1897: Karl Elsener legally registers his "soldiers' knife" for use by the Swiss army.

In an age when nationalism was fashionable, Elsener, a Swiss manufacturer of surgical instruments and cutlery, was a very fashionable man indeed. So he was less than thrilled to learn that the Swiss army was importing Solingen blades from neighboring Germany. Elsener set out to develop a homegrown multifunctional tool worthy of being carried by his local Alpine troops.

His prototype of what became known as the Swiss army knife appeared in 1891. The original -- made with a wooden handle -- included a blade, a screwdriver and a can opener. But Elsener was not happy with it and tinkered endlessly, adding a second blade using a revolutionary spring mechanism, and strengthening the housing.

The addition of a second blade necessitated extra space for the spring, which also opened up more room for other tools.

Elsener created a company, which he named Victoria after his mother, and opened a cutlery factory in Ibach, at the foot of the Alps.

After switching to stainless steel blades in 1921, the company -- which remains a family-run concern to this day -- was renamed Victorinox, "inox" truncated from the French word inoxydable for stainless. Today, in addition to its signature army knife, the company manufactures other precision instruments, especially watches.

The classic Swiss army knife bears the Swiss national symbol, a white cross in the center of a red shield, outlined in white against the red handle.

More than 34,000 Swiss Army knives are manufactured every day, and small wonder. This remarkably versatile tool is standard equipment for everyone from Boy Scouts to building contractors to mountaineers. It is even carried into space aboard the space shuttle.

Oh, and every recruit in the Swiss army still receives a knife upon entering the service. Victorinox supplies the army with about 50,000 knives each year.

Many variations are available, from relatively simple to jaw-droppingly complex.

The SwissChamp model, for example, which sells for around 88 bucks, boasts (take a deep breath): a large blade, small blade, can opener with small screwdriver, bottle opener with large screwdriver and wire stripper, scissors, pliers with wire cutter, wood saw, fish scaler with hook disgorger and ruler, metal saw with metal file and nail file, magnifying glass, reamer with sewing eye, Phillips screwdriver, corkscrew, hook, wood chisel, fine screwdriver, mini-screwdriver, ballpoint pen, straight pin, tweezers, key ring and … a toothpick.

A commemorative knife known as The Giant (it's 9 inches thick), contains 85 devices allowing for 110 functions. It's yours for around $1,200.

Other models reflect advances in technology and include features such as a laser pointer, USB flash drive and even an MP3 player.

Source: Victorinox, eWebtechnologies.com

Despite worldwide food shortages and falling farm production in the United States, little attention has been paid to a critical piece of the agricultural production web: Fertilizer.

Industrially produced fertilizer accounts for a huge increase in agricultural productivity over the last 30 years -- the so-called "green revolution" -- but its production consumes about 1.5 percent of all the energy used worldwide and produces a huge amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide along the way.

You'd think that would mean scientists would have an easy time getting funding for research into less energy- and carbon-intensive ways of fertilizing crops. You'd be wrong.

"The fact that I have a Nobel Prize doesn't keep me from losing my funding," said Richard Schrock, an MIT professor who won science's most prestigious prize in 2005. "The amount of money that is required is not available at this point."

More money could lead to a world-changing breakthrough. Schrock and David Tyler, of the University of Oregon, have been closing in, slowly but steadily, on new ways to get the air's nitrogen to react and transform into the ammonia that powers the global food system.

Schrock was able to use a molybdenum catalyst to take protons and electrons -- which would normally stick together to form hydrogen -- and instead produce ammonia. Now he's working on revisions of his process that include different forms of hydrogen.

Tyler, meanwhile, published a major paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in which he reduced nitrogen using hydrogen and an iron catalyst. Tyler said his team "had almost" created the right catalyst for converting hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia. Some members of his team anticipate a major breakthrough as early as this year.

"There's an enzyme called nitrogenase, found in bacteria, that will make ammonia," Tyler said. "If nature can do it, you'd think scientists ought to be able to reproduce it."

So far, no dice.

