LOS ANGELES — Scientific accidents have brought some of the most groundbreaking discoveries — vulcanized rubber, X-rays, penicillin — and now scientists at UCLA have accidentally discovered a material that could make digital cameras as we know them obsolete.

Graduate student Hsiang-Yu Chen was working on a new formula for solar cells when something went wrong. Instead of creating electricity when hit with light, the conductivity of the material she was working with changed.

"The original purpose [was] to make a solar cell more efficient," says Chen. "However, during the research we found the solar cell phenomenon [had] disappeared." Instead, the test material showed high gain photoconductivity, indicating potential use as a photo sensor.

Thanks to this lucky mistake, a new breed of camera sensors that are cheaper, higher-resolution and have lower distortion could be on the horizon. Click through the gallery to learn how this new breakthrough works and tour the labs where the magic happens.

Left: A piece of glass houses five strips of this new material, held between tweezers in a glove box.

Here, materials science Ph.D. student Hsiang-Yu Chen takes a polymer sample from a tray inside a glove box. Researchers in this lab test hundreds of samples before a material with desirable properties is found.

When Chen made the discovery, she was working on plastic-like substances with quantum dots — nanoparticles (roughly the size of a virus) with properties similar to a semiconductor.

The nano-size quantum dots could give photo sensors much higher resolution than current models. And because this new photo-sensing material is a polymer film, it's flexible and could someday be inexpensive to produce.

At left is a pair of stills that concentrate polymer solutions. Later, the solutions will be tested for their response to light.

Currently, the sensor in your camera that detects light and allows you to capture an image is made out of silicon. This makes it relatively expensive as well as flat and inflexible.

Having a flat sensor doesn?t seem like a big deal until you consider how your lens works. Lenses are curved, which shapes the image they see. When you project the spherical image onto a flat surface you get distortion around the edges. A flexible sensor would prevent this distortion.

The polymer- and metal-coated slide from the first photo of the gallery is now placed into an electrode clip (the white, rectangular portion of the setup). The electrodes on the clip will enable sensors to take readings from the material when it's exposed to light.

The sample in the electrode clip is inserted into the test chassis. The wires on the right send any electrical activity from the material to a computer for analysis.

A very bright, wide-spectrum light source is connected to the glove box. It's attached to the portal using a standoff header that keeps the light a fixed distance from the sample. The light appears blue because the light in the room has a yellow cast, it's actually much closer to the color of daylight.

Hsiang-Yu Chen checks the results of the test using a computer and laboratory graphing software. The graphs show the response levels to the light that the material exhibited.

In her initial experiment she was expecting to see electricity produced when the light hit the material, but instead the light stopped the flow of electricity. This means that her material acted as a photo detector instead of a solar cell.

The lab still remains committed to developing a better solar panel, but now that their findings have been published it may only be a matter of time before camera companies take notice of the technology.

An atomic force microscope is used to image the polymer sample to view its physical makeup. The AFM traces the surface of the polymer with a nanoscopic needle, the same way the needle on your record player tracks over vinyl.

This needle is attached to a cantilever that reflects a laser beam, which then determines the three-dimensional topography of the surface. Inset is the resulting micrograph of the surface from the AFM. This view allows researchers to make sure the quantum dots are properly aligning in polymer.

This tunneling electron microscope (TEM) is used to view the physical makeup of the polymer. The level of detail visible from the TEM micrographs is a few hundred nanometers. Inset is the micrograph created by the TEM of the photosensitive polymer.

1952: It's front-page news when George Jorgensen Jr. is reborn as Christine Jorgensen, gaining international celebrity and notoriety as the first widely known person to undergo a successful sex-change operation.

Jorgensen, who grew up in the Bronx, in her words, a "frail, tow-headed, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games," was drafted into the Army just after World War II. Military service only reinforced Jorgensen's belief that she was, in fact, a woman trapped inside a man's body.

After receiving her discharge, Jorgensen returned home and first heard about "sex-reassignment surgery," which was being performed only in Sweden. (It was illegal almost everywhere else, including the United States.)

Encouraged, Jorgensen began taking female hormones on her own, then headed for Sweden. She never made it. Stopping in Denmark to visit relatives in Copenhagen, Jorgensen was introduced to Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon who specialized in the kind of surgery she was seeking. He agreed to take the case and put his patient on hormone-replacement therapy as they prepared for surgery.

Several surgeries were required, the first one consisting of castration, which was only carried out after permission was obtained from the Danish minister of justice.

At the time of Jorgensen's transformation, Hamburger did not give her an artificial vagina, so she remained "anatomically incorrect" for several years before undergoing a vaginoplasty in the United States.

