January 20, 2001 - Star Wars: The New Menace - KILLER satellites, nuclear-powered lasers and interceptor missiles--the front line of George W. Bush's Fortress America may sound a little familiar. Yes, Ronald Reagan's Star Wars project is back... From New Scientist magazine

 January 29, 2001 - 'Cells' hint at life's origin - By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse, Scientists have managed to create "primitive cells" in an experiment which may indicate that life began in space and was delivered to Earth...

  January 26, 2001 - Greening of the Red Planet - NASA SCIENCE NEWS, Although Mars may once have been warm and wet, the Red Planet today is a frozen wasteland. Most scientists agree, it's highly unlikely that any living creature --even a microbe-- could survive for long on the surface of Mars...

 January 23, 2001 - The machine that wanted to be a mind - Rupert Goodwins, ZDNET UK © 2001, Machines may be adept at going through the processes, but what would it take for them to reach understanding? Artificial intelligence is one of humankind's greatest and oldest ambitions. The quest for non-human intelligence has captivated magicians, astrologers and mystics for as long as such professions have existed, but it took Aristotle to kick things off properly. He was the first to start organizing laws of thought and the way they interact with the real world -- the basic concepts behind AI. That was in the third century BC, and 2,300 years later we still haven't cracked the problem...

 January 23, 2001 - Intelligent machines threaten humankind - Will Knight ZDNET UK © 2001, Dystopia or utopia: There may be a calamitous menace hidden behind the glorious possibilities of artificial intelligence. Science fiction has portrayed machines capable of thinking and acting for themselves with a mixture of anticipation and dread, but what was once the realm of fiction has now become the subject of serious debate for researchers and writers...

  January 18, 2001 - Surf the Web faster, via satellite - By M.J. Zuckerman, USA TODAY, If you are among the 50% of Americans living in areas unable to obtain high-speed Internet access, or if you count yourself among those who find the cable and phone companies' broadband access a hassle, help is on the way. Two companies — DirecPC and StarBand — offer satellite services with download speeds close to those available via cable modem systems or DSL (telephone digital subscriber lines), while eliminating the consumer's need for separate phone lines or Internet service...

 January 19, 2001 - From the Internet Springs Life Eternal - by Lizard, Salon.com © 2001 "Online dinosaurs never go extinct -- instead, they thrive, jostling with their descendants for our attention..." 

 January 24, 2001 - VESTED INTEREST - Beyond 2000, Soldiers, emergency teams and miners will soon be strapping on the coolest of fashion accessories. Australian scientists have produced a new vest to help keep these workers alive, comfortable and efficient in the searing temperatures of deserts, tunnels and raging bushfires. The undershirt uses a personal cooling system (PCS) jointly developed by Australia's CSIRO and Defense Science and Technology Organization (DSTO).

 January 30, 2001 - Cloned Human Planned 'by 2003' - By BBC News Online's Alex Kirby, "Professor Panos Zavos: The world must "come to grips with cloning" A private consortium of scientists plans to clone a human being within the next two years. The group says it will use the technique only for helping infertile couples with no other opportunity to become parents..." 

 January 29, 2001 - A world of help in their Palm - MARNI LEFF, MSNBC, PalmPilots, say some Seattle physicians, will soon be just like stethoscopes -- a trip to the doctor's office won't be complete without one...

 January 31, 2001 - Marine camouflage goes high-tech - By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY, SAN DIEGO — For two decades, all four military branches have worn the same camouflage uniforms. But now, the Marine Corps plans to don new "cammies" that better hide leathernecks from the enemy — but let them stand out from other military services. Designed with the help of Marine sharpshooters, the new uniform features a digitally generated camouflage pattern. Up close, it resembles computer pixels, but from a distance it blends into the background faster than the current design, Marine officials say...

 January 31, 2001 - Windows 95 heading into the operating system sunset - By Michael Kanellos, Special to ZDNet, For Windows 95, the end is here. Microsoft has taken steps to ensure that Windows 95 will become an asterisk in terms of sales. One of Microsoft's most popular products among both consumers and businesses, the operating system is still in use at many corporations today. The licenses that let most computer makers incorporate the OS in new computers expired Dec. 31. As a result, Dell Computer (Nasdaq: DELL) and other computer makers no longer install the OS on new computers except under special circumstances...

 January 19, 2001 - The 'Transformers' are Coming - By BBC News Online internet reporter Mark Ward, "A prototype robot module expanded and contracted. Careful on that couch! It could be a resting robot. Scientists are starting to make robots out of smart building blocks that make them morph into different forms to suit the job they are doing..." 

 June 30, 2000 - Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA) - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA). The overall goal of this program is to develop devices and machines that will increase the speed, strength, and endurance of soldiers in combat environments. Projects will lead to self-powered, controllable, wearable exoskeletal devices and/or machines...

 January 12, 2001 - The Military Get Mightier - By BBC News Online's Mark Ward, Is this the shape of GIs to come? The US military is planning to turn soldiers into supermen by fitting them with powered exoskeletons. The research arm of the US military is spending $50m to develop new technologies that will improve the speed, strength and endurance of soldiers...

