These adhesives make strong, flexible bonds.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

Adhesives that are blends of commercially available urethane and silicone adhesives have been found to be useful for bonding metal parts that flex somewhat during use. These urethane/silicone adhesives are formulated for the specific metal parts to be bonded. The bonds formed by these adhesives have peel and shear strengths greater than those of bonds formed by double-sided tapes and by other adhesives, including epoxies and neat silicones. In addition, unlike the bonds formed by epoxies, the bonds formed by these adhesives retain flexibility.

In the initial application for which the urethane/silicone adhesives were devised, there was a need to bond spring rings, which provide longitudinal rigidity for inflatable satellite booms, with the blades that provide the booms' axial strength. The problem was to make the bonds withstand the stresses, associated with differences in curvature between the bonded parts, that arose when the booms were deflated and the springs were compressed. In experiments using single adhesives (that is, not the urethane/silicone blends), the bonds were broken and, in each experiment, it was found that the adhesive bonded well with either the ring or with the blade, but not both. After numerous experiments, the adhesive that bonded best with the rings and the adhesive that bonded best with the blades were identified. These adhesives were then blended and, as expected, the blend bonded well with both the rings and the blades.

The two adhesives are Kalex (or equivalent) high-shear-strength urethane and Dow Corning 732 (or equivalent) silicone. The nominal mixture ratio is 5 volume parts of the urethane per 1 volume part of the silicone. Increasing the proportion of silicone makes the bond weaker but more flexible, and decreasing the proportion of silicone makes the bond stronger but more brittle.

The urethane/silicone blend must be prepared and used quickly because of the limited working time of the urethane: The precursor of the urethane adhesive is supplied in a two-part form, comprising a resin and a hardener that must be mixed. The resulting urethane adhesive has a working time of 3 to 5 minutes. To prepare the urethane/silicone blend, one must quickly add the silicone to the urethane adhesive and mix it in thoroughly within the working time of the urethane.

Once the urethane/silicone blend has been mixed and applied to the bond surfaces, it takes about 2 hours for the adhesive to cure under pressure. However, it takes about 24 hours for the adhesive to reach full strength.

This work was done by Paul D. Edwards of Callech for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For further information, access the Technical Support Package (TSP) free on-line at www.techbriefs.com/tsp under the Materials category.

There's a poetic bit of narration in the massive new trailer for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, shown this afternoon at Konami's pre-E3 press conference. "Scholars tell us," an unidentified character says, "that the first spy in history was the snake in the Bible."

The first spy in videogame history, or at least the one remembered best these days, is Solid Snake, whose story appears ready to both begin and end in the third Metal Gear Solid. By going back to the beginning of the Metal Gear story, in 1964, it will apparently resolve many of the mysteries in the series' convoluted plot, while bringing together the message its creator wants to get across.

Director Hideo Kojima has a bit of a pun put together to characterize the theme of Snake Eater. The idea behind the first Metal Gear Solid was genes, the biological information passed down through the generations. Its sequel, Sons of Liberty, dealt with the question of memes, the ideas passed down independent of our chromosomes. Snake Eater apparently sews those concepts together into the "scene," the timeline made up by both genetics and ideas. Mix and match those three, and you get M-G-S, although even Kojima can't make that connection without a bit of a laugh.

Today's presentation from Kojima, and the new trailer as well, present plenty of big ideas to color the cinematic side of the game. However, there are as many or more details on display pertaining to its new gameplay systems, offering the encouraging reminder that this will hopefully be as much game as movie.

Snake Eater's camouflage system is familiar from Kojima's demonstrations earlier this year, with the only new demonstration in the latest trailer being the first employment of Snake's red and black checked fatigues (which let him fade up against red brick walls in a ruined Russian firebase). The Close Quarters Combat system, meanwhile, is a relatively quick study. With one button, Snake can grab an opponent, knock him out, interrogate him for information (about the best local eats, for instance), or simply kill him, showing off some beautiful disarm animations in the process. More interesting was Kojima's detailed introduction to the game's hunting system, which lets Snake catch and kill animals (or simply collect fruits and vegetables) to keep his stamina up. Maintaining high stamina is important, since low stamina means Snake will heal wounds and illnesses slower, he'll be less steady in combat, and enemies may hear his stomach rumbling.

One of the game's "Survival Viewer" sub-menus runs down Snake's available food, as well as a catalog of plants and animals he's already eaten (indicating how much he liked it, how much stamina it provided, and other useful details). It may also note whether the animal in question leaves behind something more useful than food, like the famous crocodile hat (which Snake uses once again to escape roving spotlights as he wades through a swamp in the new trailer). The only way to learn about something is to take the plunge and chow down -- if it's a particularly tasty meal, Snake shouts "Umai!" (yum! in Japanese) and regains a hefty chunk of stamina.

Snake can catch his dinner in two ways, dead or alive. Live prey, captured with the tranquilizer gun, lasts longer, and it's handy in some situations, like sicking a poisonous snake on nearby guards. Kojima also notes that conservation-minded gamers might catch an animal in one area and release it elsewhere in a more hospitable environment ("I wanted to work in a wildlife preserve when I was young," he says). Killing something is simpler, since Snake can carry more canned rations than he can captured animals (only three traps are available at a time for carrying live prey), but those rations can go bad over time with deleterious effects.