The hormone therapy resulted in profound changes to Jorgensen's body. Fat was redistributed, and she began to take on the contours of a woman. Subsequent surgeries completed the process until she was ready to step into the spotlight.

Jorgensen's sex change, which may have been leaked to the press by Jorgensen herself, hit the headlines Dec. 1, creating an international sensation. "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty" screamed the banner of Jorgensen's hometown New York Daily News.

In fact, Jorgensen was not the first person to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. During the rollicking Weimar period, German doctors performed the surgery on at least two patients. The difference, in Jorgensen's case, was that she underwent hormone-replacement therapy in conjunction with the surgery. The earlier surgeries were strictly cut-and-paste.

Although Jorgensen complained frequently about the jackals of the press, she did become something of a publicity hound and took most of the tasteless remarks with good grace, laughing off jokes such as, "Christine Jorgensen went abroad and came back a broad."

She turned to acting and became a nightclub singer as well, performing, predictably, "I Enjoy Being a Girl."

But Christine Jorgensen's world was not an enlightened one, particularly when it came to transgenderism. She paid the cost for this lack of sophistication. A first announced engagement fell through, and a second one failed as well, when the state of New York refused to issue the couple a marriage license. Her intended husband also lost his job when the marriage plans became known.

She later traveled the lecture circuit, talking about her experiences and advocating for the nascent transgender cause.

Jorgensen died of cancer in 1989, a few weeks short of age 63.

Source: Various

Among the scents of fresh pine garlands, pumpkin pie, mulling spices and roast turducken filling your home this holiday season, you may catch a whiff of that old familiar vapor.

Yes, that special time of year has come again. We are officially accepting nominees for the annual Wired.com Vaporware awards, our yearly showcase of the products pitched, promised and hyped, but never delivered.

2008 is actually gearing up to be much more exciting than years past.

Some of last year's favorites won't be eligible this time around.

The Tesla Roadster is rolling off the assembly line, albeit slowly. Spore sprung to life. The Optimus Maximus keyboard successfully separated overpaid design fetishists from their Google stock dividends just in time for the market crash.

Even poor Axl Rose managed to perform his six millionth ProTools edit and get Chinese Democracy onto shelves after a 14-year wait.

All that action cleared the way for a whole new crop of crap. So, let's get to it and fill up the list with some fresh FAIL.

Got a nominee for Vaporware '08? Here are the rules:

• The product must have been promised to ship during 2008.
• No rumors. That means no Mac Netbooks, Apple iTablets or 50-inch Sony OLEDs. It has to have been announced with a 2008 release date attached.
• If you can buy it, it doesn't count. If it shipped — even if it sucked — it's not vaporware.
• Software stuck in a never-ending, pre-release, beta-testing stage can be considered vaporware.
• Likewise hardware prototypes. It may exist in some company's lab or trotted out at trade shows, but it's vaporware until it hits store shelves.

Send your submissions to wiredvaporware@gmail.com. To make it easier on us, please put the name of the company and product in the subject line of your e-mail, as well as in the message body. And don't forget to include a couple of acerbic comments we can quote. Links are a big help, too.

The final list will be assembled by Wired.com's editors. Awards will be handed out in late December.

For the past six years, Wired magazine's Found page has presented our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Turns out, this little exercise in futurism is one of your favorite pages (as we learned recently when it took a short sabbatical). So we've decided to turn Found over to our readers — what do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years?

Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then go to wired.com/wired/found to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page (giving full credit to the creators, of course). We?ll also select one (image-based submission) as our favorite, and note it in an update at the bottom of this text block. This week's assignment: Imagine the future of the truck stop.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best Found idea and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The image must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your idea and how you made it.

We don't host the images, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions, and look for an update announcing our favorite submission!

Vote on Found ideas submitted by other readers.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your found idea.

Submit your Found image.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

Back to top

Here's our vision of the future of Wall Street in 2013. The logo of the New York Stock Exchange is written in English and Chinese. Ticker tapes, blaring cable news network updates, and new advertising overlays all bespeak a bummed out bear market that never bounced back.

We'll continue to create a new Artifacts from the Future in upcoming issues of Wired magazine. But we'd like to see your prognostications too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years? Each month, we'll propose a scenario. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions and vote for your favorites. Check out this month's Truck Stop of the Future challenge.

The concept and most of the text for this Found came from Senior Editor Jason Tanz. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, photo assistants Sarah Filippi and Daniel Salo, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image.

The Chinese flag hangs side by side with the stars and stripes.

Bloomberg reports Cramer's hunger strike enters third week.

Refill your 401K with Schwab's Scratch and Win Ultra-Lotto!

CloneCo announces 2-for-1 split.

Suze Orman's latest book, Solvency Is a State of Mind, tops the charts.

