a clothing company in Italy is marketing a coat called L.E.D., which tests the air quality around it. A microcomputer in the right breast pocket is connected to a filter and sensor that tests the air for methane, propane, Freon, and other gases. An illuminated scale gives the wearer an indication of whether the levels of these gases are above normal. Such purity comes at a price, however; the coat retails for $1,000.

four students from Jericho High School in New York won a National Science Teachers Association award for their cutting-edge proposal to use lenses (which act like eyes) from starfish for computer circuitry. Superior to man-made technology, these starfish lenses are studied for their ability to direct a beam of data-carrying light for information processing.

about 75,000 Americans own business that operate only on eBay's Web site.

the technology contained in a single Game Boy unit in the year 2000 exceeded all the computer power that was used to put the first man on the Moon.

an exotic musical instrument, the glass harmonica, was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761 and had music written for it by Mozart and Beethoven. The instrument is made of hand-blown, tuned crystal bowls mounted sideways on a rotating spindle. Touching the turning edges of the bowls with wet fingers plays it. The otherworldly, flutelike tones it produces were used by Dr. Franz Mesmer to relax his patients during hypnosis. It fell out of favor because of claims that its otherworldly tones could shatter one's nerves, and it was banned in some German towns.

early in 2002, scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, announced that they were able to perform a calculation's multiple steps simultaneously, rather than the much more time-consuming (and usual) manner of one after another. The reason is that the laws of quantum physics allow scientists to manipulate atoms so that they spin in two different directions at the same time, thus allowing quantum computers to perform multiple operations at the same time. Since the major way to encrypt electronic information is to create number keys that would take present-day computers hundreds of millions of years to decode, the simultaneous calculations that are promised by quantum computers would be so speedy that all of the world's most secret information would be compromised.

mint green — that's the true color of the universe according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, who've said that if all the visible colors of the universe were mixed together, this color would be the predominant visual impression.

in October 1994, Jeff Bezos wanted to name his new Web venture "Cadabra" — as in "abracadabra". But his attorney convinced him that this magical moniker sounded a bit too much like "cadaver". Reluctantly, Bezos went with his second choice: Amozon.com.

when IBM developed the hard drive in 1956, the cost of a gigabyte of storage was $10 million. Today, a gigabyte of storage can be bought for about $1.