Bruno Siciliano is a professor of control and robotics at the University of Naples, Italy, and the president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the world’s leading robot research association. He is also the co-editor, with Stanford’s Oussama Khatib, of the new Springer Handbook of Robotics, unveiled in May at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Pasadena, Calif. The 1,611-page handbook is a weighty tome, providing a comprehensive roundup of international accomplishments in the field and presenting the very latest research in robotics. Half technical manual, ... Read More
Succor. Succor in the Court.
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
As he does four days out of the week, Commissioner Ron Albers strolls into his courtroom carrying a fishbowl filled with folded-up Post-it notes. “All rise!” intones the bailiff. His black judicial robe flowing behind him, Albers sets the fishbowl on the table and takes a seat at a raised dais, from which he presides over the San Francisco Drug Court. Albers is built like a small, compact boxer, and in the minutes before the proceedings begin, he surveys his courtroom with a quiet, almost feline interest. The courtroom audience is composed almost entirely of addicts who have been ... Read More
Pax Americana Geriatrica
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Last year, Sergei Morozov, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region of central Russia, offered prizes to couples who agreed to take advantage of a "family contact day" and wound up producing babies nine months later, on June 12, Russia's national day. It was the third year running that Ulyanovsk had declared a "sex day" and offered prizes for babies born, according to the BBC. The 2007 grand prize (for conceptions in 2006, of course) was a sport utility vehicle. The Ulyanovsk initiative is just a part of Russia's efforts to fight a looming demographic crisis that hovers over much of the world. ... Read More
OK, Maybe Joan Rivers Can Still Use It for Her Headaches …
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Botulinum toxin is one of the most poisonous naturally occurring substances in the world. You also know it as Botox. For decades, it has been used in medicine, in tiny doses, to treat overactive muscles and some eye disorders; in fact, the cosmetic potential of botulinum toxin was discovered only a few years ago when a married couple of Vancouver scientists saw patients’ frown lines melt away after treatment for eye muscle ailments. Now, the American Academy of Neurology has released new guidelines governing the medical use of botulinum toxin. Dr. David M. Simpson, professor of neurology ... Read More
Law and Terror
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
In December 2005, The New York Times set off a political chain reaction by revealing a surveillance tactic that the Bush administration had begged the newspaper to keep secret. The debate took a familiar shape. Civil libertarians and the left accused the National Security Agency of violating federal law and turning back the clock to an era of unrestrained domestic spying. The right and Bush administration supporters defended the monitoring of international phone calls and e-mails as legal and necessary in tracking terrorists. Courts objected to the end run around their role in approving search ... Read More
Truth With Consequences
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Quite a while back, a friend of mine who teaches a college course in international human rights sent me a draft of the final exam he planned to give. The test asked students to imagine they'd been hired by a presidential candidate to write a position paper supporting the creation of a U.S. Human Rights Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission was to look into "violations of U.S. laws, U.S. constitutional rights, international human rights and international laws" by the U.S. government and its allies around the world during the so-called war on terror. Back then, I thought the ... Read More
Old Without Wheels
July 14, 2008 • By • 2 Comments
The Symptoms: America's population is growing old fast. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 40 million Americans were 65 or older, comprising about 12 percent of the total population; by 2030, the Census Bureau projects, that number will swell to 71.4 million, or about 1 in 5 Americans. And as people grow older, they become less eager or able to get behind the wheel of a car: According to the National Institute on Aging, some 600,000 people who are 70 or older cease driving each year, which can leave them cut off from crucial goods, services and social functions. AARP's "successful ... Read More
The Next Market Crunch: Water
July 14, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
It’s common practice to use business or banking metaphors when discussing the human use of water; in both cases, the central idea is to exert control, to manage. In its natural state, after all, water tends to be as unpredictable as booms and busts. It arrives as rain or snow, melts, runs into streams or seeps into the ground, floods, evaporates. Through enormous effort and expense, people have been able to corral that irregularity into something that can be relied on, mostly. You assume that your kitchen faucet will run whether or not it has rained recently, just as you expect you can tap ... Read More
Environment Becomes Heredity
July 14, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Let's say, just for the fun of it, that rats engage in speed dating, and we have a hidden camera. Rat A — let’s call her Betsy — is ready and willing to select a mate from a pool of males who are milling around in a separate room, downing too many cocktails. One by one, the male rats visit Betsy as she sits, nervous and inquisitive, at a little round table, toying with her bar napkin. Rats routinely identify each other and maintain relationships via a lot of sniffing, nosing and general snorfling, and when they’re in the mood for love, they do it even more. Alas, all the snorfling ... Read More
