ONDotnet.com

Leroy Hood: Look to the Genome to Rebuild Health Care Leroy Hood thinks the $2.3 trillion US health care system is headed for life support, but he has a plan for curing its inefficiency, and ineffectiveness. The 69-year-old biotechnologist bases his plan on the four Ps—medicine that is predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory. The goal is to shift medicine from treating illness to managing health, saving money and lives along the way. Hood's Institute for Systems Biology is developing the diagnostics and technology to make it happen. Here's the doctor's Rx. The US medical system should be ... Predictive The vision Using genome sequencing and blood tests, a doctor will be able to determine a patient's probability of developing certain diseases. The price of these tests is dropping and will soon be less than $1,000 — the same as a CT scan today. The challenge Physicians will have to be trained to use the technology ethically. Patients will have to make sense of new kinds of choices. Preventive The vision Based on an individualized risk profile, you could start therapies in advance to cut the likelihood of illness. Drugs could be designed to blunt the desire to overeat, drink, or smoke. Average lifespan could be extended by 10 to 30 years. The challenge What qualifies as a disease? Will we have fewer football players if we quiet the genes that drive aggression? Personalized The vision With billions of data points for every patient, drug therapies can be created to suit each genome. This would eliminate the trial-and-error approach doctors use today. The challenge Having your genome on Google could be a huge privacy risk. With so much information around, data security will become an important field in the health care industry. Participatory The vision People will maintain their own health, not just by treating existing illnesses but by learning about their own predispositions. The challenge How to explain biomarkers to someone with little grasp of science? Hood proposes games that teach health concepts, and his Institute for Systems Biology is working with school districts to develop top-notch science curricula. Leroy Hood is President of the Institute for Systems Biology.

Wired.com

Passport Snooping Gets Fed Intelligence Analyst Up to Year in Prison A State Department intelligence analyst pleads guilty in federal court to charges of privacy invasion of hundreds of celebrities, politicians, athletes and others. Lawrence Yontz faces up to a year in prison when sentenced next month.

Wired.com

Geeky Movies' Top 10 Coolest Kids After hours and hours in the dusty GeekDad film archives, here's the definitive list of cool kids in science fiction and fantasy movies.

Considered to be the first working robot hand, the Handyman, developed in 1960 by General Electric's Ralph Mosher, was a two-fingered, heavily jointed claw that set up the foundation for later hands.

The design looks rudimentary now, but the five-pivot segment design in each finger was innovative in its attempt to replicate the human hand's flexible joint structure. A human hand is made up of a set of rigid links (bones and muscles) connected at joints. Each joint can have one degree of freedom (hinging or sliding) or two (rotating or cylindrical). We have four degrees of freedom in each finger, giving us enormous flexibility and the ability to make complex motions.

The Handyman's fingers had three degrees of freedom. But it was the attached mechanical forearm that provided most of the wrist action, as mechanical "tendons" pushed and pulled on the fingers. A technician had to manipulate the hand by placing his arm inside the apparatus like a puppet.

The Handyman's capabilities were limited: It could pinch and hold, but had no sensitivity to what it was holding, limiting it to clawing indiscriminately at things.

Built to study the reaction times of robot muscles, the Utah/MIT hand, built in the early 1980s, is a tendon-based (forearm) system. Electric signals are sent to the knuckles through a complicated cable setup, where one tendon moves each joint, as opposed to the dueling and matching motors of earlier models.

The tendon system was precise because air cylinders allowed knuckle sensors to monitor the angle of the fingers, as well as the tension in the wrists. In addition, the tendons were strong and made the fingers move much faster than previous versions -- the seven pounds of force exerted at the fingertip was the strongest at the time.

But that power sacrificed control and range of the whole hand. If you wanted to move it with any regularity, you had to set up a complicated plan to move the 288 pulleys.

Designed in the early 1990s by Mark Rosheim, the Omni-Hand is dexterous, rugged and hand-powered by an electric gearbox in the palm. It also was the most life-like and reliable hand that NASA made in the '90s. The space agency's researchers even put a glove on it.

Like the human hand, closing and opening the fingers together laterally (as if you're making Spock's 'V' sign, also known as adduction and abduction) was made possible by a ball-and-socket joint design. This design was also used in the wrist, which enabled pitch (at 110 degrees) and yaw motions (at 70 degrees). Also, each knuckle had built-in stops that limited backwards movements, or hyperextension, just like human fingers.

By using the palm's gear box for sensor placement, tendons became unnecessary and led Rosheim to use stronger hinge materials, like double bearings supporting stronger motor shafts, and he placed flexible sensor wires near the fingers. Finally, every finger was the same as any other, so they could be easily replaced one at a time.

By 2007, scientists had developed the technology of robot hands to such a degree that they could attach a robot hand to a human forearm. Much of recent research has been split between developing hand dexterity and bridging the connection between flesh and machine.

The robotic hand created by the University of Tokyo's Hiroshi Yokoi is such an arm, and it is tendon-based, similar to the Utah arm. But this time, the tendons don't drive the movements. Instead, the wire currents inside the tendons do the job.

The Zurich/Tokyo hand has 13 degrees of freedom, and each finger is laced with powerful sensors that give it specific joint commands, enabling it, for instance, to simultaneously set a 75-degree angle for one finger and set a specific pressure for another. When the hand was finally attached as a prosthetic device, electromyography signals were used to "interface the robot hand non-invasively" to a male patient. To mimic the tactile feedback of a real hand, scientists sent electrical stimulation through the wires to the test subject's own (organic) sensor and motor system.

