To suggest topics or sites for Web Watch, please visit http://www.physicstoday.org/suggestwebwatch.html. Compiled and edited by Charles Day
In 1879, the International Polar Commission, chaired by Georg von Neumayer and Karl Weyprecht, established 1882–83 as the first International Polar year. The third and latest IPY begins in March and will run through March 2009. True to its founders’ vision, the new IPY will bring countries together to meet the cost and difficulty of exploring Earth’s polar regions.
Researchers of Purdue University have created a 10-gigabyte animation of a 90 000-atom cell structure from a bacterium—and then streamed the video through the high-speed National LambdaRail research network. The exercise foreshadows how scientists will be able to exchange rich, copious visual data. A clip from the video is available from Purdue’s Envision Center.
In recent years, the world’s inventors have submitted patent applications at a rate of about 1 million...
