Shaper Of Things To Come - intelligent machines - Brief Article - Interview
If intelligent machines ever write a history of their evolution, Hans Moravec will figure prominently in it. At Stanford University in the 1970s, he ...

Digging for Cures - antibiotics - Brief Article
When biologists Jo Handelsman and Robert Goodman set off in search of the next miracle antibiotic, they didn't look any farther than the dirt in their ...

Book 'Em, Database - police database software - Brief Article
Keeping track of all the evidence needed to bring down a dangerous criminal requires a mind like a steel trap--or perhaps like a silicon chip. Lars Kangas and his colleagues at Pacific Northwest Na

Ask The Wizard - gravity and light - Brief Article
Does light have mass? If not, then could a block hole's gravity stop light from escaping? BRYAN BURCHFIELD, MARYVILLE, TENNESSEE Ted Bunn, assistant ...

Magnetic Ghosts - audio cassette analysis - Brief Article
Every year the FBI is inundated with audiocassettes that may contain subtle criminal evidence of tampering. Now physicists David Pappas of the National ...

The Case of the Displaced Quake - Brief Article
What should have been a fortunate near-miss somehow became a direct hit. The 1994 California quake shook apart homes and offices in Santa Monica, even ...