material punch

VELDEN, Austria— Subaru’s turbodiesel flat four drops into the engine bay of the Forester small SUV as comfortably as a pair of Birkenstock sandals slip onto the feet of an outdoorsy Vermonter. Full of wholesome, organic, crunchy goodness, the 2009 Subaru Forester 2.0D is just right for a lifestyle that includes regular backpacking, antiquing, politically conscious activism and swiping used fry oil from the back of Wendy’s to brew homemade biodiesel....

Media Platforms Design TeamLOS ANGELES–We’ve been following the Chevy Volt as it has progressed through many milestones before it became a development mule based on the 2011 Chevy Cruze last May. That test drive was completed entirely in electric-only mode. Today, we had a chance to slide behind the wheel of a Volt that looks and feels much closer to production. We experienced the car in both pure-electric and sustained-charge modes, in which the conventional gas engine powers an onboard alternator to supply the needs of the electric motor when the batteries reach an elected state of discharge....

Media Platforms Design TeamPhysicsWe may think of Nobel Prize–worthy discoveries as those that find the answers to big scientific questions. But this year’s Nobel in physics was a little different—it honors the discovery of a mystery. Three U.S.-born astrophysicists will split the $1.5 million award: Saul Perlmutter, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Adam Riess, at Johns Hopkins University; and Brian Schmidt, at the Australian National University. During the 90s, they worked on two separate teams—Perlmutter on one, Riess and Schmit on the other—racing to track how the universe was expanding....

MIT is Division I in academia, and like their counterparts in sports, lots of students turn pro before graduation. As the Class of 2008 tosses their high-tech hats in the air, we look at projects–from a Google Android program out to beat the new iPhone, to a low-tech solution for Sudanese farmers–with the potential to shake things up in the real world.1. The Open-Source Green Car /// VDS VisionMedia Platforms Design TeamTwo years ago, MIT whiz-kids Robyn Allen and Anna Jaffe set their sights on India, where a $2500 car is just the beginning....

Media Platforms Design TeamTwitter has a bot problem. In a , Twitter said as many of 8.5 percent of accounts are updated automatically. Although these 23 million users may not all be bots—some could be set to post on behalf of media outlets, for example, and others may be the result of third-party apps such as Flipboard—some of them definitely are. Twitter sort of admits this, saying that spam accounts make up for “less than 5 percent” of users....

Media Platforms Design TeamCartoonist Matthew Inman, the man behind The Oatmeal and avid Nikola Tesla fan, started a fundraising campaign this week aimed at purchasing the inventor’s former Long Island lab and turning it into the first U.S. Tesla museum. After just one day, the effort blew up on Reddit and garnered the support of Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk. While we await its opening, here are 8 other laboratories and houses of mad science that are definitely worth a trip....

Spring is tricky. It’s cold, then it’s hot, then it’s cold again. It’s annoying. And it means you need a sweater. But what would really be great is a sweater that uses the same technology that’s been protecting astronauts for twenty-five years.Gihan Amarasiriwardena, who trained as an engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, partnered with two students at the business school to launch an online clothing company, Ministry of Supply, in 2012....

Are those jingle bells you hear, or just signs of early hearing damage? Researchers from the U.K. released a new study today that found many toys available this holiday season have the potential to cause hearing loss.The report, commissioned by Deafness Research UK, measured the noise level produced by 15 toys marketed toward children between the ages of 3 mos. and 15 years. At a child’s arm-length away—almost 10 in.—eight toys had noise levels that averaged between 81 and 115 decibels....

Hurricane Matthew is starting to pummel Florida with more brutal force than the coast has ever seen. Record-settingly vicious, Matthew has already left more than 300 dead in Haiti. Evacuations along its path are urgent and mandatory; this isn’t a storm you try to weather. Hell, even the A-10s are turning tail. Yesterday, A-10 Warthogs from the 23rd Fighter Group relocated from Moody AFB, Georgia to Tyndall Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle to seek safety from the coming storm....

Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS — So I’ve heard some press grumblings that this CES is, well… boring. It’s not so much the show itself—which is the biggest and most-attended ever, I gather—but the lack of any huge, splashy, entirely product (like the ). Instead, we’re seeing mostly better versions of stuff that’s been out there before—smaller, better , bigger, clearer , , etc. It’s , not revolutionary. newiPhoneHD camcordersHDTVsterabyte hard drivesevolutionaryI wasn’t sure what to make of these criticisms, since this was my first time at CES....