The BH8 BarretHand, built in 2007, is a three-fingered programmable "grasper" known for its great flexibility. Two of the multijointed fingers rotate around the palm (at 180 degrees), and switch positions easily, giving the hand two opposable thumbs.

The hand has its own processor and is controlled by a PC through a serial port. It's also completely self-contained and quite durable, which means scientists no longer have to worry about the force of the tendons or the grippiness of the fingers. It also comes with a clutch mechanism that determines the strength of the grasp.

Robotics experts at Stanford are currently using the BH8 for their Stair 2.0 autonomous robot project, fetching everything from wine glasses to toothbrushes through speech-recognition techniques.

This $65,000 prosthetic robot hand has supersmall motors and five fully articulated digits powered by a two-input myoelectric signal. Doctors place electrodes on the surface of the hand's "skin," which connects to the electrical signal generated by muscles in the remaining portion of a patient's limb.

The i-Limb enables different grips that had not been available to amputees before, such as the key grip (thumb to index finger), and power, precision and index grips (the "we're #1' grip.")

But its realistic dexterity isn't the only good thing about it. Fingers can be easily swapped out with one another, which makes servicing a little bit easier and less expensive.

Created by the EU-funded SENSOPAC group in 2005, the "Robo Habilis" is managed by a software program modeled on the human cerebellum. Now we're really getting somewhere.

An advanced software program coordinates sensations and movements picked up by the hand, getting us a bit closer to intelligent, self-aware robot arms. The SENSOPAC is also covered by sensitive skin made out of a thin, flexible carbon-based material whose resistance changes with pressure. This allows hundreds of tiny sensors to be used as the hand's main information conduits, providing more detailed information on a touch or grip than ever before.

In addition, the attached arm has 58 motors (in opposing pairs) that it uses to create a large range of force. The fingers have 38 opposing motors, allowing it to snap its fingers and even pick up an egg without breaking it.

Kamen created the Segway, an invention so far ahead of the game that it makes its users look, well, rather dorky. Not so with his robot arm.

Kamen's arm is light-years ahead of the clamping "claws" amputees are used to. It's a fully articulated appendage, with flexible joints and detailed user manipulation called "Gen X - Separate Exo Control." It gives the user the same range of motion (14 degrees of freedom) as a natural arm, and is sensitive enough to pick up a piece of paper, a wineglass or even an olive in a martini.

The Anatomically Correct Testbed (ACT) hand is all about the accuracy of the human hand's bone/muscle/nerve structure. Yoky Matsuoka, director of the Neurobotics Lab at the University of Washington, designed the autonomous ACT hand to respond to sensors that mirror the brain's neural commands. To do so, she created neuromusculoskeletal copies of the arm's anatomy, including tendon insertion points, specific bone shapes and weight, and supersmall motors that duplicate muscle contraction behaviors. As a result, it is the most human-looking and -moving arm out there.

Like the Handyman and the Utah/MIT hand, the ACT is based on cable "tendons," but those tendons are arranged and attached in a much more human-like manner, giving it a full range of motion.

There's also an uncommon focus on the palm, which is about as important to the human hand's multifaceted nature as its fingers.

The Sheffield Hand, built in 2002, focuses on the development of "artificial muscle" and sophisticated joints. Powered by telescopic rods throughout the palm of the hand, fingers are pulled and bent in a rotating motion. But it's the detailed phalanges that make it one the most flexible hands and arms, through simple cylindrical disks that produce realistic abduction and adduction.

The hand includes haptic sensors and its hard plastic muscles mimic the flexibility of real human arms. In the process of testing, the scientists conducted arm-wrestling contests between a human and three different versions of the arm.

The Sheffield was also used by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories as a early prototype for the Discovery space mission's 50-foot arm.

Yes, this hand looks like it's about ready to start sewing up your undies. But it's actually a very sophisticated Intel project that smartly senses the shape of objects through the magic of electrolocation, used by sharks and other marine animals to detect objects and prey via faint electric fields.

Called the "Shark Hand" or "The Sixth Sense" because of these sonar-like powers of perception, the tips of its fingers emit an "electrical impulse" that detects objects and gives the hand an sense of the shape of objects it is about to grasp.

The hand is part of a larger Intel project on "Pre Touch" technologies, where robots are being laced with internal sensors that are more long-range than the sense of touch, but more short-range than vision.

Check out the video of Wired Science's Alexis Madrigal and Intel researchers playing with the Intel shark hand.

The Shadow Hand has integrated sensors all over its palm and fingers, and can be controlled by different computer systems, which is why several university robotics programs and private contractors are using it. It even has a network option, which means you can torture your coworkers with crazy hand gestures even when you're taking a sick day.

But it is special because it's got more moves than a Moonwalker-era Michael Jackson. Its integrated bank of 40 "Air Muscles" allow it to perform 24 different, large-angle moves, and the fingertips are so sensitive that they can even detect a quarter on the floor. Not only that, but the muscles are soft and acquiescent, which allows it to play with soft and fragile objects.

Despite almost 50 years of development, these hands are only the beginning. Like notebook computers and MP3 players before them, robot hands will get tinier and ever more complex.

Intuitive Surgical's EndoWrist Instruments are small surgical tools, with 5 mm- and 8 mm-diameter options. With seven degrees of freedom and 90 degrees of articulation, they are the most precise robotic appendages in the medical world. They are widely used by surgeons because they improve the surgeons' own world-renowned dexterity and allows them to perform minimally invasive surgery through teeny incisions.

