March 28, 2001 - Microsoft wants a few good drivers - By Ian Fried, Special to ZDNet News, ANAHEIM, Calif.--Microsoft wants bad drivers off the Windows highway. With the next version of its consumer Windows operating system, Microsoft is trying to make computers less daunting and prone to crashes. To reach that goal, Microsoft not only needs to clean up its own code, but also all the third-party drivers, little bits of software that help the system communicate with peripherals and other add-ons. So Microsoft is taking a hard line with developers. When computer owners using Windows XP try to install new hardware or software with drivers that have not passed Microsoft certification, they will get an ominous warning message...

 October 06, 2000 - The Silent Personal Trainer, Beeper-sized device is workout pal - By Carly Walker - FOX News, There's a palpable buzz in the SportBrain offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., where employees seem a bit, well, wired. About size of a beeper, SportBrain literally monitors your every move. And makers hope it will inspire folks to do a little more exercise — even if it means ditching the elevator for the dreaded stairs. Periods of activity for more than 10 minutes are highlighted and called, aptly, Sportivities...

 March 23, 2001 - Beam it Down, Scotty! - NASA NEWS, Solar power collected in space and beamed to Earth could be an environmentally friendly solution to our planet's growing energy problems. It's December 2000 and the governor of California flips a switch illuminating the state Christmas tree on the capital lawn. Twenty minutes later, he orders aides to pull the plug. Why? Statewide power shortages. The United States energy secretary ordered a dozen out-of-state power companies to sell electricity to California to avert blackouts. But it's not just California...

 October 09, 2000 - How to build a discount robot - By Bob Sullivan, MSNBC, Do-it-yourself Palm Pilot kit gives new meaning to term ‘mobile device' With three wheels, the Palm Pilot robot is able to change directions quickly. Sure, a handheld personal digital assistant can beep its brains out to remind you of a noon appointment, but what if you left it at home? The beeping would be for naught - unless that Palm Pilot could follow you, chase you down, even bump into you to get your attention...

 March 15, 2001 - Cloning Around - © Copyright 2001 The Economist Newspaper Limited. "Human cloning is the stuff of fantasy, but a group of maverick scientists wants to make it real... SCIENCE fiction has not, on the whole, been kind to those at the cutting edge of human reproduction. From “The Boys from Brazil” to “The 6th Day”, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest oeuvre, people in the awkward business of human cloning appear as crazed, power-hungry, profit-seeking individuals on the fringes of society..."

 March 14, 2001 - Chip chop - New Scientist magazine, A widely used "gene chip" stops some research projects dead. A flaw in a widely used "gene chip" has stopped some research projects dead and set others back many months. The problem raises concerns about how far researchers can trust this technology and the publicly available genome data on which it is based...

 RETROSPECT  February 5, 1998 - HOW NEW TECHNOLOGY WILL CHANGE WEB, The Coming Age of Online News Avatars - by David Noack, E&P Conference Daily News, SEATTLE (Feb. 4) -- The days of online news consisting mostly of text on a computer screen are likely to change over the next few years in some very dramatic ways, speakers at an Interactive Newspapers session predicted this afternoon. New interactive technologies and an increase in bandwidth will eventually revolutionize what newspapers can -- or must -- do to remain competitive in the online field...

 March 16, 2001 - FIRST Robotics Competition Information - The FIRST Robotics Competition is a national engineering contest which immerses high school students in the exciting world of engineering. Teaming up with engineers from businesses and universities, students get a hands-on, inside look at the engineering profession. In six intense weeks, students and engineers work together to brainstorm, design, construct and test their "champion robot". With only six weeks, all jobs are critical path. The teams then compete in a spirited, no-holds-barred tournament complete with referees, cheerleaders and time clocks...

March 20, 2001 - Mir re-entry is unprecedented - By BBC News Online's science editor Dr David Whitehouse, "The final command in the Mir drama will be issued on Thursday, just 45 minutes before the space station plunges to destruction. The platform's final moments will be as a swarm of incandescent fragments hurtling into the water at near-sonic speeds..." 

 March 10, 2001 - The End is Mir - NASA NEWS, "Space station Mir, the heaviest thing orbiting our planet other than the Moon itself, will return to Earth around March 22nd. When the space station Mir returns to Earth over the remote South Pacific later this month, it will be big news. And rightly so. The 135-ton Russian outpost is the heaviest thing orbiting our planet other than the Moon itself. During its 15-year stint in space, Mir has set endurance and space-adventure records that are going to be hard to beat..."

