Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM have perfected miniature hardware that can detect airborne pollutants, toxic chemicals and poisonous gases. These devices will be used in hand held instruments. The devices are small enough to fit inside a pea pod.

NASA may eventually launch rockets using magnetic levitation. They have already set up a 50-foot-long prototype of a 0 to 600-mph launch ramp. The vehicle would weigh about 20% less then current vehicles since less fuel will be aboard the rocket, resulting in tremendous savings.

The $10,000-per-pound of launching satellites has researchers designing smaller satellites. The new satellites weigh less than 22-pounds. NASA is currently working with Intel to radiation-harden their Pentium processor so it can survive the harsh environment of space. Since this new class of satellites will have more power they will be able to do more than collect and report data.

If you have ever thought that your printer doesn't print vivid enough colors, help is on the way. Researchers have created a high-performance active matrix display made with color filters deposited using inkjet technology. The screen use light emitting polymers that can be deposited like ink. Since these displays are inexpensive they may even be used to print on clothes.

If you don't want to take up all of your system resources when you're burning your own CD mix, the new CDR 2 is for you. It a CD player with a CD-R drive. It has a 4x-dub speed, and can also dub to CD-RW's at 2x. It also features audio input jacks making it easy to record from any source.

And from the irrelevant information department...
To alleviate confusion when people get an error message that ends with "press any key to continue." Compaq once added an Any Key to their computers.

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