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Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Greg L at en.Wikipedia)Thank goodness for sewers. They protect us from waterborne diseases and putrid smells, allowing us to live in dense, bustling cities. Now we can return the favor and keep them safe: According to research published today in the journal Science governments can reduce corrosion by making a simple switch in the chemicals that clean drinking water.Typically, sewers last anywhere between 50 and 100 years; however, depending on the quality of construction, sewage, and other factors, pipes can collapse in only 10 or 20 years and cost billions to replace....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe workhorse of Russia’s commercial space operations crashed spectacularly on Tuesday, just seconds after lifting off from its launch base in grasslands of western Kazakhstan. The nearly 700-ton Proton-M rocket blasted off exactly as scheduled at 8:38 am local time at Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying a trio of satellites for the GLONASS constellation, a Russian equivalent of the GPS navigation network. But moments after clearing the lightning towers of the launchpad, the heaviest rocket in the Russian space fleet began to gyrate and swing wildly left and right in front of a live camera broadcasting the launch around the world....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast night’s episode of Lost, “Ab Aeterno” (or “since the beginning of time”), depicted a flashback to the life and times of our favorite ageless, eyelinered Other, Richard Alpert. As suspected, he came to the island in 1867, a criminal—he accidentally killed a doctor while trying to get medicine for his sick wife—from Spain’s Canary Islands who was sold into slavery on the Black Rock. The ship is caught in a storm, and a huge wave sends it careening into Tawret, the 250-foot-tall Egyptian statue that sits on the island’s shore....

DETROIT – Just as we noted last night about GM putting the “show” in auto show, Mercedes-Benz today did its bit to increase the “wow” factor within the walls of Cobo Hall. To help punch home the point that the maker has a plethora of capable all-wheel drive vehicles, including a new GL Class with a Bluetec diesel V8 engine (ostensibly the reason for the press conference), Mercedes turned its entire display into an ice rink....

Microsoft scientists have released a paper claiming that their visual recognition software is outperforming humans, a long-sought after feat. The benchmark for humans in image classification is a 5.1 percent error rate. Microsoft claims their error rate is 4.94 percent, beating out Google’s 6.66 percent.In the ImageNet Competition, teams are given a dataset of 150,000 images and asked to identify 1,000 objects within those images. The 1,000 objects may appear in different pictures, meaning a computer may need to identify something like a power drill both with a person holding it and sitting on a workbench by itself....

Media Platforms Design Team"Don’t be afraid to stand on the brakes.“No matter how many times McLaren’s chief test driver, Chris Goodwin, recited these instructions, the message just didn’t compute. This was back in 2009 on a test drive of a preproduction model of McLaren’s newest road car, the MP4-12C. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my head around the insane capabilities of the car. All I knew was that I had to have one....

Media Platforms Design TeamLet’s talk about plumbing – and I don’t mean how to unclog your toilet. I mean plumbing that can handle high-pressure gases and liquids. On MythBusters, Adam Savage and I often build scary rigs out of pressure tanks, pipes and fittings. When we want to get a job done, we round up a supply of plumbing tools and fittings and all of a sudden we have rockets, guns, powerful machines – everything we need to get into a whole lot of trouble....

Media Platforms Design TeamA NASA-led research team may have come one step closer to accurately predicting the size of earthquake-induced tsunamis.Tsunamis are generated when an earthquake or underwater landslide displaces a large amount of water; only when that displaced water reaches shore does it turn into large waves. When an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Chile on Feb. 27, scientists predicted that waves as high as 12 feet could hit Hawaiian shores; only 12-inch waves actually materialized....

Media Platforms Design TeamReading before you drift away to sleep may lead to a poorer night’s rest—if you read on lit screen such as an iPad, researchers say.The body’s circadian rhythms depend largely upon cues such as light, which is part of the reason why crossing time zones can lead to jet lag. For instance, dim light in the evening typically leads the body to generate melatonin, a brain chemical that regulates sleep....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamDaniel H. Wilson’s first book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising, poked holes in our Hollywood-supplied anxiety over automaton-on-man violence, while quietly educating us on real-life robotics. Now the renowned author—and PM’s resident roboticist—is taking on the jetpack-commuting, Smell-O-Vision-scented future that never happened. His new book, Where’s My Jetpack? ($14.95, Bloomsbury), is funny—but it also turns out to be a tribute to the far-fetched ideas that often drive progress....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt was midnight on Sunday, Oct. 28, when Coast Guard pilot Wes McIntosh established radio contact with the HMS Bounty. The three-masted, square-rigged ship was 100 miles off the tip of Cape Hatteras, N.C., right in the heart of the churning gray pinwheel of . McIntosh and his six-member crew had left Raleigh in their C-130 Hercules search plane a half-hour earlier. They were still 60 miles away, just outside a solid wall of rain visible on the radar, when McIntosh got the first update from the foundering ship: Six feet of water had pooled in the belly of the boat, and the Bounty was flooding at the rate of a foot an hour....

