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 Lifetiles
In a hallway of the Baltimore Aquarium, a boy stares, entranced by a long glass mural that shows sea lions diving in the waves. He's discovered that as he walks, the creatures swim along with him. The animated mural is the work of Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, filmmaker and artist whose interactive panels called Lifetiles can be found in museums and public spaces across the U.S. — from the Smithsonian, where he's brought Duke Ellington to life at the keyboard, to the Miami Zoo, where he's set toucans and anacondas gliding through an Amazonian jungle.
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 Treespotting
In recent years, the abandoned lots and burned out houses of downtown Detroit have given way to urban prairie. Weeds, vines, even trees poke out of broken windows and one plant in particular — Ailanthus altissima aka Tree of Heaven or ghetto palm — runs rampant. Able to grow a ravenous five feet a year, flourish in toxic soil, power through walls and resist the occasional bullet, the tree has become synonymous with urban blight.
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 Doing Da Vinci
In an empty lot near a business park just outside Los Angeles, a group of men clusters round a phalanx of breach loading cannons. Explosions rock the ground. A war reenactment? Not quite. A crew of special effects engineers, welders and carpenters are testing a series of full-scale da Vinci inventions they’ve built for Discovery Channel’s Doing da Vinci.
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