Новости науки и техники в "Scientific American"

POLYMER DEVICES COULD SPEED UP DATA TRANSFER

Anyone who has waited for a web page to download can appreciate the limitations of data transfer. Advances in fiber optics have already radically increased the Internet's speed since its inception, with bandwidths of 10 gigahertz (GHz), or 10 billion bits per second, common today. Now scientists have designed polymer devices that could dramatically improve the transfer of extremely large files. The new design can supply a bandwidth of nearly 200 GHz.

HAND WEIGHTS ENHANCED ANCIENT ATHLETES' PERFORMANCES

Most performance-enhancing tricks used by today's Olympic athletes can only be detected using high-tech laboratory tests. But ancient Olympic athletes used a more obvious method to improve their results: hand weights. Standing long jumpers, it seems, used stone or lead pieces known as halteres to travel farther.

BOOKSTORE: BEHIND DEEP BLUE: BUILDING THE COMPUTER THAT DEFEATED THE WORLD CHESS CHAMPION by Feng-hsiung Hsu

It was l949 when the eminent mathematician Claude E. Shannon suggested how to program a computer to play chess. "At that time, many renowned computer scientists believed that the Computer Chess Problem - creating a chess computer that could beat the World Champion - would be solved within a few years." It was, in fact, 48 years before the IBM computer Deep Blue - capable of searching 200 million possible chess positions per second - defeated world champion Garry Kasparov. Hsu, now a research scientist at the Western Research Lab of Compaq Computer, was the system architect for Deep Blue. He makes an exciting tale of computer chess evolution and the Kasparov match. Is Deep Blue intelligent? No, Hsu says: "It is only a finely-crafted tool that exhibits intelligent behavior in a limited domain."

OIL SPILLS LEAVE LASTING MARK

The immediate effects of an oil spill are all too apparent: dead wildlife, oil-covered marshlands and contaminated water chief among them. Now the results of a new study suggest that contaminating oil can persist in the marine environment - perhaps indefinitely - even if surface sediments appear healthy.

MODERATE ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION CLOUDS BRAIN'S ABILITY TO DETECT MISTAKES

It's common knowledge that a brain on booze doesn't function as well as a sober one. After drinking, people demonstrate slower reaction times and make more mistakes. Researchers have discovered that moderate drinking also interferes with a person's ability to recognize when he has committed an error.

RESEARCH UNRAVELS MYSTERY OF MARTIAN METEORITES

The most famous Martian meteorite, ALHA84001, received attention because of the possibility that it houses ancient bacteria. But other rocks from the Red Planet have survived the long interplanetary journey to end up on Earth, too. Scientists were stumped, however, as to why the majority of these meteorites were relatively young compared to Mars's age. New findings can help explain the characteristics of the Martian meteorites.

ASK THE EXPERTS: WHY DOES BRIGHT LIGHT CAUSE SOME PEOPLE TO SNEEZE?

Roberta A. Pagon, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, explains.