Scientific American-January 2008

OPINION

posed increases may vanish before the ic stem cell research. But some Demo- bills become law, and in the meantime cratic lawmakers have also obstructed THE EDITORS’ BL8G federal agencies have to operate at last progress. Representative John Dingell of For more posts from SciAm Observa- year’s funding levels. Michigan, chairman of the House Ener- tions, see www.SciAm.com/blog Who’s to blame? Our government’s gy and Commerce Committee, fought dismal science record for 2007 is partly the increase in fuel economy standards Won a Nobel? Go Nuts! the result of the political gridlock that proposed in the Senate’s energy bill, say- Posted by Philip Yam, October 19, 2007 occurs whenever one party controls ing it would devastate U.S. automakers. As a long-time science journalist, I have Congress and the other rules the White Internal divisions among Democrats led learned to take what James Watson says House. Last June, for example, President to the current logjam on the energy issue, with a grain of salt. Even so, I was caught Bush vetoed legislation that would have which must be untangled for the sake of off guard by the outrageousness of his expanded federal funding for embryon- our planet. g latest words. Watson gets all the kudos for his genetics work, and his discovery with Francis Crick of the double-helical structure of DNA unquestionably Sustainable Developments deserved the Nobel Prize. But maybe that’s what’s wrong. For most research scientists, winning the Nobel Prize stands as the pinnacle of Primary Health for All success, the ultimate goal that takes intelligence, dedication, luck and Ten resolutions could globally ensure a basic human right ambition (and don’t be fat, Watson would at almost unnoticeable cost say, because fat folks are not ambitious). BY JEFFREY D. SACHS Once the king of Sweden drapes that medal around your neck, life is good— Sixty years ago at the Second, half the increase should be people want to hear you speak, offer you launch of the World channeled through the Global Fund to prestigious positions and are more Health Organization, Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. inclined to give you what you want. the world’s govern- The Global Fund has proved to be a To their credit, some scientists take ments declared health highly effective institution, with mini- the opportunity to tackle very “out there” to be a fundamental mal bureaucracy and maximum impact. research. Soon after he won his 1995 Nobel in Physics, Martin Perl launched a human right “without It has supported the distribution of project to fi nd “free quarks.” distinction of race, religion, political approximately 30 million antimalaria Conventional thinking says there can be belief, economic or social condition.” bed nets, helped to get nearly one million no such things—quarks must remain Thirty years ago in Alma Ata, the world’s Africans on antiretroviral treatment and bound in the particles in which they governments called for health for all helped to cure more than two million build—but some scientists speculate that by the year 2000, mainly through the people of TB. some quarks might have been left over expansion of access to primary health Third, low-income countries should during the big bang. Perl recognized the facilities and services. While the world devote 15 percent of their own national long-shot odds of fi nding these quarks, missed that target by a budgets to health. but it was a project he could do because long shot, we can still Consider a poor coun- of his Nobel. A graduate student would be achieve it, at remark- These simple steps try where the average committing career suicide. ably low cost. Ten key income is $300 a year. Other researchers run from the glory. could save the lives steps can bring us to The total national Brian Josephson, who discovered the of nearly 10 million quantum effect in which superconducting health for all in the budget might be electrons could jump across a narrow next few years. adults and children. around 15 percent of barrier, went off to study mysticism and First, affl uent coun- GDP, or roughly $45 psychic phenomena. (His problems, tries should devote 0.1 percent of their per capita. Fifteen percent of that fi gure though, may run deeper; not many people gross domestic product to health care for devoted to health would come to just would choose Taco Bell for a [free] lunch low-income countries. With a rich world $6.75 per person per year: not enough to meeting.) GDP of $35 trillion, that would create a provide adequate basic health care on its After the wacky things James Watson fund of roughly $35 billion a year— own, but combined with $35 per capita has uttered over the past decades—on enough for $35 per capita in added health from donor aid, it would do the job. continued on page 37 services for the roughly one billion peo- Fourth, the world should adopt a plan

ple who need them. for comprehensive malaria control, aim- INSTITUTE GILBERT/EARTH BRUCE

ing to bring malaria mortality nearly to zero by 2012 through nurses and community health comprehensive access to antimalaria bed workers. nets, indoor spraying where appro- Tenth, using recent break- priate, and effective medicines throughs in medicine and when malarial illness arises. public health, the expanded Fifth, the rich countries health systems in the poorest should follow through on their countries should be equipped long-standing and achievable to handle noncommunicable commitment to ensure access diseases that have long been to antiretrovirals for all HIV- neglected but are treatable at low cost: infected individuals by 2010. hypertension, cataracts and depression. Sixth, the world should fi ll the These simple steps could save the lives of nearly 10 million fi nancing gap of roughly $3 billion adults and children a year, at a cost that would be nearly unno- a year for comprehensive TB control— ticeable to the world’s wealthiest nations. These measures would another area where known and long-proved interventions are also slow, rather than accelerate, population growth in impover- highly effective but chronically underfunded. ished regions, thereby easing the economic and environmental Seventh, the world should honor, for just a few billion dollars strains that bulging populations are imposing on them. Health a year, the access of the poorest of the poor to sexual and repro- for all is not only the moral imperative it was at the launch of the ductive health services, including family planning, contraception World Health Organization 60 years ago, it is also the best prac- and emergency obstetrical care. tical bargain on the planet. g Eighth, the Global Fund should offer roughly $400 million a year for comprehensive control of several tropical diseases (main- Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute ly worm infections), which occur in virtually the same regions at Columbia University (www.earth.columbia.edu). where malaria is rampant. Ninth, the Global Fund should open a new fi nancing mecha- An expanded version of this essay is available at nism to bolster primary health care, including—most impor- www.SciAm.com/ontheweb tant—the construction of clinics and the hiring and training of

Forum A Better Mosquito Net Fighting malaria will require more innovative defenses BY EVA KAPLAN

