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Born to be Mild
Honda DN-01 Honda View Photo GalleryEngineers have tried and failed for decades to build motorcycles with automatic transmissions. Honda finally gets it right with the new DN-01 "sports cruiser" bike....
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Beyond Ethanol
Yellow Fuel Scientists search for more-efficient ways to turn corn into butanol, a biofuel that can outperform ethanol. Thom Thompson/DuPont By this spring, drivers in the U.K. will encounter an...
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Building Better Money
Better Money Exploded Bill Cop Vs. Con Artist: We asked Wayne Victor Dennis, who was once jailed for printing $15 million in fake currency, to point out security flaws in today's $100 bill. Larry...
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Do Cells Make Noise?
Sickening Sounds Listening to cells might help scientists catch cancers without painful biopsies. Hybrid Medical/Photo Researchers You have to listen very, very closely, but yes, cells produce a...
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Where Is Your Money?
Once upon a time, when banks observed the gold standard, every dollar was backed by an equal amount of metal. Put simply, your money was in the vault. But now cash is all most people ever get to hold,...
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Handheld Sunbeam
Handheld Sunbeam Hans Pieterse View Photo GalleryRalf Ottow was standing in front of his bathroom mirror one morning when he noticed that his forehead was sunburned. He hadn't been out tanning—his...
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Fire Without Flame
More Than Meets the Eye Invisible propane gas flows, unlit, from a torch. On hitting the rhodium-studded ceramic honeycomb from a catalytic converter, it burns without flame, heating the ceramic...
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This Germ Could Save Your Life
Tooth Fairy The Streptococcus mutans bacteria shown here lives inside your mouth. It eats sugars and excretes teeth-rotting acid. But by replacing its acid-production gene with a gene that makes...
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Mail That Never Gets Lost
First-Class Fit The Letter Logger is crammed with GPS and other electronics yet thin enough to fit into a standard envelope. Dawdy Photography Even snail mail is getting a tech upgrade. This month...
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The Buddy System
Dextre Matt Stubbington View Photo GalleryReplacing a circuit breaker in a dark basement is one thing. But what if you had to climb around the outside of a spacecraft orbiting hundreds of miles above...
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Fly the Eco-Friendly Skies
Eco-Friendly Skies Jeff Hunter/Getty Images View Photo GalleryLast summer, more than 1,000 environmentalists in the U.K. staged a weeklong protest in a "Climate Camp" at Heathrow Airport, where about...
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Old Cam, New Tricks
CHDK Firmware Displaying the alternate main menu. Luis Bruno Camera makers love the incremental update: selling a new model with just enough enhancements that you'll be tempted to trade up. But if you...
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What's the Biggest Thing a Carnivorous Plant Will Eat?
A Venus Fly Trap Catches Prey Stefano Zucchinali Carnivorous plants generally stick to a diet of bugs that they ensnare. On rare occasions, though, tropical pitcher plants—which drown and break down...
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Money Minded: How to Psychoanalyze the Stock Market
Avid Reader Richard Peterson used his psychiatric training to build software that analyzes investor behavior. He's founded a hedge fund based on the results. John Gilhooley There's just no nice way to...
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Extra Credit: Save the World
Meet Jennifer Daftari's fifth-grade class at Jay Elementary School in Jay, Oklahoma. They don't know it yet, but they're going to save the world.I got an e-mail not long ago from Ms. Daftari in which...
View ArticleHandheld Sunbeam
Ralf Ottow was standing in front of his bathroom mirror one morning when he noticed that his forehead was sunburned. He hadnt been out tanning—his homemade flashlight had…
View ArticleFire Without Flame
To a chemist, burning means the rapid combination of a fuel with oxygen, called oxidation. You might say, for instance, “Oh, no, we didn’t have a fire at the nuclear power…
View ArticleThis Germ Could Save Your Life
It's a drizzly morning on New York's Upper East Side, and Rockefeller University microbiologist David Thaler is sipping a double espresso amid the retro-hippie pillows and…
View ArticleMail That Never Gets Lost
Even snail mail is getting a tech upgrade. This month TrackingtheWorld, a California-based GPS developer, expects to begin mass-producing Letter Loggers—small GPS-equipped envelope inserts that could...
View ArticleThe Buddy System
Replacing a circuit breaker in a dark basement is one thing. But what if you had to climb around the outside of a spacecraft orbiting hundreds of miles above the Earth to do…
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