This petite router turns a cellular wireless data connection into Wi-Fi.

What it is: Atlas Power Ascender What it's used for: Rapidly pulling people and their gear up the side of a building or canyon The prototype of the Power Ascender was not easy to use. The battery-powered, waist-mounted climbing assistant yanked people up a dangling rope at a blistering 10 feet per second — almost 7 mph — fast enough to snap their limbs back. So Atlas, a company run by four mechanical engineers outside Boston, set the maximum speed to a more reasonable 5 feet per second and added a variable- speed trigger like on a power drill. Now customers — such as US military personnel — simply clip the 25-pound device onto a climbing harness, push any nonbraided rope through the top, and let it fly. Inside the gizmo, a network of grippers scurries up the line and ensures that it threads cleanly out the side. The Ascender's 10-kilowatt output can lift up to 350 pounds, which is no easy task. "Having that much power that close to your crotch is a huge engineering challenge," says Atlas' Bryan Schmid, "and frankly a bit risky." Sounds pretty ballsy.

Wired.com

Early Bird Registration for the Mobile, Media, and eMbedded Developer Days is now open. Additionally keynote speakers and a number of preselected sessions have been identified.

Attention, All Subscribers to the IAEA.org RSS Feed. We have moved and integrated all the site's newsfeeds into one central location. From this new page you will be able to subscribe to all other feeds the IAEA is offering, for example, job vacancies, IAEA meetings and publications. We urge you to update your subscription as soon as you can.

PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European leaders hoped to agree on a detailed plan in Paris on Sunday to prevent market panic and stave off what the International Monetary Fund warned could be a global financial meltdown.