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Researchers at McGill University have developed the strongest and toughest glass ever known. Inspired, in part, by the inner layer of mollusk shells, this glass does not shatter when hit, and acts more like plastic. The material, once commercially viable, could be used to improve cell phone screens, among other applications in the future. Interestingly, this may be an example of modern science rediscovering an old technology, now long lost. Apparently, a form of flexible glass existed during the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar. So the story goes, as told by Petronius, a glassmaker brought a drinking bowl...

State Of The Union: If President Obama's intention Tuesday night was to shift the inspiration away from the forces arrayed against him, his hour-long paean to government spending failed. "Sputnik" has crashed. Jimmy Carter's malaise speech of the summer of 1979, in which he seemed oblivious to the American spirit, ended up in the judgment of history as the archetype of his presidency. Barack Obama may have just done the same thing to himself with the "Sputnik Speech." Even supporters of the president and the Alinskyite radicalism that dominates his party will find it hard to acclaim this gifted orator's...

Standing 60 feet above sea level on this oil platform 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, Rab Bruce pointed to where the huge wave slammed into a tangle of grated steel and multicolor pipes. The Petronius deep-water platform, which was hit by a 90-foot wave during Hurricane Ivan last September, is now back on line. "I was just in shock at the damage," said Mr. Bruce, a longtime field coordinator on Chevron's Petronius deepwater platform, which was hit by a 90-foot wave during Hurricane Ivan last September. "I had never seen anything like this. Everything was busted, dangling and messed...