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You'll want to gift yourself with this cozy cashmere set and golden extras. Ralph Lauren Blue Label cashmere turtleneck, $198, and drawstring pant, $500. Christian Roth titanium sunglasses, $398. H&M knit scarf with fringe, $12. Cara Croninger bangles, $170-$200.

Beauty note Wearing this season's softest fabrics over silky skin makes them feel even more luxurious. To get it treat yourself (or a friend) to L'Occitane's lightly scented, moisturizing Honey Foaming Jelly shower gel, $15, which can he used on both skin and hair.

HAIR LAWRENCE DE PALMA/TWI, NYC. MAKE UP SANDRINE VAN SLEE/CMINY.COM. FASHION EDITOR CARA SHAPIRO, MANICURE: CLAUDINE DUCHAMP/ARTISTS BY TIMOTHY PRIANO. STILL: PROP STYLING: MIAKO KATOH.

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Flesh to Metal: Soviet Literature and The Alchemy of Revolution, by Rolf Hellebust. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2003. x, 221 pp. $42.50 US (cloth), $18.95 US (paper).
Anyone with even a cursory acquaintance with Soviet literature is probably amused by the persistence of metallic imagery in the titles of its chef d'oeuvres'. "We Grow from Iron," The Iron Flood, How the Steel Was Tempered. As new capitalists gain possession of the rusting hulks of communism, it has become, as Rolf Hellebust admits, "a commonplace to designate the whole period since 1917 as an Iron (or Steel) Age" (p. 143). But books about commonplaces can be useful, for they may shed interesting light on things one takes for granted and lead to far-reaching re-assessments of hitherto sacred first principles
Hellebust's monograph provides a well-written, entertaining summary of the Soviet literary obsession with metallurgical transformation. He points out its roots in diverse mythical traditions and in the practice of alchemy. He rightly insists on the importance of corporeal transfiguration to the Russian Symbolists, and he shows how this theme spills over into the work of the Proletkul't. He discusses the ubiquity of metallic imagery in several works of Socialist Realism and he considers the critique of the metallic discourse to be found in the work of a countervailing, often dissident tradition (Zamiatin, Pilniak, Olesha, Platonov, Aksyonov). Finally, he explains the roots of the discourse's persistence: "the ancient Promethian traditions that fed Revolutionary socialism," "the ardent Bolshevik endorsement of Marx's belief in the soteriological power of industrialism," the lack of intellectual sophistication of the new ruling class, which had little "real knowledge of the West and its accomplishments [and so] could only grasp them in exaggerated, symbolic terms" and, finally, the Orthodox tradition of valuing the transfiguration and deification of flesh rather than flesh's rejection (pp. 144-45).

Hellebust packages his materials well, and students in survey courses of Soviet literature or history will find his book useful. Hellebust assumes "minimal knowledge of Russian literature or life on the part of the reader." He hopes that his book "will provide an accessible introduction to some unique aspects of the culture of twentieth-century Russia" (pp. 4-5). Unfortunately, a measure of his success is that few of his comments will provide new information or innovative interpretations to scholars of Soviet literature or Russian cultural history.
Part of the problem is the source base. For the most part, Hellebust confines his reading to the usual suspects. He makes sweeping comments about Socialist Realist literature and sculpture without encompassing a sufficient number of texts. His discussion of origins - such as the imagery of the French Revolution - is often based on just a couple of secondary texts. (The one point where he does consider a text not usually part of the critical canon - Vladimir Popov's wonderfully named 1948 novel Steel and Slag - is undermined when he confesses to using a somewhat sanitized later edition and a 1951 English translation of what he presumes was the initial Russian text? Why not take the time to consult the original?). For the most part, texts are read too cursorily to generate new insight. [In a book on the transformation of flesh to metal, how can a discussion of Olesha's Envy content itself with noting that the hero's machine has "the evocative name of Ophelia"? (p. 117)]. Moreover, some readers may be put off by the book's prose style, which occasionally seems to be imitating the rhetoric of the Proletkul't: "if my whole or parts are compared to a metal in this day, it is likeliest to be iron. Atomic number 26; melts at 1,530° Celsius; soft, ductile, and gray-white in its pure form, with high tensile strength. Primary substance of the earth's core, fourth most abundant in its crust, and essential in the human body (mainly in the hemoglobin of our red blood cells). Look around: any metal you see is probably iron" (p. 12).
The chapter on Socialist Realism contains the book's most interesting insight: Hellebust notes that even in the novels with metallurgical titles, very few instances of metal imagery are used to describe positive heroes. He attributes this to the paradoxical goals of Socialist Realism, which "addresses the demand for heroes both believable and Utopian by separating the images that symbolize their Utopian transformation as far as possible from the depiction of actual physical bodies - while making this imagery all the more insistent in contexts where the dehumanizing potential is minimal" (p. 87). If this observation holds true for a wider array of Socialist Realist texts, it will prove productive for future scholarly works. How would this discovery fit in with the psychoanalytically inflected work on the strange preoccupation of Socialist Realism with the maiming of its heroes? [Hellebust does not refer to Igor Smirnov's ground-breaking work on this topic: "Scriptum sub Specie Sovetica" Russian Language Journal, 41(1987) pp. 115-38.] Is the crippling of the hero a part of making positive figures more believeable? Why would serious physical injury be less threatening to the Communist subject than metallization?

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