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Media Platforms Design TeamDr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (2008)Media Platforms Design TeamThe only good thing to come out of last year’s writer’s strike was Buffy creator Joss Whedon’s sci-fi musical Web series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. It stars Neil Patrick Harris, as the titular supervillain torn between taking over the world and winning the heart of his laundromat crush, and frequent Whedon collaborator Nathan Fillion, as his archnemesis, the ultramacho Captain Hammer, who thwarts both of his goals....

Media Platforms Design TeamDRIVE GREEN SPECIAL /// ALL-NEW ALT-FUEL TESTS!• CITIZEN FUEL CELL: GM Hydrogen Car Hits 40+ MPG in Long-Term Test• MECHANIC’S DIARY: Water-Powered Mod Still Can’t Improve Economy• GEEK THE VOTE: Was Obama Right About Tire Inflation and the Gas Crunch?• FIRST DRIVE: Nissan Cube EV-02 Could Hit 150-Mile Range by ‘10• EURO TEST: With Diesel, Does U.S. Want Jag XF’s ‘Fright Mask’ Look?CARPENTERIA, Calif. — In an attempt to change perceptions in the U....

Media Platforms Design Team MILFORD, Mich. — The Corvette ZR1 has been the center of the automotive performance universe since the covers first came off America’s supercar at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show. After our first test drive, we were mighty impressed. But yesterday, it was finally time to see if Chevy’s most powerful Corvette ever was indeed the quickest. Test gear in hand, we drove through the gates at GM’s proving grounds here, ready to learn if the ZR1 is in fact the monster we all imagined....

Media Platforms Design Team MADRID–Twelve million strong and growing, the E-Class is and has been the bread and butter of Mercedes-Benz’s lineup. This premium midsize sedan is set squarely between the company’s compact C-Class and flagship S-Class, and Mercedes-Benz considers the all-new 2010 E-Class to be its most important new car of the year. Over 22 million miles were logged during its testing—the company’s most comprehensive development process to date—with the goal of making it the best E-Class yet....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhether it’s built from steel plate and circuit boards or slabs of reanimated flesh, if a robot has artificial intelligence, according to the cultural myth, that machine has the ability to be a monster. Sometimes the AI’s problem is that it’s not intelligent enough, triggering murderous glitches as in the legendary Golem of Prague or Robocop’s ED-209 armed security bot. More often the threat of AI is its dark brilliance, from the blackmail scheme concocted by Frankenstein’s self-loathing monster to the grotesque battery-slave camps of The Matrix....

When it comes to drills, we like power as much as the next guy. But the bigger and stronger the tool, the heavier and more expensive it is. That’s why a full-on drill isn’t always best. For many jobs – boring 1/4-in.-dia. holes and driving small screws – cordless screwdrivers (or stick drivers) are all a homeowner needs. The big news in this category is the introduction of lithium-ion batteries. Used predominantly in heavy-hitter tools of 18 volts and more, this battery chemistry is also ideal for compact products....

Media Platforms Design TeamGeckos tend to get a lot of attention from scientists, thanks to their fascinating feet. A gecko’s feet are padded with microscopic hairs that create an attraction between the atoms in its feet and the surface (called van der Waal forces), which is what lets them stick to surfaces and climbs up walls and trees. Roboticists try to copy gecko feet to build bots that can scale vertical surfaces....

Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday, two-time Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon was killed in a horrific crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. And much like Dale Earnhardt’s death at the 2001 Daytona 500 focused the world’s attention on driver safety, Wheldon’s untimely passing will no doubt reignite the conversation. In fact, there are frightening similarities between Wheldon’s and Earnhardt’s deaths. The primary problems are the same: Cars are too fast, and too close....

Media Platforms Design TeamToyota’s CES press event yesterday was mainly dedicated to discussing the state of the carmaker’s hydrogen fuel-cell program and the current state of hydrogen refueling infrastructure. But one particular aside tossed off by Toyota’s senior vice president, Robert Carter, stood out. According to Carter, Toyota is also working on an external device that would allow a hydrogen fuel-cell car to charge a house for up to a week in case of an emergency....

Media Platforms Design TeamFuturists promise that hydrogen will replace fossil fuels someday. There’s just one problem: Today, 95 percent of the world’s available hydrogen is extracted from natural gas. Getting hydrogen from water, the greener alternative, is too expensive to be practical. Or it was, until a recent innovation by engineer Richard Bourgeois and his colleagues at a General Electric research facility in Niskayuna, N.Y.Bourgeois’s prototype electrolyzer cuts the equipment cost of using electricity to grab hydrogen from H2O....