Time machine futures collapse.

Finish this sentence: Bioterror is....

This Mobile Device Only Does Email — Perfectly

Not every gadget needs a carnival of features. Take the Peek, which tackles just a single task: mobile email. No phone, no browser, no camera—and no apologies. It won't satisfy convergence-rabid smartphone fetishists, but for the rest of the world (i.e., the majority of it), this one-trick pony is a godsend. In terms of looks, its slim profile stands up to the big boys. But the real treat is the interface. Instead of forcing you to wrestle with laborious setup menus, the Peek asks for a name, email address, and password. That's it. Message from your Comcast.net account? Done. Gmail, Hotmail, and other webmail accounts? No sweat. Peek has an army of techies behind the curtain to handle the digital diplomacy that makes their device work flawlessly with every major email purveyor — and quite a few minor ones. It runs on T-Mobile's massive cellular network, so even the most itinerant technophobe can use it on the go. —Terrence Russell

$100, plus $20/month

Sleek Sony Cam Shows Off Family Photos on the Spot

Face it: No one checks your Flickr page. The only time friends see your photos is when you whip out the old digicam and cruise through whatever happens to be stored on it. The crafty folks at Sony know this, which is why they made the Cyber-shot DSC-T700, a pocket snapper that's as adept at displaying images as it is at capturing them. Just 0.7-inch thick, the sleek case incorporates a 10.1-MP sensor and Carl Zeiss lens, giving pictures a crispness rarely found in compact cameras. Flip it over and you'll find that the back is literally all display — a 3.5-inch, 16:9 touchscreen that replaces every hard button except Review, Zoom, Power, and Shutter. But this rig's beauty goes way beyond the surface: 4 gigs of onboard memory hold up to 950 hi-res shots. So enough with the uploading. Quit spamming the world with links to 40 shots of your lunch and start bragging with this. —John Mahoney

$400

Stage a Water-Cooler Ambush With Pump-Action Nerf Blaster

Workplace warlords must master a complex arsenal — the preemptive status report, the perfectly timed personal day, the BCC. And ever since Nerf released its N-Strike line of "toys" in 2002, we've had one more: the foam bullet, expertly aimed at your coworker's concentration-furrowed brow. For the serious open-plan warrior, there's no better weapon than the Recon CS-6. This pump-action blaster comes outfitted with a shoulder stock and a red-dot sight for cubicle sniping. Should you get caught in a watercooler ambush, the CS-6's six-shot magazine staves off the dreaded hollow click. But if you're going under cover, you'll need a sidearm you can conceal behind a manila folder. No problem, because the Recon is a transformer. Remove the stock and barrel extender and it becomes a stealthy Nerf pistol. Keep one in your desk drawer and those hooligans from accounting will never even look at your parking space again. —Cliff Kuang

$20

Commute-Friendly Electric Cycle Does 0 to 30 in 3.8 Seconds

The electric vehicle is a cool idea too often poorly executed. Today's batteries don't have the oomph or range to be practical — unless you drop 100 grand for a Tesla. That's why Brammo's gearheads started with motorcycles. They're so light that even readily available batteries can make one commute-worthy. The 285-pound Enertia is proof of that. At its heart is a lithium-iron-phosphate power cell designed to be as safe as it is efficient. "A plasma fire is not something we want to see," company founder Craig Bramscher says. The Enertia charges in just over three hours and is good for 45 miles. The 13-kW motor silently propels the electro-cycle to 30 mph in 3.8 seconds — quick enough to beat that cab away from the light — and to a top speed of 53 mph. Brammo hasn't created a highway-ready monster (yet), but Bramscher takes heart in what his creation can do: The electric motor's instantaneous torque is perfect for wheelies. —Chuck Squatriglia

$15,000

3-D-Ready HDTV Uses Laser Light to Double Color Range, Save Energy

Mama always told you not to stare into the sun. She might have added lasers to the list of no-nos — looking directly at the concentrated beams can burn your retinas. So who'd have thought they'd make an ideal light source for televisions? Mitsubishi's 65-inch LaserVue taps this tech to produce an astonishingly vivid picture. The rear-projection set's color range is twice as broad as a typical HDTV's, yet it consumes 33 percent less energy than a similar-size LCD. Though this 3-D-ready TV may seem straight outta Solaris, you don't need to fear its newness; unlike most nascent technologies, lasers have stamina. The company claims they'll never need replacing. So go ahead and screen those Lost DVDs 24/7. Or if you're feeling reckless, fire up your Blu-ray player to savor Angelina in all her Beowulfian glory. Kind of like staring at the naked sun, only hotter. —Jose Fermoso