 January 18, 2001 - Fifteen years after Challenger, NASA inoculates against 'go fever' - By Miles O'Brien, CNN Space Correspondent, ATLANTA (CNN) -- What a difference 15 years can make. On this week in 1986, the space shuttle Challenger stood erect on launch pad 39B -- poised for a disaster many engineers inside the program were all but certain would happen. This week, the space shuttle Atlantis is on her way back to the Vehicle Assembly Building, so that workers can look for a problem that may not exist -- with a potential for risk that is essentially immeasurable because it is so minute...

 January 22, 2001 - Mechanical taster passes cheese test - DAVID ADAM, Nature.com, A mechanical mozzarella taster, for the perfect pizza. Italian food scientists are developing technology that they hope could revolutionize one of the country's most important culinary traditions — judging the taste and flavour of mozzarella cheese. In tests, their device matched the flavour-profiling performance of an expert team of human cheese-tasters, who had been trained for the task over several months. It could distinguish milky aromas from olive smells, for instance, and correctly picked out the only one of eight mozzarella samples prepared using citric acid...

 January 12, 2001 - Where Have All the Computers Gone? - By John Seely Brown, Technology Review, The following document arrived at the offices of Technology Review in a time capsule dated 2020. It purports to be a history of computers written by computer scientist-turned-historian John Seely Brown. In the late 20th century, Dr. Brown served as director of Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center...

 January 12, 2001 - Medicine Gets Personal - By Marc Wortman, Technology Review...

THE OLD WAY—One size of drug fits all.
THE NEW WAY—Each medicine will be adapted to the genetic makeup of individuals or subgroups of the population.
THE GOAL—Better treatments, better control of side effects. 

In early 1999, Karen Cassidy, a dental hygienist and former high school athletics official, saw ads touting the new LYMErix vaccine for preventing Lyme disease, a bacterial infection passed to people by the bloodsucking bite of the deer tick. "Deer are right at my back door," says Cassidy, who hoped the vaccine would let her rake the yard of her suburban Philadelphia home without fear. But shortly after she completed two of a course of three inoculations in May 1999, Cassidy began experiencing burning pain in her back, numbness in her arms and aches and swelling in an ankle. "Just the thought of walking across the yard hurt me," says Cassidy...

  January 12, 2001 - Ten Passed Technologies - Technology Review, Not every disappearing technology deserves that fate. Sometimes the "losers" have an elegance and simplicity the "winners" lack. Here are ten examples...

 January 12, 2001 - New Evidence for Black Holes - "NASA's two Great Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, have independently provided what could be the best direct evidence yet for the existence of an event horizon, the defining feature of a black hole and one of the most bizarre astrophysical concepts in nature..."

 October 30, 2000 - Xerox center reaches end of an era - PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) - The site itself is unremarkable, save for the serenity of the nearby hillsides and the view of Silicon Valley in the distance. But Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center is no ordinary complex. It is the birthplace of inventions that have helped change the world - including the mouse-driven personal computer, the laser color printer and the building blocks of modern networking. Now, the 30-year-old center is at the end of an era. Once thought of as a pure research lab, PARC faces pressures to be more like other research parks that focus on improving high-tech bottom lines. Xerox Corp., which failed to profit from some of PARC's biggest innovations, is losing money. Last week the Stamford, Conn.-based photocopier giant announced it was looking for "noncompetitive partners" who would buy a stake in PARC and help commercialize the work of its 300 researchers.

 January 12, 2001 - What Is 'IT'? Book Proposal Heightens Intrigue About Secret Invention Touted as Bigger Than the Internet or PC - "Steve Jobs quoted on accomplished scientist's new device: 'If enough people see the machine you won't have to convince them to architect cities around it. It'll just happen.' A venerable press pays $250,000 for a book on project cloaked in unprecedented secrecy..."

  January 13, 2001 - The Ginger Files - By Andrew Klobucar, Associate Editor, Developer, The sound bytes themselves summon up bizarre outtakes from some long forgotten b-grade science-fiction film: from Apple Co-founder Steve Jobs, we hear that it will change the very way cities are designed, while Jeff Bezos, chief of Amazon.com, calls it a "product so revolutionary, [there'll be] … no problem selling it," and if that doesn't intrigue you, you might consider the fact that Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Doerr has invested millions in it...

  January 12, 2001 - Who is Dean Kamen? - Dean Kamen is President and owner of DEKA Research & Development Corporation, a Manchester, New Hampshire-based company specializing in advanced technologies in medical equipment. A physicist, engineer, and inventor, he holds more than 100 US patents. He was an undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute when he invented the wearable infusion pump, on which he was awarded his first patents, and in 1976, founded what became his first medical device company, AutoSyringe, Inc...

 January 05, 2001 - A cut above - Smart scalpels could transform cancer surgery - SCALPELS fitted with probes that can instantly reveal whether cells are cancerous may soon help surgeons operating on tumors. The technology, which can detect the earliest stages of cancer, could even replace biopsies...