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The selfie stick seems like a modern menace, but in fact it’s more than 30 years old. And as the BBC reports, the device was actually invented twice – once in Japan, and once in Canada. The Japanese one flopped and was later enshrined in a book of useless inventions. The Canadian one is currently being banned from stadiums, concerts, and other public events.Both inventors – Kenji Kawakami and Wayne Fromm – had the idea while struggling to photograph themselves during European vacations....

Imagine you had a never-ending hunger that compelled you to eat more than your weight in sugar every day. And imagine you had to find that food in a near-continuous windstorm.Now you know how a hummingbird feels.A new study from researchers at RMIT University in Australia and Harvard tries to explain just how the supercharged sprites do what they do every day, especially in rough weather.You’ve seen the slow motion footage....

Media Platforms Design TeamChannels that run beneath the surface of Mars, evidence of a time when the planet was full of water, have mostly remained mysterious to NASA researchers. For instance, Marte Vallis, a 1000-kilometer (621-mile) channel near the planet’s equator, has been impossible to study because it is buried beneath some of the youngest . lava flows on the planetNow, scientists are learning to look beneath the surface. A team led by the Smithsonian Institution’s Gareth Morgan has used the Shallow Subsurface Radar—known as SHARAD—on board the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to probe the Marte Vallis....

Repair RunwaysRelative to the countless passenger complaints about the dreary experiences in many of the nation’s airline terminals, the condition of runway surfaces outside those buildings is in surprisingly good shape. The most recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report to Congress regarding the state of aviation infrastructure reveals that 98 percent of the runways at U.S. airports with commercial service were in good or fair condition, soundly exceeding the FAA’s goal of 93 percent....

Media Platforms Design TeamFrom hints dropped at Le Mans to the official unveiling of their GT3 race car, I’ve been following Bentley’s return to racing with curious fascination. And so it was nothing short of surreal to find myself halfway around the world at last weekend’s Gulf 12 Hours endurance race at Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi.The grandstands may have been curiously empty at the massive F1 track, but Bentley’s motorsports team didn’t seem to mind the absence of fans– in fact, they likely relished the emptiness, since it would be tough to top the last time the Flying B brand turned a wheel at a race, when they scored an astonishing first and second place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans a decade ago....

Bionic LimbsImplants have enhanced Sommers’s baseline strength: She shoves people across entire rooms with one arm, leap from building to building and run alongside a speeding car. Prosthetics, while far along, still have to catch up to the functionality and feeling of normal limbs before they can venture into the realm of enhancing strength and agility. By 2009, DARPA hopes to have a prosthetic that’s on par with flesh and blood....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt turns out that dogs are not top dog when it comes to super-smelling. In a study published today in Genome Research, researchers found that African elephants have twice as many genes responsible for differentiating odors than dogs do, though dogs and elephants beat out humans by two times and five times more genes, respectively. By analyzing the genomes of 13 land mammals, the scientists found more than 10,000 unique olfactory receptor genes, which code the proteins that detect different odors in the air....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy did you decide to make science a big part of the story?BERNDT MADER: I think a big part of the film is the main character Julius’s natural curiosity. We’re all scientists in a waywe’re all going through life asking questions and learning through observation with the scientific method, and we’re all employing it on one another. Julius is a scientist. He’s curious about these worms and he’s experimenting on them, and he’s also kind of curious about his own life, and trying to figure out where he is going what he’s doing at all times....

Devon JarvisMy printer predates my computers, phone and especially my tablet, but it still prints just fine. How can I get this old thing to play nice with my fleet of wireless gadgets? The good news is that you aren’t missing much. In an industry defined by reinvention and obsolescence, printing technology has stood relatively still. Printers are usually replaced when they break, not because something better has come alonga rarity in the electronics world....

Satellite-based navigation has become a ubiquitous tool for business, military and personal use. The downside is that any disruption in the Global Positioning System could wreak havoc down on Earth.This year, the Department of Homeland Security decided that a 30-year-old navigation system used by mariners will be upgraded to back up GPS. The decision preserves the Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) network, which has been teetering on the verge of forced retirement since the 1980s, according to the Coast Guard’s Navigation Center....

The tiny drone launches from its pneumatic carrying tube, extends its wings, and zooms at speed up to 115 mph, driven by an electric propeller. But the 7-lb. Hero 30 can also cruise at slow speeds, loitering over an area. A stabilized camera and a thermal imager in the nose beams back video to the operator. Hero can fly for 30 minutes, long enough for the operator to locate, identify, and confirm a target several miles away....