If there was ever a field crying out for innovation, fertilizer is it. Most fertilizer production depends on a 99-year-old industrial method known as the Haber-Bosch process, which produces ammonia, the chemical precursor to nitrogen fertilizers. By one scientist's count, the 87 million tons of ammonia that are produced each year by this process feed 40 percent of the world's population (.pdf).

However, the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process depends on using lots of natural gas, both as a source of hydrogen and for the power needed to cook the chemicals.

Given all the demand, natural gas prices have doubled since the mid-90s, and the price of ammonia has tripled. That's bad news for farmers, especially those in the developing world who already have limited ability to purchase fertilizers.

"Why are the Chinese using so much energy?" Tyler asks. "It's making ammonia plants."

Some environmental and organic farming groups contend that just "greening" the process of making ammonia isn't enough. They point to the problems that nitrogen-based fertilizers cause. Nitrogen gets into rivers, which carry the fertilizer to the coasts of developed countries. There, algae feast on the stuff and use all the available oxygen in the water. The result: dead zones off the coasts of countries that use the fertilizers. Other groups argue that heavy input of fertilizers encourages monoculture: planting huge tracts of single, high-yield plant species, a practice they say is bound to be environmentally destructive.

But given rising populations and rising food prices, the world might not be in an either/or situation: We could need new farming methods and new ways of making ammonia.

In a twist worthy of an Arthur C. Clarke novel, the global scale of the problem all comes down to the way that electrons arrange themselves around the nucleus of nitrogen atoms. A nitrogen atom has five electrons in its outer shell, so it has a tendency to share three electrons with another nitrogen atom to create a triple covalent bond, one of the strongest in nature.

Learning how to break that bond was a tremendous breakthrough for human technology -- all the more remarkable given that bacteria can do it with relative ease. But all of the world's nitrogen-fixing bacteria only produce about as much nitrogen as humans do now. With world population estimates continuing to grow, any process that aims to replace Haber-Bosch would need to be able to replace existing nitrogen production and then some, in order to meet the world's growing demands.

So while billions of dollars in venture capital are flowing in to cleantech companies that would only make small differences in the world's energy balance, research into new fertilizer tech is inexplicably underfunded.

"Something like this, the big guys would jump all over it," Tyler said, "assuming we could do it."

EMERYVILLE, California -- Spore is an ambitious game, years in the making, from Sims designer Will Wright. It lets players create creatures, then influence the beasties' evolution from single-celled organisms to space-exploring monsters.

Wired.com got a look at Spore's Creature Creator component, which will let players design the beings they'll interact with and share with the world, during a Tuesday night press event at Maxis Software's studios. Aside from the official presentation, an array of cardboard cutouts, colorful posters and other items spied in the Maxis offices all hinted at things to come when Creature Creator is released June 17.

Spore is scheduled for a Sept. 7 release.

Left:

One of the many brutes greeting us at the door as we trickled into the EA office Tuesday evening -- the yellow chap made of cardboard, not the Maxis employee. Both were probably amused at the horde of journalists stumbling about their office space.

If this bulbous monstrosity is any indication of things to come, the Creature Creator will not be for the faint of heart. That gaping maw, those cold, vacant eyes ... surely the spine-chilling product of some severely twisted imagination. Or promo material for Electronic Arts' The Simpsons Game.

Spore invades Earth! Community is central to the game's experience, with a great deal of the content spewing from the minds of those who get their hands on the Creature Creator. This poster, spotted on a wall at Maxis, offers a time line of events past and things to come in the Spore development cycle, and provides insight into the ideas driving the creative process.

An onsite 3-D printer crafts little ceramic models of creatures that the folks at Maxis have been coming up with. Eventually, the Spore Store will offer the option to have a model of your own little monster created and shipped to you.

A sneak peek at possible planet sketches for the final game. Only the Creature Creator was revealed during Tuesday's press event, but hints and glimpses of the full experience were strewn about the Maxis office.

This poster, tacked on a wall in the Maxis office, offers suggestions of the evolution or growth of a particular creature. Details about Spore were sparse, but you will be able to guide your very own creation from its first cell, to shambling beast, and finally through the air and to the stars.