Malaria remains one of To combat the disease, many develop- there is anecdotal evidence that some the world’s great scourges, ment agencies have focused on distribut- people have employed the nets as wedding striking more than 500 ing mosquito nets that would protect Afri- veils or fishing aids. Some economists million people every year. cans from being bitten while they sleep. argue that charging a small fee for the The groups most at risk This strategy has resulted in a huge upsurge nets would increase the likelihood that are pregnant women and in the number of bed nets supplied to the they would be used appropriately. Others children younger than population as a whole and particularly to claim such a fee would prevent a large ﬁ ve years old. In sub-Saharan Africa, 20 pregnant women and young children. The part of the population from receiving percent of all childhood deaths are from widespread distribution, however, has nets. These are valuable debates. Before malaria. Pregnant women who contract not resulted in a signiﬁ cant decrease in delving into behavioral economics, the mosquito-borne disease can develop malaria. Many doctors in sub-Saharan though, it might be useful to consider a severe anemia and give birth to under- Africa attribute the failure to an overreli- more basic problem: the mosquito nets weight babies. The World Health Organi- ance on nets in lieu of other interventions, are poorly designed. zation estimates that 10,000 pregnant such as the indoor spraying of dwellings The bed nets distributed by govern- woman and 200,000 infants in Africa die with insecticide. Other experts say the ments and international organizations

from malarial infections every year. problem is the misuse of mosquito nets; have one of two basic designs: circular or COLLINS MATT BY ILLUSTRATION BORLAND; JAMES BY PHOTOGRAPH

THE EDITORS’ BL8G For more posts from SciAm Observa- tions, see www.SciAm.com/blog

continued from page 34

women, homosexuals and the obese, to name a few—now comes his decision to join hands with the transistor-developing, eugenics-advocating, sperm-donating William Shockley, who, I recall, blamed his wife’s genes for his kids being less than genius. As a geneticist, Watson arguably has better credentials to rant about race and IQ than Shockley. But that still doesn’t make him an expert on IQ studies. It’s true that blacks have historically scored 15 points lower than whites on IQs. What’s been debated endlessly is how much is tied to heredity and how much to environment. Intelligence researchers such as James Flynn have found that IQ can change over rectangular. The circular design hangs young children would be a net that does time, suggesting a strong environmental from the ceiling by one string, with the not hang at all. One possibility would be infl uence. Others, such as Philippe Rushton net fanning out from a ring at the top a collapsible, tentlike structure, very and Linda Gottfredson, say the data are at and tucked tightly under the mattress on similar to the crawl-through children’s least as consistent with hereditarian arguments as they are with environmental all sides. The rectangular design ties to toys that clutter so many playrooms in ones. I don’t want to get into a whole the ceiling with four strings and hangs the U.S. The challenge would be to make discussion about IQ again—we’ve covered straight down on all sides of the bed, the structure both affordable to produce it a lot in this magazine (see, for instance, with the fringes again tucked under the and durable enough to be used daily for “Unsettled Scores” [February 2007] and our mattress. Both designs work well for years. In addition to being user-friendly, Intelligence special issue [Scientifi c middle-class homes with flat ceilings this free-standing mosquito net would American Presents, Winter 1999]). But and a bed for every member of the fam- have to be sized for children to ensure while I’m at it, one question I have for the ily. But most of the poor in sub-Saharan that it is used by the intended recipients hereditarians: How do you separate genetic Africa, especially in rural areas, live in rather than older, hardier members of explanations from womb conditions—a mud huts, often with thatched roofs. the family. crucial environmental factor? Hanging mosquito nets is very diffi - Mosquito nets have been changed Without having mucked around in the cult in these homes, and most people before to meet user needs. Several com- morass that is IQ research, Watson can at prefer the circular nets because they are panies have recently introduced nets that best be only a casual observer. He’s reportedly dim about the prospects of easier to hang. Although the rectangular are impregnated with long-lasting insec- Africa because of that continent’s lower nets can be used without a bed, the cir- ticide, eliminating the need for people to intelligence test scores. What—cultural cular nets cannot, because they have to continually apply fresh coatings of confl icts, religious attitudes and greed are be tucked under the mattress to fan out. chemicals to the nets. Companies must less important? That’s hard to justify when In many African communities, most continue to improve mosquito nets if you look at what’s going on in different children younger than fi ve sleep on the progress is to be made in combating parts of the world right now. fl oor, so only the rectangular nets would malaria. And once better nets are avail- Yet because of his Nobel and past be effective. But the rectangular nets able, researchers will be able to objec- accomplishments as a geneticist, Watson’s take up quite a bit of room in a mud hut tively judge the effectiveness of the dis- words take on added meaning and weight and have to be taken down and rehung tribution programs. g beyond what they deserve. Winning the every night for the hut to be of use dur- Nobel grants a great deal of power. Too bad ing the day. Given the diffi culty of hang- Eva Kaplan is a writer and consultant Watson didn’t channel Stan Lee and ing the nets, it is unreasonable to expect who has managed research projects recognize that with great power comes people to follow this routine. focused on disease prevention in great responsibility.

MATT COLLINS MATT A design more suited to the needs of sub-Saharan Africa.

Skeptic Evonomics Evolution and economics are both examples of a larger mysterious phenomenon BY MICHAEL SHERMER

