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Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by G. Hamilton) Meredith Nettles is a geophysicist with an eye for unusual earthquakes. In 2003, Nettles and several colleagues noticed an epidemic of seismologically bizarre quakes emanating from an unlikely spot: the coasts of Greenland. The team deduced that the quakes were caused by glaciers, moving so fast and so violently that their movement has shown up in seismic recordings. The scientists’ work could help address one of the biggest unknowns in climate science: how rapidly sea levels may rise over the coming century....

Media Platforms Design TeamPrice: $300For more than a decade, a pair of big gray Bose headphones has signaled to the world that you’re tuning it out. Now muting the world and tuning into Bose’s carefully manicured sound is subtler: The company has fit its active-noise-cancellation electronics into in-ear earbuds (and the accompanying clunky remote). They sound fantastic, both in terms of the sounds you want to hear and those you don’t....

Media Platforms Design TeamRobin Hood: Unrated Director’s Cut Blu-ray/DVD Combo (2010)Media Platforms Design TeamHaving grown up with the Disney version, the Kevin Costner version and even Bugs Bunny’s Rabbit Hood, I loves me some Robin Hood! Academy Award winning director Ridley Scott tackles the classic tale, only this time as an origin story with an open ending for possible sequels. Robin Hood marks the fifth collaboration between Scott and actor Russell Crowe, their first film together being 2000’s Gladiator....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen disaster strikes, every minute matters. And the time spent surveying the scene is time that can’t be spent saving survivors.Researchers at Texas A&M University and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have collaborated on a way to speed up the process. Small robots take photos of the disaster site. The photos are then uploaded to a computer program called Rubble-Viewer that transforms them into a three-dimensional map of the site....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Nintendo Wii’s stick-like, motion-sensing controller is a natural gaming stand-in for a Zelda sword or baseball bat. But as a steering wheel, it stinks. The new Wii Wheel may be little more than a wireless plastic hoop with a controller slot (Nintendo honcho Reggie Fils-Aime looked like he could crush it in one hand at E3 last year), but it makes behind-the-wheel simulation feel a whole lot more natural....

It doesn’t matter how many years ago you graduated high school, leave it to the Internet to ignite a major case of mental anguish on you. This time it’s in the form of a math problem given to high schoolers in Singapore that asks the supposedly simple question: When is Cheryl’s birthday?The question isn’t as simple as it seems. It was first posted by Kenneth Kong on his Facebook page, who is television host in Singapore....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThe big story out of Elon Musk’s world this week was Hyperloop, his plan for ultra-rapid transit between San Francisco and Los Angeles. While the world marvels at Musk’s illustrations and calculations, his space business inches closer to realizing its own big idea: Reusable rockets.We’ve been tracking the development of SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket, a system designed to fly itself back to the platform and land following a launch, which would make it possible to use rockets again and again....

American spy satellites have capturedan exhaustive array of images of the Earth. After all, they’ve been taking photographs since the early days of the space race. In the 1990s, when climate change and other earth-science issues came to the forefront, researchers began to realize that the government’s unparalleled satellite data could be a huge boon—if scientists were allowed access to classified images. Jeff Dozier was one of the first permitted behind the veil of secrecy....

Somewhere around 480 million years ago, a fearsome-looking six-foot shrimp scrounged the ocean floors in search of its next meal. But it wasn’t hunting, scientists say. Despite its giant size, the shrimp mostly scrounged for plankton and other small creatures, filter feeding as it went along. Basically, the enormous Aegirocassis benmoulae was the arthropod version of the baleen whale or whale shark, an animal that feeds on a surprisingly timid diet despite its giant size....

Media Platforms Design TeamBrand equity is a slippery commodity that requires decades to properly build, and in the case of two-wheeled icons like Harley-Davidson and Vespa, marketing campaigns are as deliberately engineered as engine blocks.Seeking to maximize the storied history behind their 66 year-old brand, Vespa has fired up a website that uses crowdsourcing to evoke a Pinterest-style mosaic of owner-supplied content. With merged images from Instagram and Flickr as well as Twitter feeds and user generated content marked by #VespaStyle and #VespaVita hashtags, LaVespaVita....

