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Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamIt seems like a fair trade: All you have to do is walk a little funny, and your backpack will feel 80 percent lighter, thanks to some fancy spring work developed at MIT. The new exoskeleton, developed by 2005 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership Award winner Hugh Herr and his Biomechatronics group, aims to transfer heavy loads directly to the ground through a series of springs and tubes running along the legs and torso of its wearer....

Even using time lapse, it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s happened in a day through a security camera—there’s just too much footage to go over. FLIR’s newest camera solves that problem by building a composite of all the movements in a room in a day and playing them simultaneously. That way you know if something – or someone – is out of place. The FLIR FX is fairly cheap, too, at about $199....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today.View full post on YoutubeWith thousands of different languages around the world, sticking with just one shuts out billions of possible conversations with people across the planet. Skype wants to break the language barrier as it introduces live translation. Read ThisApple officially buys Beats Electronics for $3 billion. [via TechCrunchDrones and balloons are all well and good, but now Google and Facebook are looking toward space to bring internet to everyone....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe future of medicine isn’t about the drugs. It’s about the delivery.Researchers around the world are experimenting with new ways to direct a treatment through the bloodstream right to where it’s needed. And a smart new idea from MIT relies on copying the way in which bacteria and white bloods find their route through the body.The tumbling microscopic walkers seen here, developed by Alfredo Alexander-Katz and colleagues, find their way thanks to friction....

Media Platforms Design TeamHistorically, first flights of new expendable launch systems often go awry, though engineers with much more design experience and ability to simulate systems have good track records. So while SpaceX obviously wanted to demonstrate the ability to deliver a dummy payload to orbit with the first flight of its Falcon 9 last Friday, it was a test flight, with a number of objectives. Even if it hadn’t achieved that ultimate orbital goal, just meeting the lesser goals would still have constituted a successful test....

When it was finished in 2004, the 1,667-foot tall Taipei 101 was the tallest building in the world. Even though it’s since given up that title to the Burj Khalifa, the iconic Taiwanese supertall is still damned impressive, and this past weekend its internals set a new record while keeping it upright in a typhoon. Like all supertall skyscrapers, Taipei 101 has a mechanism inside to help stabilize itself in high winds....

LAS VEGAS — The Ted Baxter rules no longer apply.I remember Baxter—the vain and pompous anchor from The Mary Tyler Moore Show—explaining proper television apparel in one episode along these lines: “stripes strobe, checks bleed, and plaid’s even worse.“But in the HD era all that has changed. The Sony event last night was shown on lots of HD sets around the room, and it was shot in 1080p. I noticed that Sony’s Rick Clancy was wearing a plaid sportcoat, the sort of well-defined pattern that would have been disaster on ordinary television....

Media Platforms Design Team Although the 2009 National Hardware Show was not without its highlights, the Chicago show in 1978 must have really been a scene: There, among the vibrant polyester sportcoats, the world witnessed the debut of a slick new handheld vacuum called the Dustbuster. Developed by Black & Decker as an alternative to the whirling beater bars and brushes on bulky conventional vacuums, the new “electric dustpan” was styled to physically resemble a dustpan in profile....

Apple’s big product announcement yesterday delivered its expected burst of cheering, excitement, and hype. Those new iPhones are ultra-thin with gloriously large displays. The Apple Watch looks like something people might actually want to wear. And Apple Pay could be the first credible attempt at mobile payments. There’s a good chance Apple will take all of our money with at least one of its latest creations.The devices are impressive, no doubt....

Strictly speaking, you could the say the business of jet packs is, indeed, taking off. The number of companies looking to sell them to private consumers has increased by as much as 33 percent in the last week alone. And since the going assumption is that all human beings would like to be able to fly—not by plane or helicopter or oversize cannon, but strapped to a thunderous gadget with intuitive controls—that’s good news....

