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Media Platforms Design TeamBack in October we asked if a budget-priced Nissan Leaf could spur stagnant EV sales. The Japanese automaker seems to be wondering the same. Today it announced the 2013 Nissan Leaf S, a “lower-priced entry-level” EV aimed at drivers turned off by the SL and SV models and their steep $36,050 entry price.While the company has yet to release specifics on pricing, Nissan says that it could but the Leaf’s cost by shifting production to it’s Smyrna, Tenn....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph from Airbus Americas)The Airbus A-320 that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River on Thursday was equipped with a ditch switch on the aircraft’s overhead panel (see the orange arrow above and to the right). In the event of a water landing, the pilot can manually activate the switch, which closes the outflow valve and avionic ventilation ports, which are the openings below the aircraft’s float line....

Pentagon officials today announced big changes for its closely watched Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, aiming to bring combat sensors and robots to the battlefield more quickly. The new emphasis rests on delivering gear to infantry fighting guerilla groups in war zones, rather than developing new armored vehicles and artillery to thwart traditional, better-equipped foes. The recalculated time line makes FCS much less of a far-out plan, with new equipment now set to reach forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in late 2010–about five years earlier than originally planned....

Media Platforms Design TeamACCESS DENIED: Users are discovering that records, photos and other documents recorded on yesterday’s computer systems are rapidly becoming inaccessible as those formats evolve. (Photograph by Tom Schierlitz)When the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz takes to sea, it carries more than a half-million files with diagrams of the propulsion, electrical and other systems critical to operation. Because this is the 21st century, these are not unwieldy paper scrolls of engineering drawings, but digital files on the ship’s computers....

LOS ANGELES — There’s no better place to be hip than L.A. That must be why Saturn introduced an all-new Vue crossover at the auto show here. The ‘08 Vue model is totally restyled, both inside and outside, and offers six drivetrain choices. Trying to ride the star of two recent hits—the Sky roadster and Aura sedan—Saturn’s designers abandoned the current Vue’s boxy look for something more curvaceous. Still, it is a Saturn, so there’s a practical, four-door body and two-row seating for five....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThis morning the European Space Agency made history by landing the first spacecraft, the Philae lander of the Rosetta mission, on the surface of a comet. The 10-year, 4-billion-mile journey has a properly cinematic soundtrack, too: The ESA commissioned Vangelis to compose three sweeping musical numbers for Rosetta, concluding with the just-released “Rosetta’s Waltz” above.Here are the other two pieces of music.View full post on YoutubeView full post on YoutubeMany of you probably heard the theme from Chariots of Fire pop into your head upon reading the name Vangelis for the first time in years....

Editorial note: This piece was originally published in October 2016. We’ve updated the article for the premiere of the second season of Westworld.In November 1973, a 31-year-old acclaimed sci-fi author named Michael Crichton made his directorial debut with Westworld. The movie imagined a future in which tourists take fabulous vacations to elaborate theme parks that mimic ancient Rome, medieval times or the Old West—each of them populated by robot characters that act an awful lot like human beings....

Media Platforms Design TeamBirmingham, Ala.—Forget the horsepower wars. The days of ever-skyrocketing power figures are going the way of the Atkins diet, thanks to a vast global conspiracy of legislators who spend their time finding ingenious new ways to frustrate automakers. Or so it must seem to the world’s automotive engineers. Facing ever-tighter fuel-economy and emissions standards, the armies of CAD warriors are facing a choice: Back down from the mythical horsepower heights they’ve achieved, or build a better mousetrap....

Jet engines can be much more efficient and much quieter than they are today. The trick to doing it is as simple as adding a gearbox, but the process of doing so has taken nearly 30 years. But the journey is almost over. As Bloomberg Business explains in a fantastic little retrospective on the tech’s evolution, the new kind of engine—Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower Geared Turbofan (GTF)—traces its roots back as far as 1988....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Air Force this year deployed F-15C Golden Eagle warplanes with new active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) that can track more targets with precision and can guide several missiles at once. AESA’s digital beams, which replace radar that turns mechanically, are agile enough to spot cruise missiles and enable the F-15C to shoot them down with air-to-air missiles. (The Air Force is now testing a system that enables the F-15Cs, built in the late 1970s, to shoot down ballistic missiles as well....

