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"Pillownaut" Stays in Bed for the Sake of Science

When humans eventually live on the moon and Mars, the discomforts of eating freeze-dried food and drinking our own urine will hardly be our only space nuisances. Apparently, our feet will tingle, we'll get headaches and toothaches, our eyes will be runny, and we'll have chronically stuffy noses. Scientists have a pretty good notion of what will happen to your body when you're walking on the moon or traveling gravity-free for two years en route to Mars -- thanks to a cadre of bed-ridden test subjects.

Thinking Beyond the Windmill

Lily Pads as Power Outlets

The Next Phage

It seemed like nothing at first. The red patch that appeared on Roy Brillon's thigh could have been a spider bite. But as the weeks passed, it grew and grew. By December 2004, the innocuous-looking bump had become an open wound the size of the palm of his hand. Brillon's doctor, Randy Wolcott, prescribed just about every antibiotic he could think of to cure the infection, but the lesion just got worse. "It was really bad," says Brillon, a 62-year-old retired housepainter from Lubbock, Texas. "I had to give up work because I couldn't climb ladders anymore." Brillon felt like he was being eaten away from the inside out. And in a very real sense, he was.

GM Unveils the P.U.M.A., and Possibly the Future of Urban Transportation

Is it the car of the future? The Segway of the future? An idea destined to go nowhere? Something in between? Today GM unveiled the PUMA, a two-wheeled city vehicle built in collaboration with Segway. PUMA stands for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, and the idea is to create a small, highly maneuverable mini-car ideal for congested cities where the traffic is slow and the parking is nonexistent.