Nanotech Gets Real

From the editor in chief

Prototype

Straight from the lab: technology´s first draft.

The Death of Digital Rights Management?

Next Stop: Clean Diesel

Network Clog Buster

A Chip with Ears

Hauling Hazard

Internet to Go

Blood Vessel Booster

The Digital Dividend

Bridging the digital divide could lead to—surprise!—profits.

A.I. Reboots

"Artificial intelligence" used to mean robots that think like people; now it means software for rejecting junk e-mail. Low expectations could yield better applications, sooner.

Merck´s Mission: An AIDS Vaccine

With a hugely ambitious new research program, the pharmaceutical giant has revived the hunt for a vaccine to prevent AIDS. Will others follow?

From PlayStation to PC

Whether you play them or not, video games are good for you. These exercises in interactivity are spurring advances in interfaces and 3-D graphics that will benefit all computer users.

Digital Railroad

Forget "content" and "branding." For freight railroads, information technology spells better ways to haul coal, lay steel and pour crushed stone.

Planet Internet

Achievements to date: Internet backbone, Web browser. So when Larry Smarr takes the reins of a new $400 million institute and starts talking about intelligent highways and digital genomics, people listen.

The Internet Amenity

For big organizations, hoarding wireless bandwidth costs more than giving it away. Smell a free lunch?

Blog This

Online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms.

Wal-Mart Trumps Moore´s Law

Information technology matters—when it delivers "everyday low prices."

Intellectual-Property Ecology

What tree huggers can teach us about the public domain of ideas.

Systems Biology

The map of the genome is just the rule book; "systems biology" is the ball game.