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Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowPrice: $28,270 to $40,770Competitors: Ford Explorer, Hyundai Santa Fe, Honda Pilot, Chevy Traverse, Toyota HighlanderPowertrain: 3.5-liter V-6; 260 hp, 240 lb-ft of torque; CVT transmission, FWD or AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 20/26 (FWD); 19/25 (AWD)What’s New: Nissan is pushing fuel economy as the most important attribute in the seven-passenger-crossover segment, with admirable results. The new Pathfinder bests the outgoing version’s mpg numbers by 30 percent, putting it well ahead of its competition (though it’s still possible the AWD seven-passenger Hyundai Santa Fe could come close)....

Researchers this year announced they had invented a microscopic operating table for tiny, unsegmented roundworms called nematodes. The question is: Why? What could researchers learn from creatures that can be as small as 0.3 mm (i.e., as thick as a grain of sand)?The operating table traps individual nematodes and severs their nerves with laser pulses to study how their nervous systems repair themselves. The research could lead to treatments for human nerve damage....

In a parking lot outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center, a small shuttle snakes its way around a lined course, stopping occasionally to open up its gate-like doors for passengers. But there are no passengers. There isn’t even a driver. And although there are lines showing the shuttle’s path, it doesn’t need them. The demonstration is meant to show off the capabilities of Induct’s Navia, a quirky little electric people-mover that could be many people’s first encounter with an autonomous vehicle....

Gathering geographic and time-sensitive data from large populations can be difficult, complicated and extraordinarily expensive for researchers. But collecting massive amounts of sensitive information may be as easy–and cheap–as writing an iPhone app. When combined with a GPS signal and a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, mobile phones can gather data, organize it and send it to a server to be analyzed. These large amounts of cheaply gathered data come at the cost of the control and reliability enjoyed in a laboratory setting–a problem that has come to light in recent years with scientific research that has relied on the processing power of everyday home computers and gaming consoles....

Today, it seems as if we define civilization in terms of the small things, like decoded strands of DNA, splitting atoms and microscopic bumps on plastic compact discs. With a focus so fine, it’s easy to forget the bigger, simpler things that got us here and continue to define our lives. Back up a bit and look at what the real world is made of. In there with wood, steel and glass you’ll find another material quietly holding it all up....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowPrice: $52,795 Competitors: BMW X3 335Xi, Mercedes-Benz GLK 250Powertrains: Supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, 354 hp, 347 lb-ft; eight-speed auto; AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 16/23 What’s New: Audi slaps the S (for Sport) on its high-performance editions, but this is the first Q model to earn the designation, though an SQ7 may be in the works. Exterior enhancements are subtle, but the key distinction—power—is more tangible. The SQ5 employs the same 3....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat’s different about the submersibles you’ve been designing?I’ve built 60 or so normal submersibles, which we call sinkers. They work by Archimedes’ principle of weight and water displacement. They go down heavy. They literally fall down and then they drop weights to float back up. What we’re building now, the Super Falcon, is buoyant and very simple. It works on the principle used by the Wright brothers for flightit has wings....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe end started much like the beginning—with an early morning flight. Pilot André Borschberg climbed into the cockpit of Solar Impulse and took off from Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport a little before 5 a.m. local time on Saturday, July 6. After nine months, the team was only 21 hours away from completing a daunting mission: Traveling the skies of America powered only by the sun. Having spent days in a cramped cockpit during the long journey, Borschberg eagerly anticipated the final descent of this experimental aircraft into John F....

Media Platforms Design TeamA thousand miles north of Antarctica, in one of the most remote parts of the world, enormous surprises lurk beneath the surface. Near the South Sandwich Islands, a British territory that straddles the Southern Ocean and the south Atlantic, scientists found more than a dozen huge underwater volcanoes, some of which tower 2 miles above the ocean floor. The expedition’s leader, volcanologist Phil Leat, who is working with the , says the volcanic cluster is unusually dense and active....

