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Media Platforms Design Team GENEVA — Hyundai has introduced a string of interesting concept and production vehicles recently. And the HED-5 unveiled here today is a brand-new concept vehicle with seating for six. But unlike most concepts, it’s what lies beyond the design that we find most interesting. Hyundai officials say the so-called i-Mode’s body materials are lighter and more adaptable than metal and glass, and that should reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions—not that anyone’s saying exactly what makes up those panels....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamIf you’ve ever wanted a laundry sink but couldn’t come up with a way to drain it, you’re not alone. Most older homes have inadequate plumbing, especially when it comes to laundry drains. Often there’s only a trapped drain in the basement floor. And many basements, both old and new, have no below-floor drainage piping at all. These are common problems with no easy solutions....

Media Platforms Design TeamAfter a first failed try to find wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, search crews sent the robot back into the depths early Wednesday morning (Australia time) for what they hoped would be a full 24-hour deployment. The first mission was aborted after eight hours on Tuesday when the probe was sent beyond its maximum range of 15,000 feet below the surface, at which point the vehicle essentially shut down, according to investigators in Perth, the headquarters for the search effort....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou might have seen gigapixel images—those stunning billion-pixel pictures that allow the viewer to zoom and enhance anywhere, CSI-style, creating incredibly in-depth views of cities, landscapes, and more. But you’ve may not have seen an extraterrestrial one until now.NASA today released a 1.3-billion-pixel panoramic image of Mars (a tiny portion of which you see here), made by weaving together more than 850 frames that the Curiosity rover shot last fall....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe most important person by far for this year’s Special Operation Industry Conference in Tampa was a dead man: Osama bin Laden.The timing of bin Laden’s death was certainly fortuitous for this get-together. This year’s conference, an annual event sponsored the National Defense Industrial Association, a trade association, comes just weeks after the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) mission to kill the al-Qaida leader. The always-popular conference was even more packed this year: The exhibit space was sold out, and companies’ displays overflowed into an outside area....

Here’s the latest look at Ford’s Escape model for 2008, which the company plans to officially unveil Dec. 2 at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Photos (at right) reveal the extent of styling changes Ford has in store for the small SUV (now called Ford’s first crossover?). All sheetmetal surfaces below the greenhouse are new, including fenders, doors, rockers and hood. Major changes are also seen in the grille, taillights, fascias and rear hatch....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: March-April 2014Base Price: $35,290Competitors: BMW M235i, Chevrolet Camaro, Ford Mustang, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Nissan 370Z, Subaru WRX, Volkswagen Golf RPowertrains: turbocharged 2.5-liter H-4, 305 hp, 290 lb-ft; 6-speed manual; AWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 19/23In the past, the STI model of the Subaru WRX so special: This was the one to own if you were serious about speed. Whether on road, track, dirt or snow, the STI was a serious upgrade from the WRX....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Set your mower to the highest cut setting or one notch down from that.2. Cut the lawn, but remove no more than 1/3 its height in a single pass. If it’s tall and shaggy, and you’ve got the time to do so, make two cuts. Space the cuts a couple of days apart to avoid leaving behind large clumps of moist grass clippings.3. If the blade is dull or chipped, either resharpen it or replace it....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow is the Australian government using science to try and get rid of the cane toads?Whatever has been thrown at the toad in terms of control has just been a dismal failure. People have used fences, they’ve used chemicals to spray on the toad, they’ve hand-collected the toad, thinking that would help. People have tried traps, they’ve tried different attractants for the traps, whether it be blue lights or red lights or the mating call of the toad, so all the males think there’s a sexy female and come running into the trap....

It should come as no surprise that Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh – who, with some fellow Cleveland no-goodnicks made some remarkably influential synth-punk music – has a few electronic instruments. But do you realize how flat out awesome some of them are?Take all those accusations of backmasking in music – hiding a message by playing it backwards in a song. Yeah, Mothersbaugh has a device for that. And he’s used it over the years to insert the phrase “We smell sausage” in dozens of projects, including the music he composed for Rugrats....

The Apple Watch—and most other smartwatches really—have caught a lot of flack for having crappy battery life. But Apple Watch owners might be in luck. The Apple Watch actually has a hidden diagnostic port that is perfect for giving the wearable some extra charge.Officially, the Apple Watch charges wirelessly using a proprietary magnetic charger, but that’s not the only way. On the inner edge of the watch, there’s secret a six-pin port for doing diagnostics....