A doctor manipulates the hand through fingertip controls from a few feet away from the patient, looking into a micro lens. It's hard to believe, but the Endowrist is also strong, and it can handle a variety of forceps, needle drivers, scalpels and any other things needed to cut up a person carefully and safely.

Sergey Brin Reveals Risk of Parkinson's on New Personal Blog Google cofounder Sergey Brin has finally started a personal blog, and he went from describing his title choice to revealing some significant health news: he is at potentially high risk for contracting Parkinson's disease.

Future worlds described by science fiction visionaries like Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Robert Heinlein often included wildly inventive methods of transportation to other planets, galaxies and dimensions.

These brief glimpses into the possible future of travel were left largely to the readers' imaginations, but a flourishing group of dreamers, designers and illustrators are bringing those creations to life -- at least online.

The conceptships.org website run by Igo Tkac showcases these artists' renditions of spaceships and other fantastical creations. From retro-futuristic aerial attack machines to automated deep-sea treasure hunters, here are some of the coolest.

Nicolas Bouvier has always been fascinated with space travel. Growing up in Cape Canaveral, Florida, he vividly remembers watching shuttles and rockets launch. Now a game designer with credits including Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Assassin's Creed, Bouvier also designs book covers. He fashioned this illustration for a French edition of a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories.

Jeffrey Turley's otherwordly aquatic vessel is an archeologist's -- or treasure hunter's -- dream. The underwater vehicle submerges to unexplored depths to locate lost artifacts and document unusual life forms.

Turley, a visual development artist at Walt Disney Animation Studios, said he dreams up his concept creations in his spare time.

"It was just for fun," said Turley. "I do these warm-ups now and then to keep my art fresh."

For this ship's ethereal design, David Levy decided to upgrade an old concept -- the pirate ship -- with a sci-fi twist. Levy, art director of visual design studio SteamBot Studios, envisioned a space boat voyaging across the universe undetected, thanks to advanced disguise technologies that would keep the craft hidden from enemies.

Additionally, the expansive wings of the sleek ship are solar-powered and can be rotated to face the sun as the ship travels. Even the ship's captain has a revamped first mate: "The bird on the shoulders of the pirate is a robot," said Levy. "Which is why it does not need any breathing apparatus."

Although 23-year-old designer Ben Mauro painted this haunting vessel as an assignment for an art class, sketching and illustrating concept ships is an avid pastime of his.

Mauro based this ship's bulbous skeleton on shapes formed by musical notes and rhythmic formations. According to Mauro, the cruiser's main purpose would be largely for surveying foreign lands, exploring unknown areas and conducting reconnaissance missions.

Industrial designer Michal Jelinek came up with this cargo ship concept as part of an instructional lecture for his students.

"The main purpose of this ship is to deliver goods across the planet and to outer space," said Jelinek. The carrier, with its powerful jet engines positioned on the hull for maximum steering control, would also be capable of navigating extreme atmospheric conditions, he said.

Multimedia artist Joel Carlo Aymat pieced together this clover-shaped ship while experimenting with his favorite graphic applications, Photoshop and ZBrush.

Aymat pictured it as a perfect vehicle for everyday intergalactic traveling -- though he still needs to concoct a fuel-efficient power source. "It would probably be a pretty snazzy hybrid commuter," said Aymat. "It'd be like the Toyota FT-HS of space travel!"

When Jake Parker isn't at his day job developing special effects for big-budget animated films like Ice Age and Robots, he's bringing his own creations to life in comic books.

This vessel would compete in aerial death matches, so Parker envisioned a vehicle with superior speed and lethal attack functions.

"I love the designs of pre-WWII racers," said Parker, who works as a designer for high-end CGI firm Blue Sky Studios. "Their sleek lines and full shapes always appealed to me."

A bright yellow paint job with black racing stripes gave way to the craft's nickname -- The Wasp.

Swedish concept artist Theodor Waern took inspiration from dystopian sci-fi thrillers Aliens and Terminator to illustrate a menacing battleship for deploying troops to and from pockets of action.

Dubbed the "Ferro," Waern's war machine is equipped with weapons and can carry up to eight passengers and a pilot.

Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.

This year marks the first time that new, statewide, centralized voter-registration databases will be used in a federal election in a number of states.

The databases were mandated in the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which required all election districts in a state or U.S. territory to consolidate their lists into a single database electronically accessible to every election office in the state or territory.

But the databases, some created by the same companies that make electronic voting machines, aren't federally tested or certified and some have been plagued by missed deadlines, rushed production schedules, cost overruns, security problems, and design and reliability issues.

Last year, in Larimer County, Colorado, election workers got an error message when they tried to access the state's database to process absentee ballots, and had to log off for 20 minutes. In a mock election four months ago, clerks in other counties had trouble accessing the database from polling locations. Those who could connect said the system was sluggish.

Election officials in several counties said they didn't trust the system, and planned to load the database to county computers and use printed poll books on Election Day rather than access the central database in real time.

"The voter-registration databases are an underlying part of the voting technology revolution that has taken place in this country that has been the least noticed," says Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation. "We don't know how much of a problem (they've) been across the country. My guess is that there have been technical problems with statewide databases all across the country that have gone unreported."