 March 14, 2001 - Scientists, engineers rail at PC industry - By Rachel Konrad, Special to ZDNet (c) 2001, SAN JOSE, Calif.--Computers are illogical machines in dire need of a total overhaul, and the information technology industry is completely screwed up. That's the gist of what academics and engineers told IT workers gathered here this week for the three-day Association for Computing Machinery conference. The event is typically a sort of group hug between computer programmers and scientists, but the mood turned a tad nasty Tuesday as researchers lightheartedly ripped on computer scientists, who made up the bulk of the 200-member audience. Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades--bore the brunt of scorn and jokes about how fashion has superseded functionality...

 March 15, 2001 - Infestation: Worms are crawling everywhere - By Robert Lemos, ZDNet News (c) 2001, Four hours. That's how long it took for a glamorous tennis player to become the talk of the Net, for countless companies to shut down their e-mail gateways, and for a new virus to spread across the Atlantic. At the height of the barrage, the AnnaKournikova virus--which took the pernicious form of a "worm" attachment--was included in one of every 106 e-mails that arrived at the gateway of e-mail service provider MessageLabs. It saw almost 20,000 copies of the worm in a week. "It blew up that day," said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of the Gloucester, U.K., company. "We saw a bell curve around the working hours...It sat in a critical mass of in-trays and, when people came to work, it kicked off..."

 March 10, 2001 - ANDROLOGY INSTITUTE OF AMERICA - Infertility affects as many as 2.4 million married couples in the United States. It has been estimated that 40% of this infertility is a result of problems related to the male. One of the major problems with male infertility is poor sperm quality. It is the purpose of the Andrology Institute of America (AIA) Laboratory facilities to use the most appropriate Andrological technologies to assist men in the evaluation of their sperm characteristics and to employ state-of-the-art technologies to enhance the potential of the infertile male to conceive...

 March 06, 2001 - Crafting the free-software future - © 2001 Salon.com, By Ed Frauenheim, At VA Linux's SourceForge, thousands of programmers are collaborating for both love and money. In between his two to three hours of homework every night, 16-year-old Julian Missig plays the part of a software project manager at SourceForge.net, a Web site-cum-watering hole for programmers looking for a place to hack. At SourceForge, in collaboration with hackers from all over the globe -- Germany, France, Russia, the Ukraine - the New Jersey high school senior works on a program called Gabber...

 March 08, 2001 - Mutant fungus from space - © 2001 BBC, In the latest twist to the long saga of the Mir space station, biologists are worried about virulent new strains of fungus which Mir will bring back to Earth when it splashes down this month. Russian NTV television interviewed Yuri Karash, a space expert who thinks the micro-organisms, which have spent 15 years quietly mutating in their own isolated environment on Mir, could be a real problem...

 March 01, 2001 - Buck Rogers, Watch Out! - NASA researchers are studying insects and birds, and using "smart" materials with uncanny properties to develop new and mindboggling aircraft designs. The "personal aircraft" that replaces the beloved automobile in people's garages may still lie in the realm of science fiction or Saturday-morning cartoons, but researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC) are developing exotic technologies that could bring a personal "air-car" closer to reality. And air-cars are just the beginning...

 November 03, 2000 - Speedy lizard may be first biped - WASHINGTON (AP) - The first known creature to walk upright on two feet was a speedy, long-legged lizard that scurried onto the scene some 80 million years before the dinosaur, a newly found fossil shows. The lizard, less than a foot long and weighing under a pound, was a plant-eating reptile that researchers believe used his speed and unique way of running to avoid the hungry meat-eaters that roamed the world 290 million years ago. Walking upright on two feet is an example of "repeated evolution," where a physical advantage evolves in different species at different times in history, said Robert R. Reisz, a University of Toronto researcher and co-author of a study appearing Friday in the journal Science. Bipedalism developed independently in dinosaurs, which passed it on to birds, and then later it developed in mammals, said Reisz. "It was just such a good idea that it happened again and again. To find an example of an animal that did this before dinosaurs or mammals is particularly exciting," he said. Remains of the lizard, now called Eudibabmus cursoris, were found in a German quarry.

 November 03, 2000 - Scientists find 'seafloor storms' - WASHINGTON (AP) - Thousands of feet below the ocean's surface sudden powerful currents stir up sediments and sweep fish and shrimp along as though they were in a river, scientists have discovered. Past sonar readings and furrows on parts of the seafloor have hinted at these currents, called storms by some researchers. Now they have finally been experienced, off the edge of the continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico, some 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep. The powerful currents - seen by researchers during a two-week expedition involving several dives in the deep-sea submersible Alvin - have carved furrows into the seafloor. Scientists now are working to determine what causes the storms and what implications they might have, particularly for deep sea gas and oil wells now being developed in this region. The storms are massive currents nearly 2,000 feet thick, moving at 1 to 1.5 knots. A knot is 1.15 miles per hour.