Media Platforms Design TeamGreg and Brandon Hjelstrom. Credit: David CawthonThe Ace of Spades by Team 987, the High Rollers from Las Vegas, is a mean-looking machine that made a run deep into the national FIRST Robotics Competition in St. Louis this past weekend. But the key to this basketball-playing bot is its brain, which is the domain of a father-son duo of programming wizards. Brandon Hjelstrom, a programmer on the team, has been coding for six years....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe classic clock face is a design we just can’t let go. Look at a 14th-century cathedral-mounted clock and you’ll see the same circle-and-hands design that you’ll find on a new LG G Watch R. But in the age of smartwatches, our timepieces can look like anything we want.That’s why now, five months after revealing the first Android Wear watches, Google has released a variation of its Live Wallpaper API (application programming interface) that lets developers design their own watch faces....

Media Platforms Design TeamDoctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering will soon be getting an assist from a system designed by IBM to automatically recognize skin cancer. Yesterday, IBM announced a partnership with the hospital to use cognitive computing to sort images of skin lesions into melanoma, atypical, and benign categories. In the first tests, IBM’s system correctly picked out the cancerous lesions with 95 accuracy; without virtual assistance, a doctors’ accuracy is usually between 75 percent and 84 percent....

When Popular Mechanics trekked out to remote Aden Crater in New Mexico, we learned the existing Google Maps directions had some… issues. That far off the beaten path, map services provided inaccurate distances and routes that cross private land belonging to a railroad. If you find yourself in a similar situation, or if you create your own path to a newly discovered fishing spot, here’s how to map your route using Google Earth, and then share your adventure with friends and fellow outdoor enthusiasts....

NASA and Planetary Resources, the company that wants to mine the asteroids, teamed up on a new program with a higher purpose: It lets users hunt space objects close to Earth from their own computers.Designed for both Windows or Mac, and soon Linux, the Asteroid Data Hunter program enlists the public to sift through a trove of astronomical data from various telescopes. When an amateur asteroid sleuth IDs a possible object, he or she reports it to NASA, which then tries to match it to known near-Earth objects....

High-Pressure Leak: Normal or Not? Q: I have a 1997 Cadillac STS with 172,850 miles on it, and it’s got a slow oil leak. The mechanic at the dealership says it is a high-pressure leak since it’s not noticeable, but I lose about a quart of oil every 3000 or 4000 miles. What are the risks of a major problem here and the probability of losing an engine?A: Wait, is this a leak or not?...

Popularity and PassionThe new Camry’s looks may not turn many heads, but the car’s smooth performance and elegant interior will keep its owners smiling.Camry owners love their cars like they do their siblings–with a sincere but passionless devotion. So the folks at Toyota vowed to infuse the newest version of this best seller with some panache. After driving the 2007 Camry around Santa Barbara’s coast and countryside, we can say that Toyota has succeeded–mostly....

Electronic jellyfishElectronic jellyfish (e-jelly) constructed of a ring of blue Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). (Video courtesy of E. Widder)A Mastigoteuthis Squid at 1,600 ft A very large squid was caught on film this morning deep in the Gulf of Mexico. A one-of-a-kind technology, called the Eye-in-the-Sea, captured the giant lurking in front of its red light cameras over 1,600 ft below the surface.The event was triggered by a bioluminescence (light) sensor that turned the camera on, capturing a few seconds of the deep-water predator before it swam away....

Russian president Vladmir Putin has no shortage of hubris, but he’s making a more-outlandish-than-usual claim: that the North Pole should be Russia’s to control. Essentially, Putin arguments rests on just how far out Russia’s continental shelf extends. Putin claims the shelf stretches out further than previously estimated, and that Russian should therefore be benefit from a United Nations rule which extend its exclusive economic zone to 350 miles. Russia made the same argument to the UN in 2002, but the UN upheld the current 200-mile exclusive economic zone limits, saying there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to support Russia’s claim....

Drones are quickly moving from exotic military technology to mass market gadget thanks to companies such as DJI and 3D Robotics, which sell small but sophisticated unmanned aircraft that nearly any amateur can pilot. But the rapid growth of the consumer drone market is also raising security and privacy concerns. An anti-nuclear protester just landed a drone bearing a spooky-looking radiation hazard symbol on the roof of the Japanese Prime Minister’s office, for example (the drone gave off only small, non-harmful trace amounts of radiation)....

Spurred by yet another huge citizen protest over police killing of suspects in custody, the Department of Justice is deploying $20 million towards developing a program for body cameras on police officers. Around $17 million of the program will go towards competitive grants to test the program, with $2 million for training and $1 million for evaluating the body cameras. Many police departments, such as San Francisco’s, have already begun developing such programs....