IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 3

volume 49 number 7 north american

7.12

spectrum.ieee.org

AvAiLAbLe 1 juLy

Robots and Human Evolution

25 REFlECTIOnS
our intrepid columnist is
curious about Newton's
laws, the monty hall
paradox, and curiosity itself.
By Robert W. Lucky

updAte
9 OlyMPICS
EvERywhERE
the first all-hD, all-livestreaming games.
By Ariel Bleicher
11 RECyClIng ClOCk
POwER
12 TElEPORT TO SPaCE
14 wInd POwER'S
baT PROblEM
16 2-d SIlICOn
18 ThE bIg PICTURE
Engineers make a giant
paper airplane and fly it over
an Arizona desert.

opinion

ClOCkwisE fROm lEfT: Julian finnEy/gETTy imagEs; BasiC BOOks; niCOlas lORan/isTOCkphOTO

8 SPECTRal lInES
the reason venture
capitalists have soured
on solar has as much
to do with politics and
economics as it does with
a dearth of innovation.
By G. Pascal Zachary

depArtments
4 baCk STORy
It helps if you say "please."
6 COnTRIbUTORS
20 handS On
telecommuters, do you
hate your teleconferencing
system? Build your own.
By David Schneider

What happens when you put successive generations of
robotic tadpoles in a tank of water with
a predatory robotic sea turtle? You
find out why fish have the number of
vertebrae they do and why they have
two flippers instead of four.
In a recent "Techwise Conversations,"
host Steven Cherry talked with
bioroboticist John Long about his new
book, Darwin's Devices: What Evolving
Robots Can Teach Us About the History of
Life and the Future of Technology.

theinstitute.ieee.org

researchers and practitioners
in the fields of life sciences,
engineering, and computing.

22 TOOlS & TOyS
television will be very different when tvs run their own
software. By Alfred Poor

VOLUNTEER IN THE SPOTLIGHT
IEEE Foundation president leah
Jamieson talks about her role in
creating the public visibility initiative,
forming the New technology
Directions committee, and more.

24 gEEk lIFE
there's still time to vote in
Google youtube's Your Film
Festival. By Mark Anderson
26 TECh lIFE
people say they want to
save energy, but they won't-
unless automation and
clever design tricks make
conservation irresistible.
By Marc Mosko &
Victoria Bellotti
60 ThE daTa
character by character,
unicode is cleaning up
the Web. By Ritchie S. King

LIFE SCIENCE
NEWSLETTER DEBUTS
Want to learn more about
implantable neural interfaces,
medical equipment standards,
or the role that machine
learning plays in computational
biology? then check out the
new monthly IEEE Life Sciences
Newsletter. launched in April, the
electronic publication aims to
promote collaboration between

onLine WebinArs & resources
10 July: Introducing COMSOL
Multiphysics Version 4.3

Embedded Meets Mobility-M2M
Considerations and Concepts

26 July: Modeling Magnetrons
and TWTs With Vorpal

Achieving Medical Device Software
Compliance Under IEC 62304

Symbolic Computation
Techniques for Advanced
Mathematical Modeling

ANSYS With Apache: A Chip
Package System (CPS) Solution

Modernist Circuit Topologies
and Transistors for Smart
Grid Power Electronics

25
SFI-01042

spectrum.ieee.org

Smart Energy Technology
and Application-Specific
Solutions Training
Simulating Smart Materials

AvAiLAbLe 9 juLy

KEEPING MEDICAL DEVICES
HACK FREE
two IEEE Fellows are part of a
research group determined to
protect wireless medical devices
like pacemakers, insulin-delivery
systems, and brain implants from
getting hacked. the group has
developed a prototype firewall
to block would-be hackers from
tampering with the devices and
causing catastrophic damage.

AvAiLAbLe At http://spectrum.ieee.org/webinar
The Online Car: How Will Cars
Change When Permanently
Connected to the Internet?

Master Bond white paper library:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/
masterbond-whitepaper-library

The Smarter Grid-Engineering-
The Path Forward

IBM white paper library:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/
ibm-whitepaper-library

Transformer and Inductor Modeling
With COMSOL Multiphysics
New product release library:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/
new-product-release-library

National Instruments
resource library:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/
national-instruments-resource-library

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July 2012 * IEEE SpEctrum * NA

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2012