Living along the Orinoco River that borders Brazil and Venezuela are the Yanomamö people, hunter-gatherers every aspect of whose average annual income has the economy. But just been estimated at the equivalent of $90 as living organisms are per person per year. Living along the shaped from the bottom up by Hudson River that borders New York natural selection, the economy is mold- State and New Jersey are the Manhattan people, con- ed from the bottom up by the invisible hand. sumer-traders whose average annual income has been The correspondence between evolution and eco- estimated at $36,000 per person per year. That dramatic dif- nomics is not perfect, because some top-down institution- ference of 400 times, however, pales in comparison to the differ- al rules and laws are needed to provide a structure within which ences in Stock Keeping Units (SKUs, a measure of the number of free and fair trade can occur. But too much top-down interference types of retail products available), which has been estimated at into the marketplace makes trade neither free nor fair. When such 300 for the Yanomamö and 10 billion for the Manhattans, a dif- attempts have been made in the past, they have failed—because ference of 33 million times! markets are far too complex, interactive and autocatalytic to be How did this happen? According to economist Eric D. Bein- designed from the top down. In his 1922 book, Socialism, Lud- hocker, who published these calculations in his revelatory work wig von Mises spelled out the reasons why, most notably the prob- The Origin of Wealth (Harvard Business School Press, 2006), lem of “economic calculation” in a planned socialist economy. In the explanation is to be found in complexity theory. Evolution capitalism, prices are in constant and rapid fl ux and are deter- and economics are not just analogous to each other, but they are mined from below by individuals freely exchanging in the mar- actually two forms of a larger phenomenon called complex adap- ketplace. Money is a means of exchange, and prices are the infor- tive systems, in which individual elements, parts or agents inter- mation people use to guide their choices. Von Mises demonstrat- act, then process information and adapt their behavior to changed that socialist economies depend on capitalist economies to ing conditions. Immune systems, ecosystems, language, the law determine what prices should be assigned to goods and services. and the Internet are all examples of complex adaptive systems. And they do so cumbersomely and ineffi ciently. Relatively free In biological evolution, nature selects from the variation pro- markets are, ultimately, the only way to fi nd out what buyers are duced by random genetic mutations and the mixing of parental willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept. genes. Out of that process of cumulative selection emerges com- Evonomics helps to explain how Yanomamö-like hunter-gath- plexity and diversity. In economic evolution, our material econ- erers evolved into Manhattan-like consumer-traders. Nine- omy proceeds through the production and selection of numerous teenth-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat well captured permutations of countless products. Those 10 billion products the principle: “Where goods do not cross frontiers, armies will.” in the Manhattan village represent only those variations that In addition to being fi erce warriors, the Yanomamö are also made it to market, after which there is a cumulative selection by sophisticated traders, and the more they trade the less they fi ght. consumers in the marketplace for those deemed most useful: The reason is that trade is a powerful social adhesive that creates VHS over Betamax, DVDs over VHS, CDs over vinyl records, political alliances. One village cannot go to another village and flip phones over brick phones, computers over typewriters, announce that they are worried about being conquered by a third, Google over Altavista, SUVs over station wagons, paper books more powerful village—that would reveal weakness. Instead over e-books (still), and Internet news over network news (soon). they mask the real motives for alliance through trade and recip- Those that are purchased “survive” and “reproduce” into the rocal feasting. And, as a result, not only gain military protection future through repetitive use and remanufacturing. but also initiate a system of trade that—in the long run—leads to As with living organisms and ecosystems, the economy looks an increase in both wealth and SKUs. g designed—so just as humans naturally deduce the existence of a top-down intelligent designer, humans also (understandably) Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com).

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAD SWONETZ; ILLUSTRATION BY MATT COLLINS infer that a top-down government designer is needed in nearly His latest book is The Mind of the Market (Times Books).

Anti Gravity What’s in a (Latin) Name? The special genius behind the species and genus BY STEVE MIRSKY

The greater roadrunner is offi cially classifi ed as with Brassica oleracea (Capitata Group) is even nuttier (Berthol- Geococcyx californianus. The lesser roadrun- letia excelsa) in Latin. Preventing mix-ups is one reason why ner is Geococcyx velox. And the more familiar Linnaeus’s system comes in so handy: French president Nicolas cartoon Road Runner (beep beep) has been Sarkozy might call it a moineau, Spain’s King Juan Carlos might designated on different occasions as Accelerati call it a gorrión, and Vice President Dick Cheney might (or might incredibilus, Velocitus tremenjus, Birdibus zip- not) call out “fi re in the hole” before trying to blow it out of the pibus, Speedipus rex and Morselus babyfatious sky, but the bird in question would be recognizable to all their tastius. Consistently unsuccessful in his attempts to catch Fasti- science advisers as Passer domesticus. Which is also known in us tasty-us is Wile E. Coyote, himself variously classifi ed as a English as the house sparrow. And because common species representative of the species Carnivorous slobbius, Eatius bird- names, even within a single language, lack the authority of the ius, Overconfi dentii vulgaris, Poor schinookius or Caninus ner- offi cial Linnaean designations, the house sparrow is also known vous rex. (Real coyotes are Canis latrans, which sounds like a in English as the English sparrow. Help, is there a taxonomist in bathroom used by Roman legionnaires.) the house? So who do we, and the Looney Tunes folks, have to Linnaeus’s twin great works were the 1753 Species thank for setting the ground rules that led to all this Planterum, in which he classifi ed all the known highfalutin Latinate humor? None other than Swedish species of vegetation, and the naturalist Carl Linnaeus, who was so in love with 1758 Systema Naturae, which naming things that he gave himself a few more: Carl celebrates its 250th anniversary Linné, Carl von Linné, Carolus Linnaeus and Car- this year and which was the fi rst oli Linnaei, the name by which he proposed the major effort at organizing the standard genus-species system of taxonomic animal world. The Wikipedia binomial nomenclature still used to keep track entry on Linnaeus notes that because of all that life out there. The year 2007 was of his habit of naming all the living the tricentennial of Linnaeus’s birth, which things he encountered, “he thought shows that some people’s contributions of himself as a second Adam.” The give them a postmortem vita that’s not at cover of Systema Naturae shows a all brevis. man, presumably Linnaeus, toss- American journalist and wag H. L. ing Latin titles to “new creatures Mencken paid unwitting tribute to Linnae- as they are created in the Gar- us’s classifi cation scheme when he dubbed a den of Eden.” No shrink- large percentage of the U.S. population ing member of the genus Boobus americanus. (Don’t worry, he Viola was he. meant the other guys, not you.) Mencken Linnaeus appears to described the perpetually bamboozled have occasionally abused B. americanus as “a bird that knows no closed his absolute appellative power. season,” which coincidentally describes the Road The New York Botanical Gar- Runner, also known as Disappearialis quickius. Mencken, by the den, which hosted a rare public display of Linnaeus’s own anno- way, covered the famous Scopes trial, in which some Homo sapi- tated copy of the Systema Naturae last November, notes on its ens treated the notion that they were related to Gorilla gorilla and Web site that “he got revenge on his critics by naming unpleasant Pan troglodytes like it was a Yersinia pestis infection. plants and animals after them. For example, he named Sieges- Among Mencken’s many pithy comments about H. sapiens is, beckia, an unattractive Asian weed that exudes foul-smelling liq- “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than uid, for German botanist Johan Siegesbeck.” So Linnaeus was a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.” And in probably a pain in the Equus asinus. But without him, biology

fact, mixing up any of the numerous species of the genus Rosa could not have become big-name science. g COLLINS MATT BY ILLUSTRATION LARSEN; FLYNN BY PHOTOGRAPH

40 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN January 2008 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. Technological overoptimism lurks as a persistent risk to both profes- TRENDS sional and amateur watchers of advances, from artiﬁ cial intelligence to the ﬂ ying car. But sometimes new technologies actually live up to ■ Wireless Power some of the wildest expectations for them.