Media Platforms Design TeamVolkswagen had the Vanagon camper variant, sure. But in 1972, Toyota made its own attempt at a camper car. It was the Toyota RV2, a station wagon whose back unfurled into a tent. It was a far-out variation on the “turn a van or pickup into a camping vehicle” trend. Sadly, it also never really hit the road, spending its whole life as a concept car.Penthouse gushed at the time, “Compact and tidy, this car appears to be the answer for the quick getaway or the leisurely road trip....

Media Platforms Design TeamThis was the view from my hotel room in Abu Dhabi– and yep, that’s turn 19 of the Yas Marina Formula 1 circuit. By 9:00 the next morning, through the thick, double-paned glass, I could faintly hear the muted hum of a Radical race car running laps. Heaven.I was staying at the Yas Viceroy Hotel and Resort, part of a billion dollar complex that featured the world’s first combination of a hotel and F1 track when it was built in 2009....

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — It’s tough playing second fiddle to a fire-breathing, rally-bred superstar like the Subaru WRX STi. The Impreza WRX has always been a trusty sedan with the utility to slog its way through brutal winters, but with 81 fewer horses than the STi—more than a Smart car’s worth of stallions—if you wanted brutal thrust, there was only one game in town. Well, that’s changed a bit now. The 2009 Impreza WRX has gotten brawnier inside and out, bringing it several steps closer to its overachieving big brother....

In the ’80s, Aussie comedian Paul Hogan ruled the media universe. His “shrimp on the barbie” Australian tourism ads made Hogan a household name, his 1986 movie Crocodile Dundee was a massive hit, and he helped make Foster’s Lager a worldwide brand by proclaiming it “Australian for beer, mate.” But as Hogan’s fame has faded, it turns out his single greatest legacy (and, literally, a Legacy) will be the Subaru Outback....

On Sale Date: NowBase Price: $20,880Competitors: Toyota Camry, Ford Fusion, Honda Accord, Chevy Malibu, Kia Optima, Hyundai SonataPowertrains: 2.5-liter, 184 hp, 185 lb. ft. of torque; 2.2-liter diesel, 174 hp, 310 lb. ft.; six-speed automatic or manualEPA Fuel Economy: TBA (We got an observed 38 mpg in the diesel.)What’s New: Mazda has taken a completely different approach to its much-lauded 6. Previously, the car was a slightly smaller but sportier competitor compared to other midsize cars, but the new 6 moves up in size to match the leaders....

After we investigated what went wrong in the capsizing that killed 20, the captain and cruise line owner of the Ethan Allen tour boat have been charged with criminal misdemeanors, and several legislative changes may follow.And after our resident pilot gave us an inside look at what might have gone wrong in Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle’s fatal turn (listen to podcast here), the NTSB released new details as a follow-up for its investigation into the Cirrus crash....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Hyundai introduced the RWD Genesis in 2008 as the company’s new luxury sedan, the carmaker raised a lot of eyebrows. Since then, and despite a bit of a branding conundrum, the Genesis has been a relative hit. Now the car enters its second generation and has been rebuilt from the ground up. A new platform with more than 50 percent high-strength steel provides increased rigidity, and new sheetmetal shows off Hyundai’s Fluidic Sculpture 2....

Media Platforms Design TeamChinese dronemaker SZ DJI Technology Co., which built the drone that crashed on the White House lawn on Monday, has a plan to prevent such incidents in the future. It will simply disable its aircraft if they get too close to no-fly zones.SZ DJI is creating a firmware upgrade that will prevent a drone from flying into such sensitive areas. It works by connecting the drone to satellites, which prevent it from launching if it’s over a restricted area....

Media Platforms Design TeamRight now, the best that seismologists can do to “predict” earthquakes is to send out a warning immediately after activity is detected. In the case of the Samoan islands, they sent an alert about a magnitude 8 earthquake under the ocean floor early Tuesday morning. Within minutes of that alert, mammoth tsunami waves stampeded the islands leaving little time for evacuation. “The state of knowledge of the subsurface is just at the beginning,” says University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Harold Tobin, “We’re at the point now where we need to move our experiments from the lab and see if what we think is happening is actually occurring on a larger-scale....