This year, during primaries in several states, longtime voters phoned a national voter hotline complaining their party affiliation had changed from Democrat or Republican to unaffiliated, preventing some from casting ballots in states without open primaries. Others complained they weren't on the voter roll, though they'd lived and voted at the same location for years. One Maryland woman said the birth date in her voter record was several decades off her real age. Others were listed as "inactive," although they'd voted in the previous federal election. And one woman who said she voted in 2006 was told she wasn't registered and couldn't cast a ballot. Election officials told her the voter ID number she had belonged to a man.

But election experts say the real concern is how states are conducting database matches of new voters under HAVA.

The law requires each voter to have a unique identifier. Since 2004, new registration applicants have had to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number to register (voters who don't have them are assigned a unique number by the state). States are required to try to authenticate the numbers with motor vehicle records and the Social Security Administration database.

But databases are prone to errors such as misspellings and transposed numbers, and applicants are prone to make mistakes or write illegibly on applications. The Social Security Administration has acknowledged that matches between its database and voter-registration records have yielded a 28.5 percent error rate.

States vary in how they treat applicants whose records don't match, and experts say rules in some states could prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots or having their votes counted in November. Those who don't match in Oregon, for example, can cast a ballot, but their vote for president or any other federal race on a ballot won't be counted. There are currently about 9,500 voters in Oregon who fall into this category, but a state spokesman says matching issues will be resolved with most of them before November so they can vote in federal races. Fewer than 500 voters were affected by this during the state's primary.

"One of the big problems is that states just haven't been very transparent about how they're operating their new database," says Dan Tokaji, law professor at the Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "So it's really hard to tell how this is going to play out. A few states have implemented overly stringent matching rules, the consequence of which could be that some citizens' votes don't get counted."

In the 2000 election, about 1.3 million registered voters said they didn't vote due to trouble with their registration, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey, which didn't elaborate on the nature of the troubles. In an election when record numbers of new voters are expected to participate, experts say the number of voters who find they can't cast a ballot this year could be higher.

Voter registration databases are central to the democratic process in every state except North Dakota -- which doesn't require registration. Everywhere else, the registration roll is the gatekeeper determining eligibility to vote in an election. Voter lists aren't used just for elections, however. Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, before statewide databases were mandated, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly ordered that voter registration lists be checked for links to terrorists.

Until HAVA, each county or election district in most states maintained its own voter list, which often resulted in duplicate registrations when voters moved and re-registered -- creating opportunities for fraud. States were supposed to consolidate their lists by Jan. 1, 2004, but most got an extension to 2006. Creating a statewide system that interfaces with multiple county registration databases built by different companies proved to be difficult. About a dozen states missed the 2006 deadline, and four were sued by the Justice Department.

There have also been a number of issues involving companies that make the systems. Some states built databases in-house; others outsourced to companies like Election Systems & Software (which also makes voting machines), and the Bermuda-based Accenture. Accenture was hired by several states, but lost contracts in all but one for missed deadlines and other issues.

Colorado -- a crucial swing state -- completed its $13 million database this year after firing Accenture in 2005. A little-known Oregon company named Saber, which has created databases for 11 states, replaced it. Accenture retained its contract in Pennsylvania, though problems occurred there as well. In 2005, one state official called the $20 million system "seriously if not fatally flawed."

HAVA requires databases to have "adequate technological security" but doesn't specify details, such as encryption. And although the databases interface with every county election office, access controls haven't been developed in some states.

A 2006 audit of Florida's registration system found that the state hadn't established adequate access levels for various users and had no process for maintaining or monitoring audit logs, making records vulnerable to theft and manipulation. A June 2008 follow-up found some of the same problems. One former election office employee, for example, still had access to the database three months after leaving his job.

In 2006 in Denver, electronic poll books made by Sequoia Voting Systems crashed extensively, causing long lines that resulted in an estimated 20,000 voters leaving polls without voting. During Georgia's primary this year problems with e-poll books made by Diebold Election Systems led to voting delays up to three hours long.

Despite various issues, Kay Stimson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, says the registration databases are ready, and states are confident they'll perform well for the election. She acknowledges, however, that issues over HAVA matches are still a concern.

"Generally speaking, the uncertainty that hangs over the process, including uncertainty that results from election challenges and litigation introduced shortly before Election Day, creates a greater likelihood for problems or confusion at the polls," she said.

HAVA leaves it to states to decide how to conduct matches. Some states require an exact match with the Social Security Administration database and only a substantial match with motor records. Others require an exact match for a voter's Social Security number, first and last name, and month and year of birth.

Exact matching, however, could mean that a woman who recently married and changed her name would fail to match government records containing her maiden name. Voters who have double last names or unusually spelled names might also fail. Everything depends on how a state's matching algorithm is designed.

Last month Wisconsin, whose database just became operational, conducted a test of 20,000 voter names against motor vehicle records and found 20 percent with mismatches, due mainly to typos and transposed numbers. Among those who failed to match were four members of the state's Government Accountability Board (.pdf), which conducted the test. Thomas Cane, the board's chairman and a retired judge, failed because he was listed by his full name, R. Thomas Cane, in his driver's record.

A recent report from the Academies of Sciences noted that "many (if not most) of the matching procedures used by the states have been developed on the basis of intuitive reasoning without further systematic validation or mathematically rigorous analysis, do not reflect the state of the art in matching techniques, and have not been validated in the market, scientifically, or otherwise."

Herbert Lin, one of the authors of the report, told Wired.com that the method states use to develop their procedures often involves "a bunch of guys sitting around a table saying 'Let's try this' and 'Yeah that seems reasonable.'"