■ Drug Delivery This year’s SciAm 50 awards are replete with instances of new ■ Sustainable Fuels machines or chemicals that come close to the true meaning of innova- tion as something entirely new. One winner has created an instrument ■ Toxic Housewares that measures ﬂ uids in zeptoliters, or sextillionths of a liter. (You know, ■ Ultrameasurement the zeptoliter, the measurement unit that is 1,000th of an attoliter?) ■ Malaria-Free Mosquitoes Another innovator has devised a method that could recharge a phone ■ Bioinspired Materials without plugging it in. All you would have to do is sit at the dining ■ Diagnosing Alzheimer’s room table, phone in pocket, a few feet away from a recharging coil ■ Optical Chips hidden in the ceiling. Still another visionary is paving the way for treat- ■ Prion Disease Treatments ing mysterious and deadly prion diseases such as mad cow and kuru. ■ Sun Power Award winners highlighted here have the potential to contribute ■ Understanding Stem Cells much more to human health, consumer electronics and numerous other ﬁ elds than if they were simply offering another antidepressant that ■ Chip Printers tweaked serotonin levels or ratcheting up the speed of a microproces- ■ Prosthetics sor. What they have done is decidedly new. ■ Intelligent Route Finders —The Editors

www.SciAm.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 41 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. SCIAM 50 RESEARCH LEADER OF THE YEAR The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium U.K. A massive genetic study turns up the complex roots of major diseases

ith genetic scientifi c advances reported almost daily, it anomalies. Some of the signals were in coding regions of genes; W sometimes seems as if we are merely waiting for research- some were in noncoding regions that might regulate other ers to discover the gene at fault for every human disease. The genes; and some were in “gene deserts”—noncoding regions complex genetic basis of many common diseases, however, with no identifi ed function. The variants themselves may not complicates prediction, diagnosis and treatment. actually be responsible for the diseases. But they serve as sign- The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC), posts for other researchers to investigate DNA at a fi ne scale. a constellation of more than 50 British research groups, took on Every person possesses a certain pattern of “polymorphisms” the mammoth challenge of ferreting out the causes of diseases in the six billion nucleotides of their genomic DNA—three bil- in which multiple genes are implicated. Last June they reported lion for each of the two sets of chromosomes. The statistical the fi ndings of a study that scanned for specifi c gene variations pattern of how these variations occur, provided by studies such among 17,000 British citizens: 2,000 each from patient groups as the one conducted by the WTCCC, will help physicians cal- diagnosed with bipolar disorder, coronary heart disease, Crohn’s culate the chances that a patient could develop symptoms of a disease, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension and diabetes types hereditary disorder. The ultimate goal of this research is per- 1 and 2, as well as 3,000 unaffl icted who served as a control sonalized medicine in which patients submit a blood sample group. The large scale of the study was unprecedented and so and have their entire set of genes analyzed to determine predis- was the payoff: 24 locations in the genome were found to be position to chronic diseases, the best food and exercise regi- associated with six of the seven diseases. mens to stay healthy, and which drugs and dosages will be most The WTCCC compared the genomes of each affected group effective when illness does strike. —Kaspar Mossman with those of the controls and zeroed in on locations where

GENOME-WIDE SCANS turned up gene variants associated with dis- ) DNA bases differed between the two groups. The size of the ease, such as those for type 1 diabetes, shown as green highlights

study was essential in enabling the researchers to spot rare on a representation of chromosomes. bottom

TYPE 1 DIABETES

BUSINESS LEADER OF THE YEAR

SCIAM 50 ); ( THOMAS Inc. DEERINCK Researchers, NCMIR/Photo top Amyris Biotechnologies Emeryville, Calif. The emerging ﬁ eld of synthetic biology provides candidates for a new generation of biofuels

thanol is not the most energy-dense burned in modern engines and would be E of fuels nor the cheapest. Consequent- compatible with the existing petroleum ly, Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, infrastructure. Then the company used Calif., has come up with a potentially custom-designed microbes to produce better solution. It did so by starting with the new fuels by fermentation from a a long roster of organic compounds from conventional ethanol feedstock.

which it chose potential replacements for To create the novel strains was no YEAST microbes, once genetically engin eered, VOL. 447; JUNE REPRINTED 2007. 7, BY PERMISSION OF MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LTD. ( gasoline, diesel and jet fuel that could be small genetic feat. The task required sub- can boost biofuel yields dramatically. NATURE, NATURE, FROM “GENOME-WIDE ASSOCIATION STUDY OF 14,000 CASES OF SEVEN COMMON DISEASES AND 3,000 SHARED CONTROLS,” BY THE WELLCOME TRUST CASE CONTROL CONSORTIUM, IN IN

42 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN January 2008 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. stantial alterations to the yeast genome. Economic Forum as a Technology Pio- more valuable: a fuel end product has to Genes from the original plant source and neer, is now close to its goal of supplying be cheap enough to burn. Amyris will two other organisms were inserted, and cheap industrial quantities of artemis- have to optimize each microbial strain so a preexisting biochemical pathway was inin to developing countries. that it cranks out fuel without poisoning carefully adjusted. The engineered yeast Amyris decided that its expertise itself and produces enough fuel molecules boasted a millionfold increase in yield. could prove equally profitable when so that it is economically worthwhile to A leader in the emerging ﬁ eld of syn- applied to biofuels. It initiated a search grow. In the history of the large-scale thetic biology, Amyris is well known for for fuels that could be produced in the chemical industry, the subtlety of techni- developing a strain of yeast for large-scale lab and that met criteria on energy con- cal expertise involved in this project is manufacture of a precursor to the antima- tent, volatility and water solubility. without precedent. Yet Amyris, which larial drug artemisinin, for which the The difference between engineering last June added several oil industry veter- Asian plant source is in short supply. The microbes to produce drugs versus fuel is ans to its management, has shown that it company, chosen in 2006 by the World that, ounce for ounce, drugs are much means business. —Kaspar Mossman

