Summer 2013 – First Look
ROBOTICS Get the Drift Jellyfish may be the bane of beachgoers worldwide, but Virginia Tech researchers have found much to admire —and to mimic. The invertebrates’ very low metabolic rate…
ROBOTICS Get the Drift Jellyfish may be the bane of beachgoers worldwide, but Virginia Tech researchers have found much to admire —and to mimic. The invertebrates’ very low metabolic rate…
GLOBAL COMMERCE We Can Dig It Designated as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Panama Canal was the moon…
AEROSPACE New Shuttle Service Though its mission remains shrouded in mystery, the unmanned spacecraft that hurtled into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in December is no engineering secret. Launched…
SPACE INSTRUMENTATION Heavenly View In the race for sharper digital images, the Dark Energy Camera (right) wins, hands down. The telephone-booth-size digital camera — the world’s most powerful — has…
AERONAUTICS Icarus Redeemed Two years ago, the Solar Impulse became the first solar-powered airplane to fly 26 hours nonstop. Now the Swiss-made craft has chalked up another record. This summer,…
BREAKTHROUGHS AND TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY Emma Cardini has inspected some impressive facades, including the neo-Gothic spires of Chicago’s Tribune Tower. Still, nothing compared with the capital view…
BIODIVERSITY Deep Beauty More than a spectacle for scuba divers, Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater sculpture offers a rich environment for restoring coral reefs, the endangered “rain forests of the sea” that host…