Chris SoutherlyWilmington, N.C.Age: 44Years on Job: 11 When he was a kid, Chris Southerly wanted to try scuba diving—but the mountains of Virginia, where he grew up, offered few opportunities. So Southerly learned to dive in grad school, and now it’s how he makes his living: As an underwater archaeologist for North Carolina’s Department of Cultural Resources, Southerly is currently excavating the infamous pirate Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, near Beaufort Inlet, N....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen things go wrong during police vehicular chases, the carnage is big news. In the past there were enough dash-cam images from disastrous law-enforcement pursuits to fill seasons of cheap, sensationalized TV shows, while live footage from helicopters made for some of the highest-rated shows on Los Angeles stations. But things are changing. Almost all U.S. law enforcement agencies have adopted a restrictive pursuit policy, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP)....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis week Microsoft provided a deeper peek at Windows 8 with its latest Consumer Preview build (which is downloadable now). While features such as its new app store look fantastic, it was something else—something less talked about—that grabbed my attention: an Xbox, unbound. And I think it could be the reason many Mac users reconsider their loyalty to iPads and Macbooks, or at least the best reason we’ve seen yet....

Good news, car-sharers who long for freedom: This fall, Zipcar will try out a pilot program in Boston for OneWay, its initiative to allow drivers to take one-way trips. And while it might be a long way off, OneWay vice president Gita Rebbapragada tells Popular Mechanics that the company is thinking about inter-city one-way rentals, something with the potential to upend urban transportation.Drivers have been clamoring for one-way trips for years, Rebbapragada says....

Media Platforms Design TeamDARPA’s Vulture UAV. (Image courtesy of Aurora Flight Sciences)WASHINGTON – The U.S. Air Force has had a rough year: A historic shake-up of its leadership (with more reprimands from Defense Secretary Robert Gates reportedly coming soon), revelations of misplaced nuclear material and a headline-grabbing controversy over the contract for a new midair refueling tanker. The long-term fight for the Air Force’s future is occurring during this time of crisis, and the embattled agency will have to embrace some fast-developing tech systems in order to stay relevant....

Duramax Diesel 1994 Ford MustangMedia Platforms Design Team"I’ve always done oddball swaps," says Mike Cook, owner of the aftermarket engine performance company Nitrous Express. Cook’s 1994 Mustang is built for drag racing, but instead of using a conventional larger-displacement V8, or a radical supercharger or turbocharger setup, he swapped in a modified Duramax diesel V8 from a late-model heavy-duty GM truck. “That Duramax fits well,” says Cook, “we didn’t have to modify the firewall or the fenders....

Media Platforms Design TeamCIRCA 500: Surfboards are to sixth-century Polynesians what Ferraris or giant flat-screen TVs are to Americans today—the ultimate status symbol. And size matters: Tribal chiefs and nobles ride boards as long as 25 feet, while commoners catch waves on 7-footers.1778: During a stop in Hawaii, the crewmen of Capt. James Cook’s HMS Discovery become the first recorded Europeans to witness surfing.“I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe are watching the final weeks of TV’s most popular meth cook. The AMC series has chronicled the exploits of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned drug lord with an ingenious recipe for ultrapure methamphetamine. But does Walter White’s coveted formula have any basis in reality? Breaking Bad"Breaking Bad does a really great job with the science," says Jonathan Parkinson, an analytical chemist and blogger. “You can tell the writers have done their homework....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe definition of a nerd is someone who’s passionate about things, without irony or apology, which is why the world needs nerds. At his SXSW keynote, Dean Kamen, the Edison of Manchester, NH, showed again why he is a standout among nerds: His total focus on the humanitarian uses of technology, which stretches back to his invention of the portable dialysis machine and an infusion pump to deliver drug therapies to infants....

“A good lightweight design that a beginner can build uses a tubular steel tailpipe and intake welded to a combustion chamber,” Cottrill says. “The chamber is a long cone (the chamber wall) and a blunt cone on the front end (which I call the chamber dome). Both are made of mild sheet steel, thin enough to form by hand with the simplest tools.” Start with a well-proven design, like Cottrill’s focused wave pulse jet engine....