Nature's Grossest Creatures on world

A good dose of nature can still soothe the psyche of the modern human, but sometimes nature, red in tooth and claw, can also just gross you out. Wasps turn helpless caterpillars into a 24x7 buffet for young ones, mama mantis snacks on the head of its former lover, and a frog gives new meaning to oral fixation when nurturing the kiddies.
Go ahead and judge. These creatures don't care whether they win marks for beauty by human standards -- anything goes when survival and reproduction are at stake. They compete to not win any Darwin Awards.
Perhaps it's time for us humans to reassess our thinking, rather than let an aesthetic sense blind us to natural forms and functions that work well. Maggots writhing in a wound can disgust, sure, but saving a limb without risking an attack by antibiotic-resistant bacteria? That's beautiful.

Microvision's Pocket Projector Shines

We finally got a look at the SHOW, Microvisions almost-ready-for-prime-time laser projector. We certainly like the size—alittle bigger than an iPod in current form, and planned to be about iPod-sizedwhen other companies brand it and sell it around the end of the year. But the video quality left us a little disappointed. Color is fantastic, thanks to the lasers. (More impressive than the white LEDs Isuspect are in 3Ms projector.) But forthe same reason, the detail was a bit lacking, due to a phenomenon calledspeckle. When a laser hits a screen, some of the light bounces straight back,into the oncoming beam, causing interference. The effect made it look like the SHOW was projecting onto burlap instead of onto a smooth tablecloth, wall, orscreen. Although they promise the final versionwill look better.
The folks from Microvision say that 9 out of 10 people theyshowed it to didnt even notice the speckle. That seems hard to believe. Buteven with the speckles, the ability to shine big-screen images anywhere you gois awfully appealing.

Sony XEL-1 OLED Television

Hanging a television on the wall is nice. Even better is sticking it on, like wallpaper. The first organic light-emitting diode TV isn’t that thin, but at three millimeters, it’s close. (Sony has prototypes that are one tenth as thick.) It also produces stunning colors and the highest contrast possible—from brilliant white to pitch-black.
OLEDs have long promised these results, while presenting plenty of challenges. The achievement of taking OLED from a lab experiment to a consumer product is the top innovation of the year.
It took clever engineering. To optimize color, for instance, Sony placed the OLED in microscopic troughs sized to match specific wavelengths of light. So the red part of each pixel sits in a cavity that allows only the ideal shade of red to escape.
Why did a giant technology advance appear in an 11-inch screen? OLED circuitry requires a type of glass that isn’t produced in large sizes, and applying the material to bigger sheets requires new techniques. Retooling factories will cost a fortune. But companies will spend big money if they see a big market, and selling a real OLED TV, even a small one, has fired up demand. Sony promises 27-inch models soon. You could see sets of 32 inches or more, from several companies, by 2011.