Spore will ship with the Creature Creator, a Vehicle Creator (for land, sea, air and space) and a Building Creator, says executive producer Lucy Bradshaw (pictured). Players can tinker with these tools and share their creations with other members of the Spore community. Mac and PC versions of the game will be released simultaneously, and players can swap and share with whomever they like, regardless of the operating system they use.

Here's a tip: Your creature's "front" faces toward the arrow on the podium on which it stands. Be sure to orient your camera in the right direction -- or not. A pair of eyes on either end might lend your creation an extra advantage.

Once you're facing in the right direction (or not, depending on the look you're going for), you're free to add all manner of limbs and details to your creation, and morph them as you please. The mouse wheel scales the size of body parts, so if you're into large feet and small hands, your dream date will be ready in minutes.

Legs are optional, as this wheeled chap illustrates. The limbs you tack on to your creature will affect various stats, helping or hindering your speed, attack power, dancing ability and more. This particular monster may not be able to bust a move, but those teeth and claws probably aren't built for hugging.

With the Creature Creator offering complete control over bone structure, body morphing and limbs -- plus a robust color palette -- it's impossible to predict what the Spore community will come up with as players create content before the game's September launch. There should be enough claws and scaly beasts to go around (like this Toucan Sam on Wheaties, for example), but there will probably be plenty of cuddly creations, too.

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The folks who brought us Zillow and Expedia today unveil Glassdoor -- a site that could have a powerful effect on the business landscape. Rich Barton, Zillow's CEO and co-founder of Glassdoor, calls the new venture a TripAdvisor for companies.

Glassdoor sets up a way for people to rate the companies they work for -- anonymously, of course. A Microsoft employee can respond to a survey of 16 questions about job satisfaction, enter information about his or her salary, reply to essay-style questions, and give CEO Steve Ballmer an approval rating. In exchange, the employee would get full access to the site -- a "give to get" formula intended to convince people to participate.

If it works -- if people enthusiastically jump in the way they do on TripAdvisor -- then Glassdoor could be profound. Barton and Glassdoor CEO Bob Hohman showed me a preview. Anyone trying to decide what company to work for could get a view of the company previously only available by word of mouth.

You could starkly see how happy engineers are at, say, Google vs. Yahoo. One page Hohman showed me compared engineer salaries at Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Apple, showing that Apple pays far less than the other three -- but still woos engineers who believe in Apple's philosophy. Another page shows that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has a not-great approval rating while VMware CEO Diane Greene has one of the top approval ratings in the industry.

Glassdoor won't just be a boon to job seekers. It could become an important investment tool, helping Wall Street see more clearly into a company and its prospects -- from an employee point of view. It certainly will be a resource for journalists -- a window into a company almost impossible to come by otherwise.

Barton and Hohman initially funded Glassdoor, and it since raised $3 million from Benchmark venture capital firm. It plans to make money on advertising and keep the site free to anyone who contributes information. Hohman says filters will help prevent companies or disgruntled employees from gaming results.

All in all, Glassdoor struck me as one of the more important new Web ventures I've seen in a while.

1985: Karen Ann Quinlan, brain-dead and nine years removed from the respirator doctors employed to keep her alive, finally dies. Her case is a landmark in the ethical debate over the lengths medical science should go in trying to preserve a life that is deemed irretrievably lost.

Karen Quinlan was a 21-year-old college student in 1975 when she ingested a combination of drugs and alcohol at a party. Feeling unwell, she was put to bed by friends who later returned to find that she had stopped breathing. By the time help arrived, Quinlan's oxygen-deprived brain was severely damaged, and she was reduced to what doctors describe as a persistent vegetative state.

Quinlan was kept alive with life-support technology, including feeding tubes and a respirator that enabled her to breathe. While there was some low-level brain function, her cognitive abilities were wiped out. When months passed without any improvement in her condition, Quinlan's parents asked that she be removed from life support and allowed to die.

Doctors refused, saying she didn't meet the criteria for brain death, meaning she could not be declared legally dead by existing medical standards. The state of New Jersey also intervened, saying it would prosecute any physician who helped end Quinlan's life.