SCIAM 50 POLICY LEADER OF THE YEAR

X Prize Foundation Santa Monica, Calif. The lure of multimillion-dollar prizes prompts inventors to pursue breakthroughs in space travel, DNA sequencing, automotive fuel efﬁ ciency, and robotics

n 1927 the aviation world marveled at Charles A. Lindbergh’s Archon X Prize is Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical I nonstop fl ight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh was in it for physicist who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. more than thrills: he was after the $25,000 Orteig Prize. In a 21st- Last April the foundation also offered the Automotive X century encore, the 12-year-old nonprofi t X Prize Foundation Prize, for the fi rst 100-mile-per-gallon production car. And in conceives and manages competitions for daring innovators. September the group announced the $30-million Google Lunar The foundation’s game plan is to defi ne an exciting target X Prize purse for the fi rst private groups to land spacecraft on that benefi ts humanity, bait it with a large stack of cash, and the moon. Money may be an object for some, but there is no draw out the best in design and invention from private, nongov- doubt that the challenges set by the X Prize Foundation light a ernmental teams. The competitors, the thinking goes, will fi re under innovators worldwide. —Kaspar Mossman invest much more in technology chasing the prestige of the prize than the foundation will hand out at the awards ceremony. Events have borne out this prediction. The foundation set a goal in 1995 “to make space travel safe, affordable and acces- sible to everyone through the creation of a personal spacefl ight industry.” In 2004 Mojave Aerospace Ventures won the Ansa- ri X Prize as the fi rst team to build a space plane that could reach low-Earth orbit, return to Earth and repeat the fl ight within two weeks. Twenty-six teams entered the contest and collectively spent more than $100 million on research. The second prize, which the foundation offered in late 2006, is the $10-million Archon X Prize, for the fi rst private team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days at a cost of less than $1 million. At least four teams have already signed up for the challenge of inventing an instrument that will correctly sequence 98 percent of each genome with no more than 60,000 errors. The winning technology would accelerate deployment of new discoveries such as genome-wide association studies, which analyze large patient groups to identify genes responsible for AMBITIOUS GOALS that benefi t humanity, such as a private robotic complex hereditary diseases. A prominent supporter of the moon mission, serve as the rationale for the X Prize Foundation. COURTESY OF X PRIZE FOUNDATION

www.SciAm.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 43 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. SCIAM 50 TRENDS IN BUSINESS, POLICY AND RESEARCH Connections to an Untethered Future Delivering electric power through the air cuts the ﬁ nal cord

lthough laptops, cell phones and other gadgets give us up to pay $600 for it. The handheld device combines all the A remarkable mobility, we can roam untethered only for as functions of an advanced mobile phone with those of the latest long as our batteries hold out. Photonics researcher Marin Soljaˇcić iPod, thereby allowing users to wander freely while making of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wants to eliminate phone calls, accessing the Web, sending text messages and e- that shackle by delivering wireless electricity, or WiTricity. mail, taking photographs, listening to music and watching vid- Soljaˇcic ´ hung a copper coil 0.6 meter (two feet) in diameter eos. Although some earlier phones had offered many of these from a ceiling, then hung another coil about 2.1 meters (seven functions, the iPhone’s full-size “multi-touch” screen gave cus- feet) away, with a 60-watt lightbulb dangling from it. When he tomers far more fl exibility, including use of a standard keyboard for messaging, streaming of YouTube video and a visual list of voice mails—not to mention access to iTunes, by far the dominant online music source. Wireless sensors also gained fl exibility. Reduced to the size of rice grains or dust, they can mount a vigil for chemical and biological weapons or check for moisture content in the soil. Already they are changing how people monitor the world. A major barrier, however, has been how to know if such networks of randomly distributed sensors leave gaps in coverage or if the sensors’ ranges overlap, thus wasting the precious bits of power they may carry. Robert Ghrist, a mathematician at the University of Illinois at The iPhone’s “multi-touch” screen gives the user access to a stan- Urbana-Champaign, and mathematics professor Vin de Silva of dard keyboard, streaming video, music and a list of voice mails. Pomona College harnessed the science of mathematical homology to answer both questions. Homology analyzes the points, plugged the fi rst coil into a power source, the lightbulb on the lines and geometric arrangements within shapes. By treating sen- second coil lit up. Electric current in the fi rst coil established a sors as points, pairs of sensors as edges, and collections of edges magnetic fi eld that induced current in the second one. as shapes, Ghrist and de Silva devised algorithms that can tell Many motors exploit this effect, but normally induction works whether a sprinkled network of sensors overlap or leave gaps. only across gaps of a few millimeters, dying off rapidly with The advantage of Ghrist’s and de Silva’s algorithms is that they greater distance. Soljaˇcic ´ tuned his coils to resonate, allowing effi - only need to know which sensors are within range of one anoth- cient energy exchange over a distance. Future implementations er, not where each sensor actually is; they eliminate the need for of his system might enable laptops and cell phones to recharge expensive global-positioning circuits or the manual mapping of when they are in a room equipped with a resonance emitter. circuits. Knowing the locations of gaps and overlaps, network The human impulse to cut the cord runs deep. Apple released operators could turn up the power of certain sensors or strategi- the iPhone as an ultimate wireless interface, and people lined cally add new ones to fi ll in blank spots. —Mark Fischetti

Getting from Here to There A protein borrowed from the rabies virus gets a drug to where it is needed

s hard as it is for scientists to develop new drugs, some- es, but Manjunath N. Swamy and his team at Harvard Medical A times just getting the drug to where it needs to act is equal- School’s Immune Disease Institute devised a clever way to ly challenging. Nowhere is this more true than in the brain, sneak a drug through and insert it directly into brain cells. where blood vessel walls are tightly knit, keeping most large Some viruses that specialize in infecting the nervous sys- molecules from seeping out of the bloodstream and into brain tem, such as rabies and herpes, are adept at penetrating the tissue. This blood-brain barrier is a formidable obstacle to blood-brain barrier. Swamy’s group exploited that capability delivering certain types of treatments for neurological diseas- by disguising a drug with a small protein normally found © 2007 APPLE, INC. APPLE, INC. 2007 ©

on the surface of the rabies virus. The protein is believed to of a biopolymer cage that can protect or conceal a variety of unlock a passageway through the blood vessel walls, and a substances until their release is desirable. Both the cage mate- drug molecule hitched to the viral protein was able to pene- rial and the trigger to discharge its contents can be tailored to trate the barrier. Once inside the brain, the protein also specifi c situations. allowed the drug to enter individual nerve cells, much as a For instance, Boumans’s group created a germ-killing plas- virus would infect them. The therapeutic molecule used in tic wrap for meat by encapsulating a bactericidal enzyme Swamy’s experiments was a small nucleic acid chain, known inside woven cages of cross-linked starch molecules, then coat- as a short-interfering RNA (siRNA), which can be customized ing the plastic with them. The starch cages remain inert unless to target specifi c genes and suppress their effects, making bacteria are present and start eating the starch, thus degrad- siRNA delivered straight to the brain a versatile tool for a wide ing the cage until—surprise—the killer enzyme is released. A range of uses. similar system could allow unstable food-fl avoring molecules The same can be said of another tiny Trojan horse built by to remain encased until they contact enzymes on the tongue Hans Boumans and his colleagues at the Netherlands Organi- or foul-tasting nutrients to stay sealed in their cages until they zation for Applied Research. The team’s “BioSwitch” consists reach digestive enzymes in the gut. —Christine Soares

