Word: barring
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wonder the prospect of artificial muscles has NASA, well, pumped. Traditional robots, even in today's miniature sizes, draw heavily from the limited power supplies on a space probe, and their weight translates into higher launch costs. Bar-Cohen says the components required to construct each strip of artificial muscle cost a total of $200, need just four volts of power and weigh only a fraction of an ounce. Says Rob Manning, chief engineer for nasa's Mars Lander missions: "With all of our basketball-sized spacecraft, we're going to need this kind of technology...
That could change, because the mission to asteroid 4660 Nereus has thrust artificial muscles into the limelight. Whereas human limbs move by contracting and relaxing muscles, Bar-Cohen's artificial variety bends in response to electricity. Apply a charge to one side of a strip, and ions within the polymer are pushed to the opposite side, effectively lengthening one surface while shortening the other...
...Bar-Cohen foresees construction of artificial limbs that would allow a human to lift heavy objects the way an ant does. He has already received impassioned letters from disabled patients offering to test the first bionic limbs. But such equipment remains years from reality, because the polymer strips and gels being used for muscles are far too pliant to lift heavy weights. Until a new material is found, says Calvert, "you've only got to look at your arm to realize how far we have...
...album's 13 songs (six of which she wrote or co-wrote), Willis has the tone of a roadhouse Everygal. She could be singing her lungs out on the bandstand, swaying dreamily on the dance floor, standing behind the bar with a look of knowing pity. How knowing? Here are the album's first lines: "I don't believe a word you're saying/ And I know the game you're playing/ So it's only just for now/ That I will let you take me down." In the slow-dance Got a Feelin' for Ya, she sings about...
...unhappy with a run-through of Kiss Me, Baby, a classic Beach Boys tune. Somewhere in the middle of a complex arrangement featuring nine vocalists, he has detected someone singing flat. He asks to run through the song again and then abruptly calls a halt after maybe half a bar. He has identified the culprit, and quickly reworks the harmony to his satisfaction. This is the same in-command Brian you can hear at work on the Pet Sounds outtakes--pop's boy genius...