The federal Election Assistance Commission advises states not to leave final matching decisions to algorithms, and to have humans examine records that fail and contact voters to resolve discrepancies.

HAVA doesn't say what to do with applicants when matching issues can't be resolved. It says only that first-time voters who register by mail, rather than in person, and whose records can't be matched, must show ID at the poll.

Most states will register applicants who fail a match and let them cast a regular ballot after showing ID at the polls. But three states -- Iowa, Louisiana and South Dakota -- won't register applicants who fail. Iowa does, however, permit Election Day registration, which may allow a rejected applicant to reapply for registration at the poll and cast a regular ballot. Louisiana and South Dakota let the rejected applicants vote after showing ID at the poll but only on a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted, depending on circumstances and state law. A survey of the 2004 general election showed that states varied in the percentage of provisional ballots that were cast and counted. Most states fell in the 30-70 percent range.

"Provisional ballots are really problem ballots; we don't want people to use them if there's a way not to," says Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, a voting integrity group.

Last week Florida, a battleground state, announced a new policy that voting groups say will likely disenfranchise numerous voters. A state law passed in 2005 initially prohibited applicants whose records didn't match from either being registered or voting. But after some 13,000 voters were blocked for bad matches in 2006, and more were blocked in 2007, the state was sued by several groups, forcing it to change its plan.

Beginning Sept. 8, new registration applicants who fail a HAVA match must mail a copy or bring a hard copy of their ID to an election office before Nov. 4 to show that the ID number on their registration application is correct. Officials plan to send a letter to such voters explaining what to do. Voters who forget or never receive instructions can cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, but it will be counted only if they bring or send a copy of their ID to an election office within 48 hours. ID presented at the poll will not be accepted, which could create confusion since Florida law already requires everyone to show ID at the polls.

Election experts say the policy places an unfair burden on voters who may fail a match through no fault of their own, especially since most states get huge spikes in registration applications just before registration deadlines, increasing the likelihood that harried clerks will make data-entry errors.

"Allowing voters to return within 48 hours is worrisome because, the truth is, a lot of them won't," says Tokaji. "Maybe, if it comes down to Florida deciding the presidency, God help them, they will return. But … the more complicated you make things, the more votes won't be counted."

Critics of the policy predict it will affect 10 to 20 percent of new registration applicants.

"That's tens of thousands of people in a state that decided a presidential contest by a few hundred votes (in 2000)," says Slater, whose group was one of the parties that sued Florida.

Florida's voter-registration list isn't new to controversy, of course. In 2000 a contractor hired to weed out convicted felons used broad criteria to match voter names against correctional records and swept up thousands of the wrong people. The same problem occurred in 2004.

Slater cites another troubling trend emerging with the implementation of statewide databases.

Several states have begun comparing databases for duplicate records of existing voters, then purging voters they believe have moved and registered in another state. The problem, Slater says, is the methods used can yield false positives, and officials are deleting voters without contacting them to verify that they've moved, or waiting for two federal election cycles to pass, which are requirements under the National Voter Rights Acts of 1993.

In 2006, Kentucky's attorney general successfully sued his state's board of elections after officials compared their list to ones from South Carolina and Tennessee and purged about 8,000 voters who appeared to have registered in those states at a later date than their registration in Kentucky and were presumed to have moved.

Project Vote is investigating Kansas, Louisiana and South Dakota for similar activity. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska have also been comparing lists.

"That is a trend that will accelerate, but there are inadequate safeguards, and I think it's very, very dangerous," Slater says.

To address some of the issues that may arise at polls in November, voting groups are advising voters to double-check their registration status before their state's registration deadline (.pdf), to bring ID to the polls in case questions arise about their eligibility, and call 866.MYVOTE1 to report problems.

Campaign: John McCain Invented the BlackBerry John McCain has his Al Gore moment when one of his advisers tells reporters that the presidential candidate helped to create the "miracle" of telecommunications.

Home-brewed biodiesel may be ready to move from your neighbor's garage to prime time. No longer is the practice limited to a few mechanically inclined hippies with old converted electric water heaters. Now anyone can order up their own bio-brew kit online.

"We are testing some products now to make sure they work at the level of quality our customers expect," said Go Green Home Stores spokesman Dennis Healy. "We're really looking forward to having these products in our store."

And Go Green's interest in mass-marketing a processor comes on the heels of a decision earlier this year by Northern Tool, the Sears of professional-grade tools, to put biodiesel processors for home brewers in its catalog, for $3,000 to $13,500.

The Collective Biodiesel Project estimates that home brewers, who filter used vegetable oil from restaurants and then mix it with lye and methanol to create their own biodiesel, produced 450 million gallons of fuel last year. Some brewers say they got tired of waiting for alternatives to petroleum to come from big biz and set out to change their own habits.

In Europe, home-brewed biodiesel from both virgin and waste vegetable oil was so common that in 2002, police in Great Britain set up a "frying squad" to seek out and ticket chips-scented cars using the cheaper, tax-free cooking oil.

In the United States, a dozen or so niche manufacturers, such as Home Biodiesel Kits, already sell kits to home brewers who want to go beyond converting an old electric water heater. But the fact that home-brew equipment will be available at a major retail outlet rather than merely at niche sellers signals that companies believe there's demand and have faith in the safety and reliability of the equipment.

