Could lessons learned from Mother Nature help airport security screening checkpoints better protect us from terror threats?

The authors of a new book, Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World, believe they can -- if governments are willing to think outside the box and pay heed to some of nature’s most successful evolutionary strategies for species adaptation and survival.

Lessons from evolution applied to national security and other threats

PUT the pedal to the metal in the XH-150—a souped-up Saturn Vue—and watch the instruments. Sure enough, the speedometer shoots up in a satisfactory way. But an adjacent dial shows something else: the amount of charge in the car's capacitors is decreasing. Ease off the accelerator and as the speedo winds down the capacitors charge up again.

Such a capacitor gauge could become a common sight on the dashboards of the future. A capacitor can discharge and recharge far faster than a battery, making it ideal both for generating bursts of speed and for soaking up the energy collected by regenerative braking. AFS Trinity, a company based in Washington state, has turned that insight into a piece of equipment that it has fitted into an otherwise standard production model as an experiment. The result—the XH-150—was unveiled at this year's Detroit motor show.

In fact the XH-150 is a three-way hybrid, employing a petrol engine and conventional lithium-ion batteries as well as its special capacitors. An overnight charge gives it an all-electric range of 40 miles (60km), after which the petrol engine needs to come into play. AFS Trinity says the vehicle is capable of more than 80mph and returns the equivalent of 150 miles per gallon (more than 60km/litre) in normal use. Edward Furia, the firm's chief executive, reckons the extra kit would add around $8,700 to the price of a petrol-only vehicle were it put into mass production.

This, however, may be only the start. Eventually, the so-called ultracapacitors on which the XH-150 is based may supplant rather than merely supplement a car's batteries. And if that happens, a lot of other batteries may be for the chop, too. For it is possible that the long and expensive search for a better battery to power the brave, new, emission-free electrical world has been following the wrong trail.

Electricity storage: Ne plus ultra | Economist

What is this modern-day phenomenon that has spread like poison ivy through the ranks of novelists, historians, academics, scientists, students and almost anyone who uses and publishes words?

Plagiarism is a species of intellectual fraud that an author claims is original but has been copied from another source without permission or acknowledgment, thus deceiving and harming the reader.

I just committed plagiarism.

From the archive:

The Ecstasy of Influence, by Johnathan Lethem

A classic, or a fraud?

On Dec. 12, the Air Force announced with considerable fanfare at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia that its F-22 fighter had reached "full operational capability." Air Combat Command commander Gen. John Corley called it a "key milestone."

Brimming with pride, a spokesman for the manufacturer, Lockheed, stated: "The F-22 is ready for world-wide operations" -- and then added, "... should it be called upon."

His afterthought makes the point: There are, of course, two wars going on, and the F-22 has yet to fly a single sortie over the skies of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor has the Air Force announced any intention of sending the F-22 to either theater.

The Air Force is quite right to keep the F-22 as far as possible from either conflict. The airplane is irrelevant to both, and were it to appear in those skies, it almost certainly would set U.S. and allied forces back.

See the counterpoint:

One of my favorite sayings is, "If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck." The F-22 ensures that America's fight against any hostile air power will be very one-sided.

Consider, as well, one of Rumsfeld's Rules:

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

The F-22: expensive, irrelevant and counterproductive

Like much of the nation, New Hampshire is in a frenzy over illegal immigration. In 2005, a police chief from New Ipswich, a sleepy small town near the Massachusetts border, arrested an illegal immigrant, who had pulled over on the side of the road, on the grounds that he was trespassing in New Hampshire. "We're applying a state law to illegal aliens, instead of federal law, because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. Someone needed to bring it, so I brought it," the chief told the Concord Monitor. The courts threw out the case, but the police chief became a statewide celebrity.

Phantom Menace: The Pyschology Behind America's Immigration Hysteria

It's time to figure out how to work with the freshmen we have, rather than the ones in our admission brochures

The Myth of First-Year Enlightenment

Our annual snapshot of the emerging shape of business.

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2008

Good news for Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse:

Sedentary lifestyles could make you old before your time.

Live slow die young

Selling out?

As big pharmas fall over each other to proclaim themselves the 'partner of choice' for biotechs, there are still some lessons the younger sibling can learn.

Advice for partnering with pharma