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Media Platforms Design TeamAbout 24 hours ago, I spilled the better half of a 20-ounce cup of coffee onto my company laptop. Not in a pool seeping around the edges, but in a coffeefall onto the keyboard that seeped through and presumably turned its guts a delightful mocha color.This is just to say: There’s no moment like the moment your computer has a baptism by French roast—or the moment you realize your Facebook account is hacked, or the moment you realize somebody has infiltrated your online bank account—to bring you that super-pang of procrastination regret....

Media Platforms Design TeamChevy’s third micro concept vehicle—one of which could get your vote for production—is a product of the GM design center in Inchon, Korea, just like the Groove concept. It’s described as an interpretation of an import tuner that’s “simple, free and casual, with a strong heart.” The front-drive, three-door hatchback offers a Vertigo Green exterior paint job with the same hue carried over to parts of the interior....

SAN DIEGO - Here at AAAS, the world’s largest science conference, climate science looms large—climate change in working landscapes, the claims of geoengineering, dust in the Earth system and algae as a low-emissions fuel are just a few of the Earth-focused symposiums here. But public opinion and a string of recent controversies—from East Anglia’s controversial stolen e-mails to the mistaken rate of Himalayan glacier melt—have clouded climate change headlines. Is there a need for better transparency in climate science?...

The U.S. military has always gone to war with civilian contractors in tow. During the American Revolution the ratio hovered at one contractor per six soldiers; the numbers in Iraq are closer to one contractor for every person in uniform. As a result, contractor costs totaled $85 billion between 2003 and 2007. Few of these positions require weapons, but given the nature of the assignments–as well as the muddled legal status of hired guns–many wonder if it would be cheaper to use military personnel to provide security....

Media Platforms Design Team2007 JEEP WRANGLER It may look familiar, but this 2007 version of the venerable Jeep Wrangler is completely redesigned, with a 2-in. longer wheelbase and 3.5-in. wider track to go along with revised sheetmetal all around. Jeep claims its 100 percent stiffer frame along with higher ground clearance and larger wheels gives the go-anywhere two-door more off-road capability. A 3.5-liter V6 engine delivers 205 hp and 240 lb....

In real life there’s no such thing as a perfect airplane. Every design element must balance benefits and disadvantages with regard to the nature of the intended mission. But never mind all that. PM decided to build the ultimate fantasy plane by choosing our favorite parts from different aircraft and kluging them together to create a Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) that can operate year-round. We call this hot little number the PopMech AeroDream....

UPDATE (Aug. 16): They did it! Yesterday, the Ford Fusion 999 team ran 207.297 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats, establishing the fastest unofficial time ever run by a hydrogen-powered vehicle. Scroll down for record-breaking video! This car is about to go down in history. Unless any mechanical maladies or foul weather foils the plan, by this time tomorrow, the Ford Fusion 999 may just become the fastest hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle ever to speed across the Bonneville Salt Flats....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis morning, PM staffers were treated to a sneak preview ofCosmic Collisions, the new space show at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium. The multimillion dollar production, funded partly by NASA, vividly depicts the fiery impacts between meteoroids, asteroids, planets and stars—all gracefully choreographed to music and Robert Redford’s soothing narration.To accurately depict how these collisions ripple through the universe, clusters of supercomputers at institutions around the world were utilized to crunch enormous data sets from ground- and space-based telescopes....

Media Platforms Design TeamConfederate Gen. Robert E. Lee looked across Seminary Ridge on July 3, 1863, and watched as his bedraggled and bloodied army returned from a hellish charge against the center of the Union lines at Gettysburg, a small town in southern Pennsylvania. “It is all my fault,” Lee cried as the wounded and shaken of “Pickett’s Charge” limped past.One hundred and fifty years later, the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg is one of the most hallowed sites in the United States, drawing more than 1....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASA.Slayer fans, listen up: Venus has heavy metal frost.Elise Harrington, an undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University, had been reanalyzing data more than two decades to answer a longstanding mystery about the second planet from the sun. Radar waves bounce off the thick clouds of Venus at different elevations, but look at the upper layers and you’ll see a series of dark blotches. These spots don’t reflect radar waves, meaning there’s something heavy in them....

