Technology Review: December 2001
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Detecting Bioterrorism
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Lives could be saved by sensors and therapies now under development-along with software that could help distinguish an anthrax assault from an outbreak of the flu.
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Trailing Edge
- A Shot in the Dark
- From a backyard battle with squirrels came the idea for the gene gun-the tool that creates biotech crops by shooting helpful genes into plant cells.
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Features
- Networking the Infrastructure
- New classes of detectors, plus safer building designs, point to an "intelligent city" that senses danger.
- Will Spyware Work?
- Monitoring voice and e-mail traffic sounds like a good way to thwart terrorism, but doesn’t allow for early warnings.
- Recognizing the Enemy
- Creating a central database of photos to identify terrorists through face recognition is a bureaucratic nightmare.
- The Shock of the Old
- On September 11, a nation primed for a futuristic attack failed to foresee a low-tech assault. Why?
- The Next Computer Interface
- The desktop metaphor is now an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information.
- Digital Cash Payoff
- PayPal’s fraud-busting technology makes it easy for people to pay one another over the Internet.
- Lean Mean R&D Machines
- Leading companies want research units that can adapt to changing technologies and corporate business strategies.
- Medicine’s New Millennium
- New information about genes and proteins promises precise diagnostics and drugs.
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Columns
- How Not to Fight Terror
- Don´t let the government use terrorism as an excuse for a Surveillance Society.
- Living Memories
- Memory holds us together. That´s why it´s crucial to record the DNA of every species-and to archive the Internet.
- A Safety Net
- TV provided horrific news. The Internet provided emotional safety.
- Doctors without Patents
- Patent systems are challenged when proprietary rights clash with doctors´ sharing of health-care know-how.
Upstream
- Optical Interconnects
- Optical interconnects: replacing wires between chips with streams of photons could speed things up mightily.
Visualize
- Plasma Displays
- Plasma displays produce extraordinarily crisp TV images using hundreds of thousands of xenon-filled cells.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology