ALEXANDRIA, Va. — As the guy given the daunting task of gathering nominations for PM’s annual Breakthrough Awards, I’ve got to keep my ear to the ground. That’s why, a mere two weeks after our own ceremony at the Hearst Building in New York, I’m on my way to another awards bash—this one to announce the winners of the Collegiate Inventors Competition. It’s hosted by the Ohio-based Inventors Hall of Fame and will take place at the U....
Packed inside a metal vial, which is packed inside a wooden box, which is wrapped in cloth and tucked inside a crate of Valencia oranges, is the special delivery that sets the second episode of Manhattan in motion. About 150 grams of plutonium-239—an ultra-rare radioactive isotope in high demand, has arrived at Los Alamos all the way from Chicago. By taxicab. Researcher Frank Winters, along with his group pursuing a bomb design with an imploding core, has been reinstated and allowed to continue their research....
Media Platforms Design TeamFINAL REPORT - May 2009Media Platforms Design TeamThere is a toggle switch behind the shifter that allows you to select between Normal and Sport transmission settings. But if you’re feeling particularly feisty–and you’ve got miles of clear asphalt ahead–hold that toggle switch forward for a few extra seconds. This move will engage S-Sport mode, “Super Sport.” What does it do? Well it’s sort of like feeding the transmission a beer bong loaded with Red Bull....
Media Platforms Design TeamThis is one rough landing Christina Kurylo will not soon forget. After her Air Canada plane made an emergency landing in Edmonton late Thursday, a propeller broke loose and crashed through the fuselage right in front of Kurylo, narrowly missing her.“All of a sudden I got hit in the head,” she told reporters. “It was pretty confusing for me. It’s bits and pieces for me after that.“Kurylo was one of several employees from the radio station ROCK 97....
View full post on YoutubeWant to be terrified and humbled and awed, all at once? Try sharing the dirt with a couple of the world’s most talented motocross riders, Ryan Dungey and James “Bubba” Stewart.Because they’re blessed with masterful off-road skills on two wheels, these two have a mean way of maneuvering their motorcycles while seemingly defying the laws of physics. Their technique is fierce but can also be surprisingly delicate, as seen in this slow-mo clips of Stewart negotiating the dirt seen above....
Media Platforms Design TeamBinoculars don’t just bring birds into focus—they’re a cheap, portable tool for zooming in on the night sky too. The handheld lenses let you examine a wide field of view, right side up and with both eyes, unlike most backyard telescopes. Robin Scagell, co-author of Stargazing With Binoculars, advises setting up shop a mile from well-lit areas. “Avoid looking at bright lights before you go out,” he says....
Media Platforms Design TeamWe’re big fans of new approaches to making digital music, from electro synthesizers to DIY albums—and Rock Band, natch. So we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the new Synesthesia Mandala USB Drum Pad ($350), which was co-created by Tool drummer Danny Carey (inset by Holomorph via Wikimedia Commons). The pad hooks up to a computer via a USB cord, and pumps out the jams through your CPU’s speakers or sound system....
Media Platforms Design TeamNASA may not know whether its next destination is an asteroid, Mars, or the moon, but the agency is definitely planning for some kind of journey—and its engineers need to figure out what to pack. “It’s like you’re trying to go on vacation, but you don’t know if you’re going to Antarctica, Miami, or Buckingham Palace,” says Amy Ross, a spacesuit engineer at Johnson Space Center. The Z-1 prototype—currently being tested in a vacuum chamber—has been designed for versatility: to explore alien surfaces, float outside a space station, and even weather the radiation of deep space....
Media Platforms Design TeamORLANDO, Fla — Decades ago, Italian roboticist Paolo Dario was one of the first to speculate that the future would look less like a sci-fi movie—silver humanoids, soulless utilitarian machines—and more like a zoo. Today, robotics is a Rousseauian tableau of swinging, squirming, oozing, and flying robots, modeled after geckos, gorillas, lobsters, hummingbirds, and more. Dario was right. Robotics has become an animal kingdom.A professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna in Pontedera, Dario’s talk at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) was entitled “Biorobotics Science and Engineering....
On the heels of a litany of scandals and security lapses, the Secret Service needs to step up its game. To do so, the agency wants to build an $8 million mock-up of the White House where agents can rehearse their responses to any threat.According to The New York Times, the replica official residence would simulate not only the facade and the east and west wings, but also the White House grounds and the roads around it....