Biodiesel has two distinct faces. Big, young biodiesel companies are rising stars on angel-investor and venture-capital circles' lists of emerging alt-fuels. Their biodiesel tends to be what home brewers call virgin fuel -- made from fresh, new vegetable oil. Most of it is sold to companies and agencies large enough to have their own fleets and pumps.

And there's also the flourishing underground of brewers. From neighbors running reactors in garages, like Jules Dervaes and Hans Huth, to a Piedmont, North Carolina, cooperative that has grown to 500 members in four years and made a million gallons last year, home brewing is well-established.

Dervaes and his family have turned their home in Pasadena, California, into a green "best practices" lab. They began brewing bio about four years ago, using an open source manual on how to build a converter from an old electric water heater.

Dervaes makes about 30 gallons once a month from restaurant waste oil he gets for free. His family has a standing relationship with neighborhood restaurants glad to be rid of grease they'd otherwise have to pay to have hauled away.

"It's a big win for everybody," Dervaes said. "We're off the [petroleum] oil grid, the [vegetable] oil is being used twice, and the fuel is being made locally, not hauled around the world."

Restaurant owners like Lucas Manteca of Cape May, New Jersey, are delighted to participate, even if there are a few problems. Manteca and his wife own three Quahog's Seafood Shacks and give away about three 55-gallon drums a week.

It's great," Manteca said. "Before this, we were paying for the oil pickup, and they were just destroying the oil."

"Restaurants are such a huge source of waste, a lot of trash and oil and water, but it can be difficult and expensive to try to do things the right way," he added. "This is just easy and right."

But with rising oil prices, waste oil has become a commodity. The New York Times reported in May that restaurants in at least 20 states have had oil stolen. Waste-management companies looking for an edge over their competition, opportunistic thieves and home brewers have all been caught with their hands in the grease barrel.

"There's a lot of talk about grease wars where people do nasty stuff to get the grease," said Leif Forer, one of the founding members of the Piedmont co-op. "The waste oil used to go to rendering companies that got paid to pick it up and then sold it 'back to the animals' for pet food and livestock feed. They're not happy with us."

The co-op started six years ago in a community college class taught by Forer and co-founder Rachel Burton. They made their first batch in Mason jars, and graduated to the kitchen blender.

"Eventually we designed and built our own processor. At the end of the day, the process and mechanics are the same as the Mason jar," he said. "Now we have two plants, and we can make biodiesel in a continuous stream."

The co-op currently makes more than 120,000 gallons a month, far more than its 500 members consume.

"We got tired of waiting for a corporate solution and found a short-term answer that makes sense on a local scale," Forer said. "We'll settle for that until better fuels and technologies come."

While there have been few problems with home brewing, last month a garage biodiesel experiment ended when a chemical blast blew the front off a home in Surprise, Arizona. After the explosion, the assistant fire chief worried aloud that home brewing might mean more explosions.

But Hans Huth, another biodiesel home brewer who posted a do-it-yourself guide in 2006, says home brewers haven't had many problems -- fewer than with the commercial plants.

"Obviously, you have to be careful!" Huth said. "You are refining a fuel you intend to burn."

Besides instructions on how to build and run a processor, Huth's manual includes information on local regulations and permits.

"Good information will keep us safer," he said. "If we start causing problems, the regulators -- and I work with regulators -- will have to come in and tighten it up. As a community, that makes things difficult."

At his day job with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Huth is helping solve an international grease problem: sewage spills in Nogales, Arizona, caused by sewers across the border in Mexico that are jammed by grease from restaurants. He's helping build a biodiesel converter in Mexico.

"It looks like we'll be able to use the facility to generate enough biodiesel to fuel the Rio Rico Fire District," Huth said. "Once you start doing this, it becomes insidious, and you find yourself looking around saying, 'Where else can we go to get biodiesel?'"

The growth of home brewing from a few garages to mainstream recognition has its problems. For one, Huth says diesel cars, once the bane of used car lots, are now much harder to find and are selling for more money.

Forer, who's just returned from a national conference of biodiesel brewers in Golden, Colorado, also sees the arrival on the big stage as both a blessing and a curse.

"We have a consulting business, and we teach classes, and we're selling a half million gallons a year so we can use the money for other green projects," Forer said. "But we're closing in on the point when demand exceeds supply, and that might mean trouble."

A vast wall of swirling static dances appears on a giant screen as Trent Reznor and his band launch into their song, "Only." Initially obscured by this sea of visual white noise, the Nine Inch Nails front man intermittently appears to push through the particles of snow with his hands and body, popping in and out of view and opening up random tunnels in the chaos.

Nine Inch Nails fans are accustomed to such sonic and visual feasts whenever Reznor and company go out on tour. But this time around, NIN has pulled out all the stops, creating a groundbreaking, fully interactive visual display that is as much a part of the show as the band's instruments.

"I'm not really a purist," admits Reznor. "If I'm in the studio working on an album, I try to only please myself. But when it's a tour, it feels a bit more like I have a responsibility to some degree to entertain people."

Reznor and other band members use Lemurs during the "electronic set." The touchscreen devices can be used to control a range of audio and visual aspects of the show on the fly.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

For the band's current Lights in the Sky tour, Reznor has not only raised the bar for what's possible in an arena tour, but has also produced what could arguably be one of the most technologically ambitious rock productions ever conceived. Unlike most rock shows, the visuals for about 40 percent of the show (including "Only") aren't pre-rendered. There's no staging, no pantomiming by band members: It's all interactive, live and rendered on the fly.