Fueling Alternatives Engineers make progress toward new green fuels and energy storage devices

espite efforts to brew ethanol as a sus- So when James A. Dumesic and his fel- on the electrode’s surface from oxidiz- D tainable automotive fuel substitute for low chemical engineers at the University ing, which slows down power-generating gasoline, the plant-derived alcohol has its of Wisconsin–Madison developed a chemical reactions and also often causes drawbacks. A gallon (3.8 liters) of etha- straightforward way to extract a syn- its membrane to degrade, rendering the nol, for one, contains almost a third less thetic fuel from sugar that in many ways cell useless. By spraying the electrode energy than the same volume of gasoline. surpasses ethanol, the scientifi c commu- with nanoparticles of gold, Adzic’s team nity took notice. Called 2,5-dimethylfu- made the platinum layer resistant to dis- ran, or simply DMF, the fuel possesses solving and helped it retain most of its an energy density equivalent to that of original catalytic effi cacy. gasoline. It is also insoluble in water and To produce electricity, most PEM fuel stable in storage. Although chemists have cells must be supplied either with hydro- long known about the compound, vol- gen or with hydrocarbon compounds ume production has been tricky. The that can be catalytically decomposed new two-step process makes improve- into hydrogen. Some prototype fuel cells, ments in an intermediate manufacturing however, resemble biological cells in that 2 nanometers step that was a barrier to mass produc- they use chemical enzymes to break tion of DMF. down sugars—a special class of hydro- Beyond fi nding new alternative fuels carbon molecules—to generate electrons. for internal-combustion engines, re- Unlike living cells, they typically soon searchers are working on fuel cells that run out of the enzymes necessary to sus- offer another path toward environmen- tain the reaction. tally acceptable power. The key to an Electrochemist Shelley D. Minteer and

VOL. 315; 2007. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AAAS OF PERMISSION WITH REPRINTED 2007. 315; VOL. effective hydrogen, or proton-exchange her colleague Tamara Klotzbach, both at membrane (PEM), fuel cell is the micro- Saint Louis University, have developed a thin coating of platinum particles on method to replenish the enzymes in a the positively charged electrode, where sugar-powered fuel cell as they degrade oxygen molecules split into individual with use. The researchers have come up charged atoms. with a polymer wrapping for an enzyme, 3 nanometers Chemist Radoslav R. Adzic and his which keeps the catalytic molecule active Gold clusters (circles) retard the oxidation team at Brookhaven National Laborato- for months instead of days. of a platinum catalyst in a fuel cell. ry have found a way to stop the platinum —Steven Ashley FROM “STABILIZATION OF PLATINUM OXYGEN REDUCTION ELECTROCATALYSTS USING GOLD CLUSTERS,” BY J. ZHANG, ZHANG, J. BY CLUSTERS,” GOLD USING ELECTROCATALYSTS REDUCTION OXYGEN PLATINUM OF “STABILIZATION FROM SCIENCE, IN ADZIC, R. R. AND SUTTER SASAKI, E. K.

www.SciAm.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 45 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. SCIAM 50 TRENDS IN BUSINESS, POLICY AND RESEARCH Fighting Toxins in the Home Everyday materials may pose health and environmental threats

esearchers are continually fi nding new evidence that com- Unused pharmaceuti- R mon items in our kitchens, bathrooms and toy chests can cals are a particularly make us sick. One of the most insidious substances is bisphenol serious threat because A, a component of the light plastics used in baby bottles and consumers often fl ush Ordinary plastic items may many other consumer products. Over the past several years, sci- them down the toilet, send- cause sickness. entists have reported that low levels of bisphenol A can disrupt ing the potent molecules cell division, leading to spontaneous miscarriages and birth into rivers and lakes. Discarded birth-control pills can trigger defects such as Down syndrome. reproductive problems in fi sh, and surplus antibiotics can In early 2007 a team led by Patricia A. Hunt of Washington enhance the spread of bacteria that are resistant to the drugs. State University found that small amounts of bisphenol A inter- In an attempt to tackle this problem, the American Pharmacists fered with the growth of egg cells in developing female mouse Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed an embryos. As many as 40 percent of the eggs from fetuses agreement last year to launch a public-awareness campaign to exposed to bisphenol A had an abnormal number of chromo- change consumer habits. When people pick up their prescrip- somes. This stunning fi nding showed that the chemical’s effects tions, they will be advised to dispose of their unused pharma- can run through three generations: the pregnant mother’s expo- ceuticals through hazardous-waste collection programs. If sure damages the daughter’s reproductive cells, which in turn such programs are not locally available, the next best option is disrupts the development of the daughter’s own children. crushing and diluting the medicines, then sealing them in plas- The National Toxicology Program, which is part of the tic bags and dumping them in the trash. (Some narcotic drugs National Institutes of Health, is currently reviewing the safety of will be exempt from the recommendations because of the risk bisphenol A. In the meantime, some physicians advise pregnant that addicts will retrieve the pills from garbage cans.) women to avoid drinking water from plastic bottles, especially An even better solution would be the establishment of incen- once the containers become visibly scratched or scuffed, which tives to encourage consumers to return their unused drugs to may indicate that they are leaching the hazardous chemical. pharmacies. Pilot programs of this type are now operating in Toxic household items also pose a danger to the environment. California, Washington State and Maine. —Mark Alpert

Advances in Ultrameasurement )