Click here to post this video on your blog or website.Click here to post a photo of this winner on your blog or website.Parkersburg, W.Va., is a city of 33,000 on the Ohio River. For decades, a DuPont plant 7 miles upstream has polluted the local waters with ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO), a surfactant used to make Teflon. As debate raged about possible health effects, Parkersburg South High School student Kelydra Welcker, now an 18-year-old college freshman, took action....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn a press conference resembling a one-manufacturer auto show, GM unveiled its new fifth generation pickups: the 2014 Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra.At their core, the new pickups are based on sturdy bones: fully boxed frames throughout the lineup, an all-new engine lineup, and a lot of thoughtful upgrades. Under the hood are EcoTec3 engines featuring all-aluminum construction, direct injection, variable valve timing, and cylinder deactivation. The lineup counts a 4....

Media Platforms Design Team(Illustration by Dogo)RC ProjectionistRodger Cleye; Aliso Viejo, Calif.When electrical engineers get into the Halloween spirit, there’s no telling what might happen. Last year Rodger Cleye outdid himself with a creation as simple as it was elegant: a radio-controlled home theater on wheels that displays video of a flaming head while blaring Rockwell’s 1984 song “Somebody’s Watching Me.” The heart of the system is an electric wheelchair he bought off eBay; Cleye tapped into the chair’s control box and converted it to remote operation....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeA fuel mix-up reportedly caused President Obama’s limo—dubbed “The Beast”— to break down at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday. Quoting an unnamed source, Israel’s Channel 2 reported that the heavily-armored Cadillac was mistakenly filled with diesel instead of gasoline and failed to start on the airport tarmac.Since the vehicle’s powertrain details are kept under wraps due to national security concerns (based on what info has been releasd to the public, we know the limo is based on a medium-duty truck chassis), it’s not clear exactly what happened to the presidential limo, but there are two possibilities....

Media Platforms Design TeamDETROIT — In the old days, when styling occurred every two years or so, we called this a “face lift.” Not a major face lift, nor a minor one, just the standard freshening of details that let the owners know that they’re driving the latest model. The new Sonata is scheduled to debut as a 2009 model in mid-2008. What we see up front is a new clip—bumper, grille, headlights, fenders and hood....

Media Platforms Design TeamBillions of years ago in a dwarf galaxy far, far away, a gigantic star exploded in a burst of light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. Four years ago, that light reached the eyes of Robert Quimby, an astronomer at Caltech. He called this distant stellar paroxysm 2005a; it was the brightest supernova ever seen. And soon he would find out this wasn’t just an odd loner—it’s part of an entirely new class of supernova, one that’s shrouded in mystery....

Media Platforms Design Team Challenged to create their own jack-o-lantern, PM staffers did what they do best: Turned on the power tools. Our Halloween creation is a true mechanic’s pumpkin, with an electrical outlet, a light blub, and a whole lot of extra screws, just to be sure. Much as we love individually wrapped mini-Snickers, geeky costumes and the seasonal return of candy corn, jack-o-lanterns are PM’s favorite part of Halloween....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou’re still at breakfast when a message appears on your cellphone. It’s from a phone number you associate with your employer. You see that it’s addressed to all members of your department. “Busted plumbing flooded server closet overnight. Corporate network down,” it reads. “Restoration expected end-of-business today. Meanwhile, work from home.“You nod—now you won’t waste a trip to the office. But you’re also puzzled—if the network is down, where did this message come from?...

When most bombs go off, they release a spray of deadly shards of steel. Now, imagine that those shards were themselves explosive, detonating in a massive chain reaction. It’s for real: Defense contractors are harnessing the strange alchemy of reactive materials (RMs) – in which two or more inert materials are mixed to create an explosion – to develop smaller, more lethal warheads, as well as new ways to protect troops against mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades....

Media Platforms Design TeamMore than a million bicycles are stolen each year, according to various law enforcement agencies, and few ever find their way back to their owners. After a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, one new startup hopes to change that.The BikeSpike uses a tiny GPS chip that will monitor your bicycling speed and distance during rides, but will also track your bike if it’s stolen or, if you crash, alert specified contacts from your smartphone....