Technology Review: January/February 2002
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Getting Over Oil
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Years of cheap oil have slowed energy innovation to a crawl. A new Middle East crisis could change that.
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Prototype
- Prototype
- Straight from the lab: technology´s first draft.
Trailing Edge
- Engineer´s Art
- The black-sheep engineer in a family of artists contained carbonation in plastic.
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Features
- Fuel Cells vs. the Grid
- Before fuel cells take on the internal-combustion engine, they´ll offer clean electricity to offices and homes.
- Solar on the Cheap
- Turning sunshine into electricity makes environmental sense. Thanks to new plastics, it might even be affordable.
- The Next Nuclear Plant
- The first commercial "pebble bed" reactor-nearing approval in South Africa-may revive nuclear power.
- Whose Nuclear Waste?
- Yucca Mountain in Nevada looked like the perfect place to stash the byproducts of nuclear power. Fifteen years and billions of dollars later, it´s not even close to being operational. Is starting from scratch the only option?
- Hitting the Natural-Gas Jackpot
- There may be enough natural gas on earth to meet our energy needs for thousands of years. The trick is to ferry it across continents without blowing up.
- Electricity Goes to Market
- Building intelligence into the power grid would make electricity cheaper and more reliable. The technology-from self-monitoring power lines to giant transistors-is ready to go. But no one has an incentive to foot the bill.
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Columns
- Message in a Bottleneck
- Why doesn´t the U.S. appreciate wireless text messaging? It has no standards.
- Of Trek and TiVo
- Modern gadgetry looks like something from Star Trek. But it usually works like something from Gilligan´s Island.
- Why Weeds?
- If you use new technology while it´s still buggy, you´re an innovator too.
- Protecting People Above Patents
- Even during its "war on terrorism," the U.S. government says it can´t suspend patents. Wrong: it´s done so before.
Visualize
- Wave Power
- How to get watts from ocean waves.
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