It happens to be digital, but that's no accident. Digital videotape, which holds an hour of video or 500 high-quality stills in a cassette the size of a matchbox, is what made this hybrid camera possible. Although the idea seems obvious, it's not easy to grab crisp, still images from a stream of digital video data. Interlacing is good for getting smooth-looking video, but it yields lousy snapshots. The Optura works, in fact, as if you've simply added video capability to a regular camera.
Many collisions occur because the driver's vision is limited to the range of the headlights.
Several years ago Thomas Thundat found a way to peer beyond them. It started with a chance observation. In 1991 Thundat, a health researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was examining dna molecules with an atomic-force microscope. Heat from a diode was bending the gold-coated tip, just as changes in temperature bend the bimetallic strip in a thermostat. Thundat ran some calculations.