Zeptoliter pipettes and quantum rulers give new meaning to the word “small” bottom

cientists use pipettes when they need S to dispense well-deﬁ ned volumes of liquid. Existing pipettes can deliver ﬂ uid volumes as small as an attoliter—a quin- tillionth, or a billionth of a billionth, of a liter. Physicists Peter W. Sutter and Eli A. Sutter of Brookhaven National Lab- oratory have broken that lower limit by

constructing a pipette that metes out a ( LABORATORY NATIONAL BROOKHAVEN OF COURTESY ); top droplet measured in a unit that is a thou- sandth as small—a zeptoliter (a sextil- lionth of a liter). Such a minute volume Design Pics/Corbis ( Pics/Corbis Design Eli A. Sutter and Peter W. Sutter built the world’s smallest pipette, which helped to show that droplets of liquid metal freeze differently than scientists expected. KRISTY-ANNE GLUBISH GLUBISH KRISTY-ANNE

can contain as little as 10,000 to as much ments—has allowed physicists at Hokkai- as a million atoms of metal. do University in Japan and the University The researchers used a germanium of Bristol in England to almost double the nanowire with a solid reservoir of gold- precision of measurement when using germanium alloy at one end. They encap- photons to gauge distances. sulated the two-micron-long assembly in The scientists have built on previous a carbon shell, which constituted the work that uses photons “entangled” in pipette. Inside a vacuum chamber, they the same quantum superposition of heated and melted the alloy and then states. The team directed two photonic aimed an electron beam at the shell’s tip. pairs into an interferometer—an instru- The beam bored an escape hole for the ment that creates a circular beam path molten metal, which formed a minuscule with mirrors in which light waves inter- droplet up to 40 nanometers in diameter fere with one another. Each photon Entangled photons in an interferometer and 35 zeptoliters in volume. splits, taking separate paths simultane- make ultraprecise measurements. If measuring things in zeptoliters is ously. Four photons in an entangled state difficult, consider doing so at a scale circulate around the interferometer in how far each quadruplet has traveled. where the rules of classical physics cease one direction, and another quadruplet The precision measurements could, to prevail. Quantum metrology—the traverses the loop in the other. The inter- for example, be useful when using lasers field in which quantum mechanics is ference produced by the countercirculat- to etch ultrathin circuits on computer

); ); used to obtain highly precise measure- ing photons reveals tiny differences in chips. —Steven Ashley top

Mosquitoes Enlisted to Beat Malaria Bugs engineered to avoid transmitting the disease could outcompete bugs that do transmit it

alaria still kills more than a million Anopheles that directs production of a ogy presented evidence that engineered M people a year. Even though low-tech peptide called SM1, which manifests in genes can indeed spread throughout a measures such as spraying insecticides the mosquito’s gut and prevents malaria bug population. Working with fruit ﬂ ies,

VOL. 316; 2007. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF AAAS OF ( PERMISSION WITH REPRINTED 2007. 316; VOL. and distributing treated bed netting to parasites in rodents from reproducing. Hay’s team combined a segment of non- residents can reduce infection rates, poor The Johns Hopkins team put the trans- coding RNA, known as a microRNA, SCIENCE, countries, where most victims live, cannot genic and natural with a gene that was afford them. mosquitoes in cages critical to the develop- As an alternative strategy, researchers with malaria-infect- ment of fruit fl y embry- have tried for years to genetically engi- ed mice, on which the os; the researchers then neer mosquitoes so they will not transmit mosquitoes fed. Over altered that gene so that the disease. Malaria is caused by proto- time the mosquitoes it was unaffected by the zoan parasites that reproduce inside reproduced. After RNA. Next they re- human liver and red blood cells and are nine generations, leased the fruit fl ies into passed from person to person by female transgenic bugs made cages with three times Anopheles mosquitoes. Although several up 70 percent of the Mosquitoes can be genetically as many normal flies. engineered to avoid passing malaria research teams managed to insert genes overall population. to humans. As generations mixed, ) into lab-bred mosquitoes that made the The disease-resistant wild fl ies that incorpo- bottom ( bugs less hospitable to the parasites, the strains not only competed with the wild rated the microRNA died because it altered strains did not reproduce or sur- ones but survived better. destroyed their unprotected version of the vive as well as wild strains did. The test did not prove that infection- critical developmental gene, whereas fl ies But last March microbiologist Marcelo resistance genes would spread in the wild, that bore the altered version of that gene Jacobs-Lorena of Johns Hopkins Univer- but it raised hope that mosquitoes doped were able to survive. After nine to 11 gen- sity announced results indicating that with those genes would survive. Hardly a erations, all the offspring in the cage car- engineered insects could outsurvive wild month later, however, biologist Bruce A. ried the human-made gene combination. ones. Jacobs-Lorena inserted a gene into Hay of the California Institute of Technol- —Mark Fischetti FROM “BEATING THE STANDARD QUANTUM LIMIT WITH FOUR-ENTANGLED PHOTONS,” BY T. NAGATA ET AL., IN IN AL., ET NAGATA T. BY PHOTONS,” FOUR-ENTANGLED WITH LIMIT QUANTUM STANDARD THE “BEATING FROM SINCLAIR Researchers, Photo STAMMERS Inc.

www.SciAm.com SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 47 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. SCIAM 50 TRENDS IN BUSINESS, POLICY AND RESEARCH Material World Scientists take inspiration from nature and instill novel magnetic properties