Media Platforms Design TeamShortly after he tossed out Apple’s software patent suit against Google-owned Motorola Mobility in June, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner made a bold remark to the press. Having presided over yet another battle in the patent wars, Posner questioned the need for patents in software, arguing that beating the competition to the shelves with a new technology is enough incentive to innovate. In fact, , “It’s not clear that we really need patents in most industries....

The key to the next generation of biofuels isn’t growing in a field; it’s mutating in a lab. By swapping natural genes in yeast and bacteria for synthetic ones, scientists have tricked the microbes into producing hydrocarbons–creating, in essence, billions of tiny refineries to turn simple sugars into environmentally friendly diesel, gasoline, jet fuel and biocrude.“We’ve been making a lot of things using micro-organisms for a long time,” says Jim McMillan, biorefining process R&D manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)....

The dovetail is woodworking’s signature joint, and it’s the gold standard for connecting drawer parts and the pieces of furniture that are called the case (or carcass, if you prefer the centuries-old term for it). Hand-cutting a dovetail joint is kind of a woodworking high-wire act; one slip of the saw or chisel and the joint either won’t fit together or will look sloppy. It takes a lot of time to master the ability to cut dovetails quickly and well (by hand or machine), without a lot of fussing around....

Media Platforms Design TeamSince the 1970’s, solar researchers have pondered over one of the weirder mysteries of the sun: Why is the outer atmosphere so much hotter than the surface? It’s no trivial difference. While our star’s surface measures 5500-6000 degrees Celsius, the outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona, is over a million degrees. The setup defies standard logic about heat, as Alexei Pevtsov, an associate astronomer at the National Solar Observatory, explains....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you grew up around racetracks and car enthusiasts in the ’50s and ’60s, you’re probably familiar with King and Sun distributor test machines. Unlike today’s vehicles, those old cars didn’t come with computers to aid the ignition process. They used mechanical distributors. A distributor test machine pinpoints the most accurate ignition timing for a vehicle, maximizing horsepower and efficiency. Sun is now owned by a Dutch company and doesn’t even make distributor diagnostic machines anymore....

Media Platforms Design TeamSince 2002 Subaru has been serving up all-wheel-drive fun in the rally-inspired WRX sport sedan. For 2015 the WRX gets a thorough redesign with more unique or modified parts than ever before.Under that iconic hood scoop is a modified version of the new direct-injected 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder that comes in the Forester XT. Here it’s making 268 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque, and comes hooked to a six-speed manual with Subaru’s mechanical viscous center differential AWD system or a multimode CVT with electronically controlled AWD....

Media Platforms Design TeamSo many episodes, so much scientific intrigue.Episode 6.09: “Ab Aeterno"Larry J. Zimmerman, Ph.D., RPA: professor of anthropology and museum studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis School of Liberal Arts[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/mv-_5L-J98g&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/youtube]As an archaeologist, the episodes that have appealed most to me are those that reveal some archaeology, which may give some clue to the Island’s origins, but also say something about the public’s interest in a “mysterious past.” Given the alleged positioning of the Island in the Pacific, with at least one exit into Tunisia, I have been reminded of [the myths surrounding] Atlantis and its even less likely Pacific counterpart Lemuria (Mu), in which an island with an advanced civilization sinks into the ocean upon intervention of angry gods in response to the hubris of the islanders....

Cruiser motorcycles are heavy, wide, and expensive, and to me, that always meant that they lack the qualities that make motorcycles wonderfully different from the automobile. It’s similarly easy to dismiss their riders as attention-seekers with loud tailpipes, or members of motorcycle clubs riding in formation to the terror of motorists.Worried that prejudices were keeping me from enjoying something I didn’t understand, I accepted an invitation to ride through Malibu on the flagship cruiser from Moto Guzzi, one of the world’s great motorcycle manufacturers....

The PromiseThe new PEN E-PL2 is the fourth in Olympus’ line of mirrorless, PEN micro four-thirds cameras. Like the others in its class, it is among the smallest digital cameras that take a detachable lens. Image quality doesn’t suffer much—the PEN series has a 4/3-inch live MOS sensor that is smaller (by as much as half) than digital SLRs—but it is much, much larger than those in point-and-shoots and mobile devices....

Media Platforms Design TeamOrbital Sciences’ first visit to our orbiting space station was a success. Earlier today, the Cygnus capsule detached from the International Space Station. It will soon burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. The departure marks the completion of the unmanned spacecraft’s first trip to the ISS, one that saw Orbital join SpaceX as the first two companies to reach the station with a privately designed and built craft.Cygnus launched from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Sept....