$7,000

USB Stake Helps Brown Thumbs Turn Green, Monitors Soil Conditions

Those cacti on your windowsill don't deserve to die. Even if you regularly fail at horticulture, the EasyBloom can help. Just leave it in your proposed planting area for 24 hours, either stuck in the dirt or propped up in its cradle, then plug it into your computer's USB port. The gizmo measures soil conditions, sunlight, temperature, and humidity, comparing the results with an online database to recommend species that will thrive there. And should the weather be wacky that day, the EasyBloom is smart enough to check the National Weather Service for local averages. Your data is stored online for quick reference. If you've already killed everything in the garden, plunk the sensor down in your little Death Valley, set it to Monitor mode, and let it tell you what you're doing wrong. But here's a tip: If you find yourself running the autopsy repeatedly, it could be something basic. You do have to water the crops, you know. The EasyBloom can't do everything for you. —Elizabeth Livengood

$60

Svelte Ultralight Notebook Comes Fully Loaded

Ultralight notebooks come dressed to impress, but most disappoint when it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Not the Voodoo Envy 133, a glossy black Kubrickian slab of awesomeness that makes other ultralights weep from their USB ports. Encased in carbon fiber, the Envy is just 0.7-inch thick and weighs 3.4 pounds when outfitted with a solid-state hard drive. Its looks will induce pangs of jealousy in the boardroom; back in the hotel room, the Envy proves that it's not just a pretty face. Even the base model rocks the tiny-team roster with a 1.6-GHz Intel processor, 2 gigs of RAM, swappable battery, LED-backlit display, and the widest array of ports — HDMI, eSATA, and ExpressCard — in its class. Like most of the svelte set, the Envy is heavy on wireless (802.11n, Bluetooth), but wired users aren't locked out. Since the case is thinner than an Ethernet jack, Voodoo built the connector into the power brick, which generates a dedicated wireless link with the computer. An instant-on OS lets you surf the Web or make Skype calls without booting up Windows. It all adds up to one drool-worthy package. —Christopher Null

$2,100, and up

Cycling GPS Tells You Where You Are — and How You Got There

At Wired, we love cycling almost as much as we love melting the chrome off passing cars with our high-powered laser. Almost. But even the combustion crew couldn't help raising an eyebrow at Garmin's top-tier, GPS-enabled cycling computer. This Tour-worthy unit tells you not only where you are but — thanks to heart rate, distance, and elevation tracking — exactly how you got there. The 2.2-inch color screen is as easy to read in the noontime glare as a sundial and offers more data-customization options than a crooked accountant. The Edge plays nice with wireless power meters to let you monitor the wattage you're generating while you pedal. It even lets you beam saved routes to other nearby 705 users. Optional street maps ensure that you can always find your way around town. So program this into your new Edge: 520 Third Street, San Francisco. Just don't roll up on some chromed-out fixie, because not even the 705 can see Lazor coming. —Mathew Honan

$500

It's the All-Digital Future ? $100 Netflix Box Streams 15,000 Films

At the start of 2008, the Web-streamed movie experience still felt like a half-baked preview of its potential. Digital delivery required expensive hardware, and you paid extra for each rental (cough, Apple TV ... cough, Vudu). It wasn't the future we'd hoped for. Then came Roku's Netflix Player, the $100 video box that could summon more than 15,000 titles at no charge for Netflix subscribers. It was a revelation, wherein we learned what streaming video was supposed to feel like: nothing. That nothing changed everything. So go ahead, tear through all four seasons of The Office on a whim (then the original British version for good measure). Watch Strays because there's nobody home to exercise a Vin Diesel veto. For movies you can't stream, you still get your little red envelopes. And the same Roku box you love now will support hi-def streams when Netflix offers them. This little treasure chest is the real thing, straight from the all-digital future. —John Mahoney

$100

Try This at Home: Camera on a Flex Cable Finds Lost Objects

Milwaukee may have designed it to help home inspectors spot hidden mold or shoddy repairs, but the M-Spector is just too much fun to leave to the pros. Did your 5-year-old really drop your diamond ring down the sink — or pawn it for Fruit Roll-Ups? Want to find out the easy way how many bananas your "hilarious" brother-in-law stuffed in your tailpipe? Grab the M-Spector, thumb the power button, and the 2.5-inch screen lights up with 320x240-pixel color video, transmitted from the tiny CMOS camera on the end of its flexible neck. A camera-mounted LED illuminates dark and dismal places, letting you see anywhere you can cram the 3-foot-long cable. Sure, cops could use the M-Spector to peer around corners or ferret out shanks in prison cells, but it's equally effective at locating the perfectly good grape that rolled under your fridge. Just don't get too creative; you'll probably want to draw the line at home colonoscopies. —Chuck Cage

$250