11/16/2005:

Intermediate Word:  diverticulum -  (a) vane at the end of a millrace diverting water in different directions  (b) pouch branching from a hollow organ  (c) distraction  (d) something intended to mislead
Difficult Word: - galmatis  (a) meat aspic, with vegetables and barley  (b) Spanish conquistador's helmet  (c) gibberish  (d) two-person pirogue

Gigantic Apes Coexisted with Early Humans, Study Finds - Space.com  A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study. Fortunately for the early humans, the huge primate's diet consisted mainly of bamboo. Scientists have known about Gigantopithecus blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. It was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct.    
MIT Closes In On Bionic Speed - SpaceDaily  Left:  A soliton (blob with red and blue stripes) moves along a conducting polymer chain (aqua and yellow for hydrogen and carbon). The soliton blob causes a localized bend in the chain. The traditional way to make polymer actuate is to dope the material with an ion such as sodium, represented by the red dot. New MIT research has suggested another way: to shine light of a specific frequency (h‡), on the conducting polymer.   Currently, robotic muscles move 100 times slower than ours. But engineers using the Yip lab's new theory could boost those speeds - making robotic muscles 1,000 times faster than human muscles - with virtually no extra energy demands and the added bonus of a simpler design.      

Fab Labs unshackle kids' imaginations  - CNN  Left:  Makeda Stephenson, 13, uses a computer-controlled milling machine to create a component of a flight simulator.  When Makeda Stephenson compared flight simulator games sold in computer stores and didn't find anything she liked, she didn't stop there. The 13-year-old used a set of computer-controlled manufacturing tools at a community center to make her own simulator -- one that lets her "fly" an airplane of her design over an alien planet born of her imagination. She did it all through a teen learning program at one of seven so-called Fabrication Labs that MIT has established in places as distant as Norway and Ghana. Each lab has tool sets that, costing about $25,000, would be out of the reach of most fledgling inventors.




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