an eWine book, a wireless computer the size of a book, is making an appearance in some restaurants to provide help to diners wishing to pick wine to go with dinner. The e-book provides a description of the wine, profiles of the wineries, and recommendations of wines to accompany selected dishes at the restaurant.

libraries of the future, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, will employ a robot that will pull a book you want off the shelf and pass it to a second robot, which will then scan the pages so that you can browse through the book over the Internet from any location.

mannequins that can "sweat" have been developed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The permeable "skins" on the mannequins are used to test clothing and its reactions to being worn in conditions of extreme temperatures and activity.

until the 1900s, anyone could be a doctor. Doctors had no qualifications other than how successful they were treating their patients, many of whom died in the process.

according to the latest estimates, our planet loses 3 or 4 species an hour, 80 species a day. and 30,000 species a year, the highest rate of extinction in 65 million years.

leeches were used for centuries to bleed the sick as this was thought to remove poisons from the body. Leeches are used today for their saliva, which keeps blood from clotting.

the Wikipedia, created in January 2001 by a philosophy Ph.D. named Larry Singer, is "a collaborative project to build a complete encyclopedia from scratch. "Located at www.wikipedia.com, anyone can write or edit an article on anything, the goal being to reach a target of 100,000 entries. One visitor might begin an article, and someone else at another time is free to add to or edit it. The Wikipedia attracts more than 1,000 new entries per month on areas from astronomy and astrophysics to visual arts and design.

moore's law, the computer axiom made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 18 months. Because the price of each chip stays roughly the same, the cost falls exponentially become more powerful, the cost of computing becomes cheaper. Moore forecast that this trend would continue through 1975; in fact the semiconductor industry now predicts this trend will continue at least until 2015.

for those people who have trouble remembering their passwords, a new alternative has been developed using pictures instead of text. A password is created by clicking in various parts of a complex picture, for example, an anatomical drawing. The locations chose are then converted into a number that represents the password. By clicking in the same locations in the same order the next time, the users identify themselves to the computer.

an Australian company is marketing an electronic device designed to keep sharks away from swimmers, surfers, and divers. The unit attaches to the person's ankle with Velcro straps and emits an electromagnetic field that causes a shark discomfort so that they swim away.