With more than 40 tons of lighting and stage rigging, hundreds of LED lights, a daunting array of professional and custom-built machinery running both archaic and standard commercial VJ software, three different video systems and an array of sensors and cameras, the tour is nothing if not a lavish display of techno wizardry.

"I wanted to see how I could use video as an instrument," he says, "and try to really make the stage feel like it's organic -- like it's part of the overall set."

Reviews have called LiTS everything from a "vision of splendor" to "the pinnacle of video art," and nowhere is Reznor's showmanship and willingness to tinker with new technologies more apparent than in the band's current tour.

NIN programmer and keyboardist Alessandro Cortini stands in back of the giant stealth screen during sound check.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The core of the show is a sophisticated trio of transparent "stealth" screens, which are raised and lowered during the performance.

Using one high-resolution (1024 x 288) Barco D7 screen -- basically, an opaque, computer-controlled screen comprised of a tiny LED system on modular panels -- and two lower-resolution semitransparent screens up front, Reznor and other band members are able to trigger and control various video loops and effects directly from the stage. The musicians can also interact directly with those visuals onscreen during the show, thanks to a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras.

For the most part, those visuals come from Reznor and Rob Sheridan, Reznor's creative partner and the art director for NIN. But the two had considerable help from a few outside parties in putting together the production.

Roy Bennet, a veteran lighting designer who worked with Reznor on the Downward Spiral and Fragile tours, designed and put together the LiTS set according to Trent's initial specs.

It was also Bennet who suggested bringing in the other key part to the show, a company called Moment Factory.

Responsible for the technology driving most of the interactive tech elements, Moment Factory is a boutique Canadian outfit that's worked on a number of Cirque du Soleil shows and has produced other industrial visual installations.

For the interactive portions of the show, all the onscreen video is rendered by Moment Factory's custom rig, a trio of Linux-based devices collectively known as "the brain."

"They build what they call games," Reznor explains. "Each [interactive] song might have two or three settings ... or games. It's basically particle-based animation."

Those particles can interact with any of the various inputs Reznor and the band have selected.

Known simply as "the brain," this rig is Moment Factory's custom-built Linux machine that runs all of the interactive visuals audience members see during the show.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

With the song "Only," for instance, the front, convex screen starts out as solid static. On Reznor's side of the display, a laser above him detects whenever he crosses a vertical plane paralleling the screen. On the floor, a piece of tape and two tiny LED lights let him know exactly where that plane is.

As Reznor intersects that plane with his hand or body, the laser tracks his X and Y coordinates. The "brain" box then tells the particles to spread out to a predetermined dispersal pattern. Reznor says: "Then it follows me around. If I leave the plane, it fills back in. If I push through, it comes back out."

The band uses the same tech for another song later in the show called "Echoplex," from The Slip album.

Like many other NIN songs, it's based around a drum machine beat. After rehearsing live a few times with real drums, Reznor realized it sounded better sounded with a machine.

"We recreated a grid drum sequencer," he says. "[Drummer Josh Freese] is actually touching and turning them on and off. But he's not really touching the screen. He's crossing the same laser on the back screen, which gets calibrated at sound check."

The end effect is so seamless, most people assume the band is simply pantomiming to a pre-rendered video, or has actually somehow installed a gigantic touchscreen sequencer on a backstage wall.

"We went through so much effort to make this stuff interactive and people still think it's all staged," jokes Sheridan.

Reznor pushes through a cloud of static onscreen during the band's performance of "Only."
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

As with any production of this magnitude, there are also the inevitable glitches and hiccups. According to Reznor and Sheridan, many of those can be traced back to an archaic Windows machine known as the Hippotizer, as well as an antiquated lightning console that it interacts with called the Grand Ma.

At one point, during the band's recent Red Rocks, Colorado, performance the Hippotizer choked and spit out some text from the machine's video-labeling system. NIN fans immediately began dissecting still shots from a video someone had taken, and a three-page discussion ensued on NIN forums trying to decipher what the secret text meant.

"It was all just that stupid fucking Hippotizer getting the wrong trigger ... something from the lighting desk just misfired," Sheridan says.

But Reznor, who is an unabashed Mac fan, is also playful about having to partially rely on Windows boxes for some of the show's visuals.

"We purposefully put one frame of the Blue Screen of Death in this collage of static that comes up at the end of 'Great Destroyer,' and right away people caught it," he says.

For the next leg of the tour, Sheridan is working to permanently move the entire lighting and visual system over to a Mac rig running ArKaos VJ software.

Moment Factory's world of cameras. During a performance of "Terrible Lie," one camera directly records the stage and then runs that video through a special effect. That video is then re-projected back onto one of the screens, producing a cool real-time ghosting effect of the band members.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

While work on the arena show didn't officially begin until last fall, Reznor says the bones of the tour date back to his 2005 With Teeth tour.

"A trap I realized with NIN was that I could go out and play aggressive music where everyone jumps up and down. But if I wanted to try to bring in some of the other stuff I've been doing -- whether it be electronic or something ambient sounding -- it's tough to take an audience that's been trained to bang their heads to then sit back and think for a minute," he says.

So with the help of Sheridan, Reznor stumbled on the idea of using transparent screens. That system allowed him to augment his wide-ranging portfolio of music with visuals he and Sheridan created. In turn, those visuals helped tie everything together -- or at least kept people from whipping out their cellphones or walking off to grab a beer during the "slow songs."

