Computer networks have been used for years by public health officials to monitor outbreaks of disease. Typically, reporting and compiling can take a day or more ... Public health experts recognize a need for more rapid surveillance and detection ... Systems are being developed to collect and analyze disease data immediately ... One such program, called Real-Time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance, or RODS, is being developed at the Center for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh.

I walk into the humid goat shed in my Tyvex suit and sterilized boots. I look around the pen. Hundreds of sly-looking, inquisitive goats are staring at me intently. They seem unexceptional enough, but ... this is a so-called "transgenic farm" owned and run by Nexia Biotechnologies.

Nexia CEO: "Oh, it's not that weird. What we're doing here is ingeniously simple. We take a single gene from a golden orb-weaving spider and put it into a goat egg. The idea is to make the goat secrete spider silk into its milk. ... We're going to make biodegradable fishing lines out of it. Or maybe tennis racket strings. We call our product BioSteel."