering out front, exchanging morning banter and finishing second cups and cigarettes. The previous afternoon, at the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York offices in Manhattan, Trojan's unit had looked at the week's open schedule and decided to start this day trolling the neighborhoods around John F. Kennedy International Airport for a particular class of arriving travelers.

When it comes to fatal gunshot wounds, forensic pathologist Richard Stroud likes to examine things from the inside out. The bruising and tissue trauma, the size difference between entrance and exit wounds--everything becomes more obvious from the underside of the skin. Consequently, Stroud has developed a habit of skinning out the victims that pass across his autopsy table.



"Of course, I don't have to worry about families wanting the body back for burial," Stroud says.

Forensic investigation grows ever more scientific, but when crime-scene veterans swap stories over coffee, the Can you top this? banter often turns not to the minutiae of evidence recovery but to the simpleton blunders of criminals who probably consider Dumb and Dumber a difficult but inspirational film.

Nothing in American police work is more controversial than racial profiling. Minorities are targeted for small offenses in the hope of uncovering bigger crimes, and the practice has generated successful lawsuits by the ACLU and pledges from state governments and law enforcement agencies to clean up their discriminatory acts.