Joseph Quinlan, Karen's father, sued to have life support discontinued, but was denied by the court. He appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where he based his case on the First (freedom of religion) and Eighth (cruel and unusual punishment) Amendments. Although the court rejected both arguments, it ultimately ruled in Joseph Quinlan's favor on the basis of U.S. Supreme Court precedents affirming an individual's right to privacy.

It also rejected the state's argument that removing life support constituted a homicide, saying that Quinlan's death would result from natural causes. Following the court's ruling, Karen Quinlan was removed from the respirator.

But she did not die.

Instead, she continued breathing unaided and lived for another nine years before infection and pneumonia finally killed her. She was 31. The autopsy disclosed severe damage to her thalamus, that part of the brain that controls -- among other things -- the processing of sensory information.

Quinlan's case is a milestone, a legal precedent for other right-to-die cases. It is also a milestone in bioethics, touching as it does on a number of moral and ethical issues surrounding the end of life. As a direct result of the Quinlan case, in fact, hospitals and other health care facilities nationwide established ethics committees.

It's not an issue that will resolve itself anytime soon. The implications of prolonging life under extraordinary circumstances are only bound to multiply with every advance in medical technology.

Source: Various

It's time to retire the NSFW acronym and associated phrases. I've simply seen far too many electrons sacrificed in long, pointless arguments about what "not safe for work" means.

Whose work? Are you bleaching the hot tubs at Playboy Mansion or arranging candlelight vigils for Citizens Against Potty Mouths? Are you European? To hear some Europeans tell the story, everyone over there watches hard-core porn and smokes hashish between staff meetings where they discuss where to find the best porn and hashish.

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Most people end up taking one of two stances, each filling in important words. First, there are those who read the classic warning as "not safe for (my) work." These people are touchy. They're the first to dive into the comments and sear off your eyebrows for not realizing that some people have jobs where the boss does not look kindly on the word jockstrap. In fact, as far as I can tell, these people have such strict work policies that the only web activity they're allowed to do on company time is complain about improper blog post labeling.

Most people, however, read NSFW as "not safe for (the platonic ideal of) work." Apparently there's this archetypal concept of a workplace that exists in the universal consciousness, and you should consult the great mother mind before putting anything on the web. Of course, not everyone is hooked into the same plane of hyper-awareness, and thus you get arguments.

For instance: bikinis? Are photos of women in bikinis safe for work? What about one-piece bathing suits? Tight pants? I've seen someone argue that a cartoon of a fully-clothed wolf-lady in a turtleneck sweater and slacks was just too steamily erotic to be work-safe. (I don't know where the arguer worked, but I hope it wasn't the Disney Store.)

And then there are those sad, twitchy souls who get hung up on the work-safety of URLs. You could post a link to a recipe for baked chicken, but if the URL contained the word breasts, they'd be convinced they're going to be shoved roughly out the backdoor of the building, to be unemployed forever as each new workplace hears of the unforgivable sin of that fateful day when you ruined their life.

Now, I know geekfolk love their acronyms and all, but I'm tired of the whole stupid conflict. Maybe, possibly, we could agree that the scope and depth of human reaction to matters biological can't be flattened into a binary designation as if stomping on a soda can? Hell, even the Motion Picture Association of America has five different categories for the relative acceptability of a movie, and its system is arbitrary and biased. What makes us think we can get away with only work-safe and not work-safe?

Here's my cutting-edge solution: How about if we actually describe things? This isn't semaphore, people. Unless you routinely blog in the middle of a desperate escape from a burning building, you've got plenty of time to say something like: "Warning: visual depiction of pert nipples and raspberry jam" or "Beware: contains pictures of Drew Barrymore in a business suit, eating ice cream and giving the camera that look" or "Cuidado: cloacas!"

If we just added those extra few words, a few additional strikes of the keyboard, then everyone could make an informed, adult decision to look around real quick before clicking through, and people could stop complaining. Except for those URL guys -- they're hopeless.

- - -

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to insist that NSFW is pronounced "nossfaw."