Technology The power walk that charges your phone IT GIVES a whole new meaning to "power walking". Strap on a pair of leg braces and with a little extra effort you can generate enough electricity while you walk or run to charge up your cellphone or laptop, or perhaps even a prosthetic arm. The brace, built by Max Donelan and colleagues at Simon … 51¶¯Âþ
Commentary: Ideas that will govern America WHEN I wrote in a previous "World lines" commentary (15 December 2007, p 52) that I was joining a group of individuals to call for a presidential debate on US science and technology policy, I didn't have much hope that such an event might actually take place. Yet in the few weeks since, we have … Opinion
Life Uncovering the evolution of the bacterial flagellum THREE years before his death in 1805, English philosopher William Paley proposed a now-famous thought experiment. Imagine discovering a watch on the heath: how would you explain its intricate arrangement of parts, its clear design for a purpose? Naturally, you'd conclude that it was built by a watchmaker, not blown together by chance. By analogy, … Features
Technology Review: The Telephone Gambit by Seth Shulman ANY reader of detective stories knows to watch for subtle anomalies. A dozen years ago I spotted one while investigating the history of fibre optics. In an interview in 1921, less than a year before his death, Alexander Graham Bell had said that he considered his greatest invention to be the photophone , an obscure … Books & Arts
Feedback Reinventing maths HOLD the front page! Richard Taylor alerts us to a blog post by an American physics student in England last year at http://fliptomato.wordpress.com about a 1994 paper by M. M. Tai entitled: "A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves" ( Diabetes Care, vol 17, … Regulars