ut your fi nger, and your body starts measuring about a millimeter across cut Ontario and their co-workers have pro- C mending the wound even before you out of a rubbery polymer a mere 40 to 80 duced a new class of magnets that com- have had time to go and fi nd a Band-Aid. microns thick. Thanks to the way that bine nickel with a variety of organic Synthetic materials are not so forgiving, surface tension scales with size, the tech- compounds. The dark, powdery sub- but Nancy R. Sottos, Scott R. White and nique may be effective for self-assem- stances remain magnetized up to 200 their colleagues at the University of Illi- bling micron- or nanometer-scale objects degrees Celsius. The researchers’ ulti- nois at Urbana-Champaign are looking made of thinner sheets of polymer. mate goal is to produce magnetic organ- to change all that. They developed a self- Electronic components based on plas- ic compounds that can be easily molded healing plastic that contains a three- tic or organic materials have become into thin fi lms or other useful shapes for dimensional network of microscopic electronics. capillaries fi lled with a liquid healing It was thought that the only way to agent. When the material is cracked, the see the exotic state of matter known as a released fl uid is hardened by particles of Bose-Einstein condensate—in which a a catalyst that are also sprinkled through- collection of particles essentially behaves out. The new material can repair minor as one superparticle—involved forbid- cracks up to seven times at each location, ding, near-absolute-zero cold. Sergej improving on the group’s previous sys- Demokritov of the University of Muen- tem (in which the fl uid was located in ster in Germany and his colleagues were individual pockets) that could repair the fi rst to create such condensates at only one injury at each place. room temperature. Demokritov used Another feature of natural organisms small, ephemeral packets of magnetic that scientists have been seeking to emu- When cracked, the plastic cube releases a energy known as magnons, which he self-healing agent from its microvascular late is self-assembly. Benoît Roman and network—up to seven times at one location. generated in yttrium-iron-garnet fi lms José Bico of the City of Paris Industrial by exposing them to microwaves. Mag- Physics and Chemistry Higher Educa- increasingly common in recent years, nons are far less massive than atoms and tion Institution used the surface tension but the same cannot be said for magnets. thus can form condensates at much high- of evaporating water droplets to fold Now Robin G. Hicks of the University of er temperatures. fl ea-size origami cubes, pyramids and Victoria in British Columbia, Rajsapan —Graham P. Collins and other structures. Their work used shapes Jain of the University of Windsor in Charles Q. Choi

Neurological Insights Biologists devise a memory on a chip and new ways to tackle Alzheimer’s

ow does a memory form? To demon- After some time, the neurons began to fi re proteins that combines advanced instru- H strate how this process occurs at the in the same way without chemical activa- mentation with sophisticated image pro- most basic level, biophysicists at Tel Aviv tion—the point at which they claim a cessing to inspect one-millimeter cubes University replicated that event with neu- memory becomes imprinted. of brain tissue from a pair of normal rons attached to a computer chip. Itay Understanding differences between mice. The investigators determined the Baruchi and Eshel Ben-Jacob placed neu- the proteins made by normal and dis- abundance of 1,028 proteins in the tis- rons from rat embryos on a chip surface eased brain tissues may provide a new sues. Future experiments will use this and connected 64 electrodes to record approach to diagnostics. Richard D. Smith methodology to compare normal brain activity. The researchers witnessed an of the Pacifi c Northwest National Labo- tissue with that affl icted by a neurode- identical pattern of nerve fi rings when ratory and Desmond J. Smith of the Uni- generative disease. chemical stimulants were dropped repeat- versity of California, Los Angeles, have Better diagnostic techniques are need- edly at the same location on the chip. created a complex system for analyzing ed, in particular, for Alzheimer’s disease. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at Illinois of SHEPHERDROB University

Stina M. Tucker, Esther Oh and Juan C. Troncoso of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine demonstrated a test using antibodies that bind to the amyloid-beta proteins that form damaging plaques in the brains of Alzhei mer’s patients. The antibodies adhered to proteins in an early stage of a disease that mimics Alzheimer’s in genetically engineered mice. That ﬁ nding might eventually lead to a test for humans that could be used along with drugs under development to avert the disease through preventive treatment. Conceivably, that test could be combined with a treatment that uses phages—viruses that infect bacteria—to break up nox- ious plaque. Beka Solomon of Tel Aviv University showed pre- liminary proof of this idea by administering phages via a nasal spray to 100 mice genetically engineered to develop Alzhei- 200 microns mer’s-like plaques. After a year of treatment, the mice had 80 percent fewer plaques than untreated mice. — Gary Stix Electrodes record when neurons ﬁ re so that a memory forms.

Light Manipulation New technologies exercise extraordinary control over light

s computer chips become ever more Another way of delaying light in micro- fi laments about 25 nanometers in diameter A prodigious in their data-processing scopic devices is to use photonic crystal and up to 300 nanometers long—stacked capacities, the task of shuttling all those components, which contain carefully on a transparent semiconductor wafer. gigabits around inside a chip becomes an designed arrays of holes whose size and Each layer had a lower refractive index increasing challenge. Help spacing exclude light in a than the one below it. The uncoated semi- may be on the way in the certain frequency band (a conductor refl ected about 12 percent of form of photonic compo- so-called photonic band light incident on it; when coated, it refl ect- nents, which deal in pulses of gap). A photonic crystal ed as little as 0.1 percent. The coating could light instead of slower pack- wave guide can consist of a have applications in photonic components, ets of electric charge. For sev- path without holes running light-emitting diodes and solar cells. eral years researchers have through such an array in a Other investigators are pursuing the been making so-called sili- thin slab of silicon. The far more speculative goal of building con optical waveguides, in band gap generated by the quantum computers, which would exploit Microscopic loops which light speeds along control light pulses. holes on each side of the weird features of quantum mechanics to inside the ridge between two path confines the light to achieve unprecedented processing capa- channels as if along an optical fi ber. travel that route. Takasumi Tanabe and his bilities. One approach involves storing But such optical interconnects must colleagues at the NTT Basic Research quantum data as long-lived states of deliver their data at precise times, which Laboratories in Japan took this scheme atoms and transmitting the information requires delaying the light pulses by con- several steps forward by temporarily with light waves. But combining those

) trolled amounts. One method is to send storing photons in a photonic crystal two media requires the transfer of delicate

bottom the light pulses into microscopic loops nanocavity —in this case, a small region quantum states between matter and light. made of waveguides where they circulate where the waveguide is slightly wider. In 2006 a group of researchers led by ex- ); IBM ( IBM );

top dozens of times before continuing on Whereas some researchers want to perimentalist Eugene S. Polzik of the Niels their journey. Yurii A. Vlasov and his co- delay light, others at the Rensselaer Poly- Bohr Institute at the University of Copen- workers at the IBM Thomas J. Watson technic Institute led by E. Fred Schubert hagen and theorist Ignacio Cirac of the Research Center in Yorktown Heights, have created a coating that reﬂ ects almost Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics N.Y., sent pulses of light through strings none of it. The coating, about 600 nano- in Garching, Germany, teleported quan- of as many as 100 such loops without meters thick, consisted of ﬁ ve layers of tum information from a light pulse to a suffering prohibitive losses of data. nanorods—titanium dioxide and silica cloud of atoms. —Graham P. Collins ITAY BARUCHIITAY AND ESHEL BEN-JACOB (