Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe PRINTER OF THE FUTURE Books, documents and reports are printed on reams of paper and take up countless filing cabinets, boxes and even floors in corporations around the world. Advertisement Two Syracuse University students who won Lexmark International's "Design the Business Printer of the Future" contest may make it possible to layer information on paper. Ryan Bednar and Nate Schaal, senior industrial design students, designed the Electronic Archive Printer that layers multiple pages of information onto a single, standard letter-size page. It could be operational in five to 10 years. "With this design, you're actually printing on paper that changes," Michael Miller, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine and one of the contest judges, says in a release. HOME DEFIBRILLATORS Defibrillators are available in malls and golf courses but studies show 70 percent of cardiac arrests happen in the home and the majority are witnessed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared HeartStart Home Defibrillator by Philips Electronics, the first of a new generation of defibrillators designed specifically for the home. In a typical community it takes an average of nine minutes for an ambulance to reach a victim. For each minute that passes, the chance for survival decreases by about 10 percent. Advertisement Designed to be fast to learn and easy to use, the HeartStart Home Defibrillator helps inexperienced responders to use a defibrillator successfully. POLLUTING COMPUTER CHIP A study by a team at the United Nations University in Tokyo has found that weight for weight, the average computer chip does more harm to the environment than the car, the British Broadcasting Corp. reports. The manufacture of the tiny, wafer-thin slivers of silicon leave behind a mountain of waste. "In order to produce one memory chip that weighs 2 grams, the total amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make that chip is 1,400 grams. That's 700 times the weight of the original chip," says Eric Williams. William's team is surprised by the results, particularly when compared with the amount of material consumed in the manufacture of a typical car. PARTICIPATORY NUTCRACKER Since the end of the Soviet Union era, many Russian fine arts institutions, challenged by the new market economy, have had to look internationally to help with funding. This year the Moscow Ballet will perform The Nutcracker in 75 cities across the United States with local guest performers totaling 5,000. Advertisement This fall, General Motors' Saturn sponsored nationwide auditions in shopping malls and aspiring ballerinas were chosen to join the ballet for that city's performance. "This gave us the opportunity to sponsor an event that would go to 75 markets that traditionally would not get this type of entertainment," Chuck Thomson, of Saturn, says in a statement.
