Technology: Magnetic Metalworking

In their elegant laboratories near La Jolla, Calif., General Dynamics scientists are doggedly attacking a difficult problem: how to extract controlled power from hydrogen fusion. The pay off for their work is hidden in the future, but the powerful magnetic fields they have built to hold reacting hydrogen gas at 100 million degrees has already yielded a valuable practical “fallout.” Those same magnetic forces used on a smaller scale have proved remarkably versatile for shaping metal.Swift Action.

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The Apple Of Your Ear

The iPhone started out the way a lot of cool things do: as something completely different. A few years ago, Steve Jobs noticed how many development dollars were being spent–particularly in the greater Seattle metropolitan area–on what are called tablet PCs: flat portable computers that work with a touch screen instead of a mouse and keyboard.

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Could Seven Dead Monks Upset President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Bold Plans To Remake France’s Legal System?

When the severed heads of seven French Trappist monks were found in a remote mountainous region of Algeria in May 1996, it was natural to assume the murders were the latest gruesome act by jihadists in their long-running and bloody campaign against the Algerian government.

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