Astronaut Health Review, Spacecraft Sabotage Dog NASA NASA is grappling with the weight of two serious reports today: allegations that astronauts may be flying under the influence, and the apparent sabotage of a space-bound computer. Broad swaths of theagency’s astronaut medical and behavioral assessments in the wake of the Lisa Nowak scandal surfaced yesterday, indicating that some astronauts may have engaged in “heavy alcohol use” within the 12-hour no-drinking period before they fly....

Yesterday, dignitaries, scientists and politicians gathered at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island to celebrate the official groundbreaking of a science lab that promises to produce beams of light small enough to aim at resolutions of one nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. (For scale, the skin of a soap bubble is several hundred nanometers thick.) The celebratory groundbreaking of the National Synchrotron Light Source II occurred in a tent next to a muddy field where a ring with a half-mile circumference will be built....

Media Platforms Design TeamCar-window tinting will keep you cooler in summer, protect your car’s interior, and add value when you’re ready to . With some dealers charging up to $500 just for labor, a DIY car tint will keep that money in your pocket.sell itWhat You’ll NeedYou can find window-tint film at places like Window Film Supplies. You’ll also need a window-tint-film application solution, a lint-free cleaning cloth, a razor knife, a scraper blade, an application squeegee, and a heat gun....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn its latest environmentally friendly legislative move, California is planning on banning single-use plastic bags from its grocery stores. If shoppers happen to forget a bag or stubbornly refuse to purchase reusable grocery sacks, they will have the option to buy a single-use paper bag for five cents or more. Drugstores, convenience stores and mom-and-pop shops will be forced to follow suit in 2013. Stores must keep records of the program, educate consumers and sell reusable bags—those made for 100 uses or more—on-site....

Media Platforms Design TeamUpdate, Nov. 14: For a report out today, the Wall Street Journal interviewed engineers and a government official connected to Virgin Galactic who said that founder Richard Branson’s ambitious timelines for flying SpaceShipTwo went against the recommendations of the technical team. The project was plagued by more problems than outsiders knew, according to the Journal, which said: “Without a firm design, there was no way to reliably predict when the first passengers would make it to space for more than $200,000 a ticket....

(Published in the November 1998 issue)Experts explain how we can save and purify the world’s water supply.Usually, the boundary between science and science fiction is as distinct as the difference between the 6 o’clock news and “The Simpsons.” Wherever the line blurs, you’re bound to find contentious debates. One of the longest-running of these disagreements centers on dowsing, a supposed sixth sense that enables people to find underground water using a forked branch, pendulum or pair of bent wires....

Since they were introduced in the 1970s, antibiotic beads have been an ER standby. Massive trauma caused by a motorcycle accident, for example, can lodge rocks and dirt in compound fractures, leading to infections. When severely damaged blood vessels around the injury limit the effectiveness of intravenous antibiotics, orthopedic surgeons insert lumps of bone cement – which is also used to secure bone implants – coated with antibiotics into the patient’s wound....

Churning with voltage and resembling an explosion at the wire factory, the breaker panel exudes mystique. But it’s just a big switch, filled with other smaller ­switches, which lead to the switches that any home­owner can fearlessly flip. Doing so conjures a current of electrons that runs along copper wires, energizing our appliances, lights and modern lives. Breaker-panel literacy isn’t only for voltage veterans who recite the National Electrical Code. Even if all you wonder is whether your humble hot tub dreams are electrically attainable, or why the toaster oven kills the kitchen lights—the panel has a thing or two to tell you....

Every year, it’ll take longer and longer to get from the West Coast of the U.S. to Hawaii. As the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean gets stronger, planes face more air resistance as they head west. That’s according to a new study, published in Nature Climate Change, which found that flight times depend on changes in long-term climate, rather than daily weather. Just as air travel affects climate change (via its large emissions), climate change affects air travel—creating a feedback loop between the two that isn’t especially good for either....

The Perseid meteor shower, known also as simply the Perseids, is here, and the next couple of nights are the best time to catch the show.View full post on YoutubeThe Perseids are so named because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus when looking into the night sky. In reality, the flashy bits we see down here are caused by the Earth running into the debris left behind by the comet Swift-Tuttle....