Reznor appears backstage before the Oakland show.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Currently, Reznor and the band are on a brief two-week hiatus, before taking the Lights in the Sky tour down to South America and then weaving back up through the States, where they'll finish up the American portion in mid-December.

There are also talks between NIN and director James Cameron to film the show in 3-D ("to at least have proof when U2 rips us off next year that we did it first," Reznor says), and the band also has been in ongoing discussions with HBO for a Year Zero miniseries which would launch in conjunction with a second album and an alternate-reality game.

When asked about his future plans for touring, after the Lights in the Sky wraps up, Reznor says the next series of shows may be a different beast altogether.

"Next time might just be white lights in a club and it's about the music," he says. "Because I'll be broke and that's all I'll have."

YouTube's biggest tear-jerker may soon be wrenching sobs from big-screen viewers.

Sony Pictures has its claws in Christian the Lion, a clip of grainy footage showing a pair of animal lovers reuniting with their adopted cub in Africa. John Rendall and Anthony Bourke, the duo who adopted the cat from a high-end London department store in the late '60s, are currently in negotiations with the studio to option their book detailing the experience.

From the lightsaber role-playing of the Star Wars Kid to the brawl on the savannah in Battle at Krueger, here are some of the viral video hits ripe for release in theaters.

Which short destined-for-the-silver screen did we skip over? Submit your picks in the comments below.

Beauty queen Lauren Upton's bungled response to a question about education during 2007's Miss Teen USA competition drew gasps from the audience -- and more than 30 million views on YouTube. Upton's on-camera gaffe won her instant internet fame and notoriety, but she still managed to nab third runner-up in the contest (and high-profile gigs like a cameo in Weezer's "Pork and Beans" music video and the 2007 MTV's Video Music Awards). Her public embarrassment and rebound are prime for a Hollywood makeover a la Legally Blonde.

DVD Bonus Features: Behind-the-scenes featurette with contest host Mario Lopez on his point-of-view; mumble-along music video of the mangled speech.

Chubby-cheeked baby Charlie's penchant for nibbling big brother Harry's finger has captured the hearts -- and eyes -- of more than 50 million YouTubers. It's also led us to wonder if the internet clip could serve as inspiration for a good, old-fashioned horror flick about a baby gone bad -- like Pet Cemetery, Children of the Corn or The Omen.

DVD Bonus Features: Sequel to Charlie Bit My Finger -- Charlie Bit My Finger ... Off.

The trials and tribulations of an awkward teenager sound like something out of a Judd Apatow feature, so why not give it the full treatment -- starring the likes of Michael Cera (who already spoofed the video on Arrested Development), Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen?

Who knew unicorns could be surly? Charlie's psychedelic voyage to Candy Mountain feels all too short at four minutes. Hollywood could turn his subterranean battle with kidney snatchers into a horror flick -- kind of The Descent meets Turistas.

Foul-mouthed valley girl Kelly and her curmudgeonly family would make a great feature-length film a la Welcome to the Dollhouse. We’d cast funnyfolk Amy Sedaris and Will Ferrell to play the twins.

Of the slew of parodies and mashups inspired by Ang Lee's 2005 Oscar-winning drama Brokeback Mountain, Brokeback to the Future is the most entertaining. Which is exactly why we propose a feature-length fourth installment of the Back to the Future franchise -- just add a couple scenes featuring Hoverboards, Crispin Glover and a souped-up DeLorean sporting a flux capacitor, and Brokeback to the Future might just give Dark Knight a run for its money.

DVD Bonus Features: Deleted scenes -- including steamy DeLorean make-out sesh where overzealous groping accidentally depresses the gas pedal, sending Marty and Doc into the future to confront the tree of life a la The Fountain.

YouTube keyboardist Tay Zonday, nee Adam Nyerere Bahner, wowed audiences in 2007 with a keyboard-fueled baritone rendition of his original song, Chocolate Rain. His dorm room-to-Dr. Pepper endorsement deal is a success story that would make for a compelling tale for the after-school set.

DVD Bonus Features: All the Chocolate Rain covers that have surfaced on the net --- from Chad Vader to Green Day drummer Tre Cool.

The nearly nine-minute home video of nature gone wild would be even better in Imax. Think March of the Penguins meets Planet Earth, but with more action and narrated by excitable Australian tourists seeing animals for the first time.

DVD Bonus Features: Whatever Happened to Baby Buffalo? follow-up finds him crashing with friends in Park Slope auditioning for Hepatitis PSAs and lampooning the entertainment business as "so phony."

No Harry Potter until 2009? No problem. Potterphiles could get their Hogwarts fix with these twisted marionette substitutes tackling a host of subjects, from sensuous potions lectures to wizardy angst. That is, until puberty makes the finger that plays Harry Potter too big to be believable and a success-induced identity crisis leads to some risqu� hand modeling.

A bleak look into dancer Judson Laipply's fictionalized early life, called Dancer in the Dark, reveals loss, drug abuse and an early adulthood spent in a desolate Russian work camp, wrongfully accused. As the film's narrative finds Laipply rebuilding his life through his love of dance, leading towards the cathartic performance that would bring joy to almost a billion viewers across the world, the film suddenly cuts to the video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." The first feature length Rick Roll is born and audiences delight in encouraging friends to see it by saying it's "Oscar-worthy."

MySpace Music Adds User Playlists, Amazon Links The first aspects of MySpace Music, a major partnership between News Corp. and the three largest record labels in the world, have been revealed to be a playlist creation tool and 'buy' links to Amazon's MP3 store. Both sound more than a little familiar.

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