NEW YORK, NY — There’s a new drone in town, and you’re probably going to want one for yourself. The Phantom 3, unveiled today by leading Chinese dronemaker DJI at a series of simultaneous announcement events around the globe, comes with a better onboard camera, impressive live-streaming technology, and improved controls. It’s the latest spin on what’s quickly become an iconic aircraft. If you’ve seen any tiny, remote-controlled quadrocopters (that’s a four-rotor helicopter) hovering above your head in recent years, it was likely a cute white-and-red-striped one bearing the distinctive markings of one of DJI’s older Phantom series drones....

Pope Francis sent out a call to all bishops in the Roman Catholic Church for urgent action on climate change. “The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life,” the pontiff says in the letter, which also calls for an end to fossil fuels. It’s a strong edict coming from the head of the church, who called inaction on climate change “collective selfishness....

Media Platforms Design TeamCategory: FX WizardryThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button Criterion Collection Two-Disc Special Edition & Blu-Ray (2008)Media Platforms Design TeamThe Academy Award-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is coming out in a special two-disc edition from Criterion. Adapted and liberally expanded from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story of the same name, the film stars Brad Pitt as a man who is born at the end of his life and ages in reverse....

The battle for heavy-duty pickup truck supremacy got a little more interesting today. Both Ford and Chevy/GMC took the wraps off their largest, most powerful pickups ever. And Dodge released information about the new 6.7-liter Cummins diesel that will power 2007 Heavy Duty Ram pickups. Here’s how each new truck stacks up. —Ben StewartChevy Silverado HD/GMC Sierra HD The 2007 Chevys and GMCs share much of their sheet metal with their newly unveiled, light-duty brethren....

Media Platforms Design TeamFor Steve Norris, making hand-built robots is the perfect hobby. He’s a software engineer at work and handyman at home, so DIY robotics brings together his interests in hardware, electronics and A.I. programming in one convenient–and very cool-looking–package. A brief glance at his catalog of more than a dozen quirky and useful bots offers the impression that his house, not unlike that of futurist Daniel H. Wilson, is some kind of techno-wonderland packed with robotic marvels....

Media Platforms Design TeamFloating through the air 200 feet above the ground, I glide past a cluster of buildings, a stand of trees, the shoreline of a shimmering bay. A golf driving range drifts into view. Four men stop swinging their clubs and stare up, open-mouthed. In an age that’s jaded by wall-to-wall entertainment, they’re experiencing an all-too-rare sensation: pure awe. A giant oval shadow moves over them, and I’m gone....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Siegfried Layda/Getty Images)Charlie Shrem, former vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, has pled guilty to transmitting money via Silk Road, the now-defunct bitcoin-only marketplace.While CEO of bitcoin exchange BitInstant, Shrem helped Robert Faiella, aka BTCKing, sell bitcoins to members of Silk Road for the purchase of drugs and other illegal items. Faiella would exchange dollars for bitcoins via BitInstant, sometimes in transactions processed directly by Shrem, and sometimes getting discounts for high-volume trades....

This story is brought to you byGas 2.0Media Platforms Design TeamAccording to the California Air Resources Board (CARB), Chevrolet’s upcoming Volt is an ultra-low emissions vehicle, or ULEV–which is great, until you realize that tailpipe emissions from Volkswagen’s line of TDI diesels, Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s full line of Hybrids are (per CARB) significantly cleaner.Chevy’s Volt performed well in most categories, but not concerning carbon monoxide. CO limits for SULEV status is 1....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s hard to stop a bad idea with enough money behind it—even rogue science on the high seas.Russ George, a wealthy American businessman with a history of big, controversial ideas, launched his latest one this October: dumping 200,000 pounds of iron sulfate into the North Pacific. His aim was to spur a huge plankton bloom, which would absorb carbon dioxide in photosynthesis and then sink to the ocean floor....