Combat Veteran DroneMedia Platforms Design TeamUnmanned aerial vehicles have made hunting for roadside bombs easier. Here, Petty Officer 1st Class John Taylor shows off the Silver Fox, a UAV that can be launched from basically anywhere, including the back of a Humvee. With state-of-the-art aviation technology, the “bird” uses an infrared and high-resolution camera to scope the ground and report information back to the men on land. Because it can be flown autonomously, the Silver Fox keeps Marines from having to investigate dangerous regions physically, saving them from improvised explosive devices....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThe Tokyo Motor Show is famous for strange, even otherworldly concepts in personal transportation, from single-person pods to cars that double as a living room on wheels. But Nissan’s BladeGlider is not fantasy, despite wording in the press release like “the ultimate in glider-like driving pleasure,” and “a shared experience of ‘free soaring’ for all.” More important is the phrase “prototype of an upcoming production vehicle,” which means that the narrow front track and triangular 3-passenger seating configuration will eventually be in showrooms....

Media Platforms Design Team An LED lamp’s long life and sippy-cup approach to energy consumption makes it an appealing light source. But it’s still a relatively nascent technology, primarily popping up in small-scale applications such as flashlights and vehicle turn signals. Which is why the new Philips ColorReach Powercore LED light is so surprising—and could be a game-changer. It’s the first LED architectural floodlight—that is, a lamp used to dramatically drench a building’s nighttime facade with light and color—capable of lighting an entire skyscraper....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today.Media Platforms Design TeamA company wants to turn your existing car into a self-driving vehicle. All it takes is $10,000 of rooftop sensors and actuators. No, we’re not about Google or GM, but a small San Francisco startup named Cruise. Even more surprisingly, the company hopes to bring its first units to market early next year, according to Forbes....

Media Platforms Design TeamPhoto: Getty ImagesAnnounced yesterday at the INTERMAG Europe 2014 International Magnetics Conference in Dresden, Germany, Sony’s new magnetic tape cassette can store up to 185TB of storage at 148GB/in2 (gigabits per square inch), shattering the previous world record by 18.5 GB. IBM Corporation, which was the previous record holder, assisted Sony in developing the tape by measuring and assessing the tape’s data storage capability, according to a press release....

Media Platforms Design TeamA. Operating SystemMicrosoft’s 8-year-old Windows XP has found a second wind powering low-cost netbooks, and the new Windows 7 was designed with netbooks in mind. Just avoid Windows Vista if you can—the bloated OS can overwhelm netbooks’ low-power processors. Open-source devotees may also opt for a Linux netbook, although these are becoming less common. And sorry, Apple fans: no Mac netbooks just yet.B. Keyboard Although some newer models cram in full-size keyboards, the small size of most netbooks necessitates a shrunken typing space—usually 10 to 20 percent smaller—which can cause discomfort for people used to larger layouts....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs I was driving down the freeway recently, I watched an SUV in front of me drift out of its lane, off the road and down an embankment. I stopped, ran to it and saw two young women inside, apparently okay. There was music blaring and something was on the navigation screen.This happened on a straight road, on a sunny day, without much traffic. And I thought how much safer I was, driving in my 50-year-old Jaguar XK120–with no side windows, no radio, no distractions–than these women were in their new truck with its ABS, airbags and other modern tech....

Media Platforms Design TeamOnce upon a time, Aaron Crowl was a dirt-track racer, kicking up dust in old stock cars. But after a friend showed him some lawnmowers he had tinkered with, turning them from suburban grass cutters into track-day speed demons, Crowl was hooked on lawnmower racing.“Lawnmower racers are pretty damn innovative,” says Crowl, who today is president and founder of the American Racing Mower Association (ARMA). “When you can take something that was just meant to go out and cut grass and put it out on the track, and it can handle and endure speeds of 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, that’s a pretty good accomplishment....

Media Platforms Design TeamDrill and Fill: Installers thread pipe into a hole a few inches wide and over 100 feet deep. As wind and solar hog the alt-energy spotlight, this technology has remained underground.“You’re not making heat, you’re moving heat,” Colorado geothermal installer Jim Lynch says. Installations like Lynch’s tap into the earth below the frost line–which always stays around 50 degrees Fahrenheit–to reduce a home’s heating and cooling loads. All HVAC systems require energy-intensive heat movement, a task responsible for over half of the average house’s total energy demand....