Rockman Elysium

Tried tweaking the comm's layout again. It should still give a scroll bar now for those monster posts; let me know if you have any problems. I dinked around with various combinations of styles for the last couple of hours, and so far this is still the most flexible layout I've found.

Also, out of curiosity, I'd like to hear back from the comm with everyone's screen resolution and browser so future layout tweaks can serve the largest number of people in the community. If everyone's running Firefox at 1024x780 on 17 inch monitors, that's good to know; if there's more variance, that'll tell me I need to keep changes conservative. :D

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/dec/HQ_07287_Invention_of_the_Year.html
HAMPTON, Va. - A device that can act like muscle and nerves to expand and contract surfaces is the 2006 NASA Government Invention of the Year.

NASA's Macro-Fiber Composite, or MFC, can be attached to a structure to bend it, reduce vibrations and monitor force. A team at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., created the flexible and durable material that uses ceramic fibers. By applying voltage to the MFC, the ceramic fibers change shape to expand or contract and turn the resulting force into a bending or twisting action on the material. Likewise, voltage is generated in proportion to the force applied to the MFC material.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1397 (with awesome pictures!)
Takao Someya lead a group of University of Tokyo researchers that same year in creating a robotic skin consisting of pressure-sensing and temperature-sensing networks laminated together. The resulting artificial skin can detect both properties simultaneously. The transistors used in the circuits and the semiconductors both use "organic" materials based on chains of carbon atoms, so maybe robots will "feel" a little bit more human.

How will artificial skin conduct sensation for human beings? Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes can make the surface of prosthetic devices feel like the the covering you were born with. In the example shown above, a nanotube is shown delicately balanced on top of gold filaments, and threaded through a rubbery polymer. The polymer/nanotube skin will transfer heat from the surface to the sensor network below as quickly as your skin communicates this information. The nanotubes enhance the piezoelectric effect inherent in the polymer. The sensors can then generate a signal to the brain.

HAHA! *point!!* Conduit-layered synthskin!! XDDDD *SO vindicated!*