Imagine a starship—a vessel capable of ferrying human beings from one solar system to another. Would it have wings and a cockpit? Or would it look like an aircraft carrier hauled out into the void and fitted with flame-belching rockets and glowing ion drives? Science fiction has offered us all sorts of visions of interstellar spacecraft, from avian-inspired Klingon birds of prey to hulking masses such as the Borg cube. In general, sci-fi leans toward sleek designs with lines borrowed from planes or cars, since those are the kinds of looks we’ve been conditioned to think of as “fast....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s hard to look at a car’s tailpipe and not be depressed. After all, even the most efficient internal-combustion engines use only 30 percent of the fuel’s energy to propel the vehicle. Much of the rest exits out the rear as waste heat. Now, researchers at General Motors are working on an energy-scavenging device that could convert that exhaust heat into electricity.The key is the use of a shape-memory alloy (SMA), explains Jan Aase, director of GM’s Vehicle Development Research Lab....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: NowPrice: $11,999Competitors: Ducati 848 EVO, Triumph Daytona 675RPowertrain: Dual overhead cam, fuel-injected 750-cc inline four-cylinderEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): N/AWhat’s New: Though it retains its signature blue and white color scheme, the 2011 Suzuki GSX-R750 incorporates chassis and engine tweaks to enhance its road-devouring prowess. Its 750-cc inline 4 has been retuned for a broader powerband, better throttle response and a 10 percent bump in fuel economy....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the most counterintuively anticipated cars to debut at this year’s Chicago Auto Show is the 2014 Chevy Cruze TD. The basic idea of the car is this: Take a Cruze Eco, add few new aerodynamic tricks, load in the 2LT upgrade interior package, and drop in 2.0 liter turbodiesel that cranks out 148 hp but an impressive 258 lb-ft of torque at just 2,000 rpm. Better yet there’s an overboost feature that lets the turbo spool up to help develop 280 lb-ft of grunt for 10 seconds....

The Brainiac Dishwasher /// $799-$899Media Platforms Design TeamUsing its SmartDispense technology, GE’s Profile suds machine spits out detergent on the fly, crunching the numbers so you don’t have to squeeze a blob yourself–or waste any Cascade for a smaller load. With a 45-fluid-ounce bottle of liquid or gel in tow, the dishwasher calibrates for soil level, size of load, water temperature and water hardness (which you can also test against your home pressure thanks to an included test kit)....

MORE NEW FOOD RESEARCH* EXPERTS: Tainted Tomatoes, Beef & Lemons Worth the Food Fright?As antibiotic-resistant supergerms carried in food become an increasingly creepy threat, nanotechnology may eventually help to banish bacteria–without killing it. In place of industry-standard antibiotics, researchers at Clemson University are experimenting with new pathogen-disabling nanoparticles to keep South Carolina chickens healthy.Poultry-farm chickens are ideal incubators for livestock-laden diseases. Due to their weak immune systems and crowded living conditions, the animals can act as carriers for bacteria and fungi that may affect their human consumers....

Media Platforms Design Team The Heat Is OnQ: My battery failed after four years, which I thought was a little too soon. The repair shop that installed it thought the same, so they replaced the battery with a somewhat larger one, the biggest they could get to fit into the battery tray. They also did a full charging system checkout. Two years later the new battery failed, so they replaced it under warranty–but only half the cost was covered....

Media Platforms Design TeamA miter saw is the best tool for making angled cuts in crown molding, baseboards and other types of trim. Many beginner DIYers and homeowners purchase a single-bevel 10-inch compound miter saw and then get right to work, only to find that their corner joints are loose and sloppy. The problem is that most wall corners rarely meet at a perfect 90 degrees. To compensate for these small inaccuracies, miter-saw settings need to be adjusted in a process that requires calculations, trial cuts or both....

Media Platforms Design TeamVisitors to the 2014 North American International Auto Show in Detroit will see plenty of shiny new cars, but they’ll also be treated to one of the most impressive floor displays we’ve seen in awhile. Showstands are often sprawling, multi-level setups outfitted with their own lighting rigs, more screens than a Vegas sportsbook, hidden meeting rooms, and even dining areas. But this year, Ford outdid everyone by installing a partial assembly line featuring its all-new F-150 truck....

“Machine learning” is a funny term. On the one hand, taken at face value it suggests nothing less than straight-up artificial intelligence. And machine learning and deep neural networks do underpin the ability of software to do things like identify objects and faces in images, invent recipes, or recognize whales songs in the ocean so that ships don’t run into them.But the reality is that machine learning is much more about teaching computers to quickly study for statistical patterns, and autonomously identify those patterns in a large data set....