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the ever-elusive hydrogen economy is a Unlike the chief method of hydrogen production today, which uses natural gas and emits heat-trapping carbon dioxide, hydropower offers the advantage of actually easing the problem of global warming. As with other alternatives such as solar and wind energy, hydropower uses cleanly produced electricity to split water into its constituent parts—hydrogen and oxygen. Fuel cells in cars like Chevy’s Sequel and Honda’s FCX take advantage of a mirror process to convert hydrogen gas back into electric power....
For woodworking aficionados, the Warther Museum in Dover, Ohio is a must-see. The museum is dedicated to memory of master woodcarver Ernest “Mooney” Warther, who was able to do things like carve a miniature, working steel mill from wood, using just a sewing machine motor to power the whole thing. His son, David Warther, carries on that tradition. In the video below, he shows how he makes an ingenious pair of working pliers from a solid block of basswood, using just ten cuts into the wood....
Media Platforms Design TeamCrews are still collecting debris and investigating what happened early Sunday morning when a Manhattan-bound train from New York’s Metro-North railroad derailed on a sharp turn where operators must decelerate from 70 mph to 30 mph. In a brief press conference Monday afternoon, the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) reported that the train was traveling at 82 mph going into the turn, well above the safety standard before and during the turn....
When the market for compact point-and-shoot cameras appeared on the brink of collapse—undercut by sophisticated smartphone cameras that are with us all the time and take instantly shareable shots—few would have predicted a comeback for the single-purpose digicam. And then along came GoPro to save the standalone camera by doing one thing, and doing it well: Strap it to your wrist, dashboard, or bike mount, and it’ll record your bravest outdoor exploits without being ruined by the elements....
A Chicago startup thinks it has come up with a weapon for people who don’t want guns: Salt. The weapon, which recently appeared on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, is described as a nonlethal home defense solution.Salt looks like a typical bullet-firing handgun, but it isn’t. It isn’t even a firearm as defined by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Salt is basically a paintgun that fires paintballs filled with an incapacitating pepper extract....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: September 2013 (front-wheel drive), spring 2014 (4Matic)Base Price: $30,825Competitors: Audi A3, Buick Verano, Acura ILX, BMW 1 SeriesPowertrains: Turbocharged 2.0-liter I-4, 208 hp, 258 lb-ft; seven-speed dual-clutch automatic; FWD or AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy, est.): 25/36What’s New: Based on the A-Class hatchback sold in other markets, the CLA250 is the first front-wheel-drive Mercedes-Benz in North America (not counting the rare, lease-only B-Class fuel-cell car. The only engine we’ll see is a turbocharged 2....
Media Platforms Design TeamEvery year, January brings three things: post-holiday gift returns, half-hearted New Years’ resolutions, and the Consumer Electronics Show (January 8-11)—which, if you’ve somehow managed to avoid hearing about it until now, is the largest gadget convention in the world. As big companies such as Microsoft have pulled back from the show and electronics manufacturers have largely abandoned the yearly product cycle that used to cater to the yearly event, the influence of CES on tech news has waned somewhat....
Media Platforms Design TeamYou hear it all the time—your earbuds will cause hearing loss. And while it’d be nice to shrug this off as the same old conventional wisdom that everything fun is bad for us, it happens to be true: Prolonged use can in fact lead to hearing loss. A clever new invention being unveiled Friday may help keep your earbuds and your hearing—and your audio quality—intact, without forcing you to return to an era of Footloose-style Walkman headphones....
Media Platforms Design TeamThere are many strange landscapes in the solar system, but perhaps none stranger than that of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Deserts blanket Titan for hundreds of miles, rippling with wind-sculpted dunes that rise more than 300 ft. Images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past two years also reveal riverbeds sculpted by liquid methane, canyons, and what appear to be a volcano and a shoreline. When Cassini dropped the Huygens probe onto Titan’s surface in 2005, the 701-pound craft landed in a substance with the consistency of wet sand....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhy is This Happening?Simply, AT&T, like all other mobile providers, is required to honor the contracts customers have signed, so may users are grandfathered in to unlimited data plans even though new customers can’t buy into those plans anymore. However, because the contracts specify no data speed, AT&T has the right to slow down the speed for specific customers if it so chooses.Should I be Worried About Being “Throttled Back?...