Media Platforms Design TeamI just bought my first really nice car, a BMW 335i, and I want to make sure the leather interior stays pristine. What’s the best way to maintain it?The bulk of wear on leather surfaces comes from the abrasive quality of built-up dirt, but cowhide also loses essential oils and UV protectants over time that need to be replaced. Ignore leather care and the surface finish will dull and cracks will begin to form....

Media Platforms Design TeamTaking a cue from Randall Munroe’s excellent “Up-Goer-Five” XKCD comic, a Reddit user has given SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket the same treatment.The original Up-Goer-Five comic used only the 1,000 most common words in the English language to describe the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts from the Earth to the Moon. Here, reddit user surrender52 describes the module of the “Bird 9” as “Stuff going to space....

Media Platforms Design TeamAcross the United States this spring, many homeowners will hear rain’s pitter-patter interspersed with the knocking, clanging sounds of hail. These balls of ice—typically pea-sized, but sometimes as big as baseballs or even grapefruit—cause about $1 billion in damage to property and crops annually, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Even the most battered home, however, probably can’t compare to the one inside the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) Research Center in South Carolina....

Media Platforms Design TeamSince moving from New York to the Midwest, I’ve been on a quest to make a pizza crust that rivals those from the Big Apple’s wood-burning ovens. I’ve been tinkering with the dough fermentation period, hoping to produce a more complex flavor by letting the dough ferment slowly in the refrigerator. Today, though, I’m feeling impatient. So I targeted the baking surface. Specifically: Does baking pizza on a pizza stone, instead of a regular baking sheet, make a difference?...

Media Platforms Design TeamPrice: $70The Macbook Pro Retina is two-tenths of an inch thinner than its non-Retina counterpart. So Apple had to pare down ports, including the Kensington lock hole. Though the Kensington cable lock was shrimpy—anyone with a decent lock cutter, or even strong hands and a wire cutter, could get through—it was still a good deterrent.Media Platforms Design TeamLuckily, there’s now an option for tying up the new computers: Maclocks’ lock bracket....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week the Solar Impulse, a Swiss plane designed to fly around the world powered only by solar panels, flew for the first time. Aviator and scientist Bertrand Piccard, the man behind the project, sees it as the next great adventure in flight, and Solar Impulse is an appealing poster child for renewable energy. But this technology also has real applications, from traffic management to data network infrastructure....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy commercial spaceflight, as opposed to government-run programs? After I finished my master’s degree, I moved to a company called Aerospace Corporation, a big think tank for the U.S. Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. I saw what government programs were and how they were executed. In some cases, they were executed beautifully, but in others, there was tremendous waste. I then moved to a smaller company, expecting it to be different....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe best tools are the ones you want—no, need to own, no matter how little use you have for them. Stanley’s Fubar II ($30) is that kind of tool.The original Fubar (which stands for functional utility bar, but is clearly referencing the more foul-mouthed acronym) was a smart sort of crowbar multitool, adding serrated jaws and a hammer head on one end of a pry bar. The jaws were sized to grip 2-in....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe fourth time’s the charm for NASA’s new aircraft-powered global warming research mission. After multiple delays working in the constraints of the space agency’s notoriously hobbled Earth-based research budget, a team of atmospheric scientists is set to take advantage of new satellites, balloons and planes during a potentially groundbreaking mission this summer in Costa Rica.Announced yesterday, the Tropical Composition Cloud Climate Coupling (TC4) field campaign will examine a somewhat mysterious layer of the atmosphere that could provide a crucial link to climate change....

Media Platforms Design TeamAir Force One Earlier this month, the U.S. Air Force began seeking contractors that will build the next generation of Air Force Ones, scheduled to take to the skies starting in 2017. There is more at stake than just money: building airplanes that carry heads of state is the ultimate in bragging rights for a manufacturer. Like the present-day presidential aircraft, a pair of modified 747-200s, the next jumbo jets in the presidential fleet will most likely be based on familiar civilian planes such as Boeing’s 747-400 or 747-8 or the Airbus A350 or A380....