Daily News Briefs

MIT graduate student James McLurkin, inventor of the world’s smallest self-contained autonomous robots -- measuring a little over one inch on a side -- is the winner of the ninth $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventiveness. The 30-year-old native of Baldwin, N.Y., is working on his Ph.D. in computer science and building a fleet of small autonomous robots that work cooperatively to accomplish tasks. His work is being showcased in a traveling exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Science. . . . Webcasts of NanoEngineering TecForum presentations at the recent DesignCon 2003 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., are available from the The International Engineering Consortium (IEC). The six 45-minute films can be accessed free of charge at www.iec.org after a brief login registration. . . . Edmund Industrial Optics (EO) has released its European 2003 Optics Catalogs. The 340-page catalogs are available in versions for the UK (with prices in pounds or euros) and for Germany (priced in euros). Each catalog provides over 500 new products, information, primers and selection guides. The company also said it will release an Asia Pacific version of its catalog in January. For more information, visit: www.edmundoptics.com