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2009 Acura TSXMedia Platforms Design TeamThe media reception for Acura’s all-new TSX entry luxury car was somewhat lukewarm this morning. With only 201 hp to move a sedan that has grown larger, we’re wondering if customers will agree with Acura’s claim that that the TSX is a “world-class sedan enthusiasts will love.” After all BMW, Audi, Merdeces-Benz and Lexus all offer entry-level sedans with more power and either rear or all-wheel drive....

Media Platforms Design TeamBase Price: $19,745Delivering an EPA-rated 53 mpg in the city, the Toyota Prius C is the most fuel-efficient compact car in America. Although the C uses much of the regular Prius’s tech, it does so in a lighter weight, more compact footprint based on the Toyota Yaris. The drivetrain is a clever setup, consisting of a 1.5-liter four-cylinder paired with an electric motor, CVT, and batteries. The engine revs only to 4500 rpm, but then the electric motor kicks in to provide any extra power....

Media Platforms Design TeamTo meet ambitious fuel economy standards coming in the next decade-plus, automakers will need to get creative. We’ve heard all about carbon fiber and aluminum as lower-weight materials that will help cars go farther on a gallon of gas. Yesterday, General Motors announced it is testing a new magnesium sheet metal forming technology—the first of many steps to incrementally improve fuel economy over the next decade. Roughly 75 percent lighter than steel and 33 percent lighter than aluminum, magnesium sheet metal seems like an obvious choice....

WE LIKE NATURE on certain terms – as in, the less of it inside the house, the better. So perhaps you can understand what compelled C.W. Roseburr to smoke a family of raccoons out of his house in Kansas City, Mo., last May. Seems Roseburr had a long-running feud with the animals, which had taken residence in his eaves.Potshots from his BB gun did no good, so Roseburr decided to frighten the adult raccoon by using a long stick tied at the end with a rag....

Media Platforms Design Team(Illustration by David M. Brinley)Listen to Simon Cooper discuss the problem of China stealing sensitive military secrets on the Popular Mechanics Show. Download now.On a hot Florida day late in 2005, Ko-Suen “Bill” Moo was preparing for the endgame of a covert operation he’d been orchestrating for nearly two years. He had arrived in Fort Lauderdale at 5 am on Nov. 7, as the city was recovering from the onslaught of Hurricane Wilma two weeks earlier....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere are some cleaning and restoration jobs around the garage that are too tough for detergents and elbow grease. A rusty leaf spring on a vintage vehicle, a wheel ravaged by road salt and brake dust, a dingy accessory on an otherwise sparkling engine—when it comes to this kind of hard-core work, savvy DIYers bring in the heavy artillery of media blasting. (It’s also called sandblasting, but sand is no longer used due to the health risks of inhaling silica particles....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow’s this for automotive evolution?Mercedes-Benz’s first all-wheel drive vehicle came in the form of the Dernburg Wagon. Unveiled in 1903, this prototypical SUV had an ultra-tall profile, weighed 3.6 tons, and boasted a top speed of 25 mph.Fast forward to 1985, and the first generation 4Matic driveline premieres at the Frankfurt Motor Show, adding approximately 300 pounds to the E-Class sedan that eventually hits showrooms in ‘87. The system has since progressed into its fourth generation– the first three of which came from supplier Magna Steyr, the latest which was developed in-house by Mercedes-Benz....

A series of drones have flown over many sensitive areas of Paris, including the U.S. Embassy, the Eiffel Tower, and several main roads, sparking concerns that they could be part of a criminal or terrorist plot. The latest sightings have taken place over two consecutive nights. That follows months of intermittent sightings of drones around government buildings, power plants, the Elysee Palace presidential house, and nuclear submarine docking bays. French authorities say the drones appear to be consumer-grade drones, readily available most places....

According to documents obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, the United States Air Force suffered 20 large drones casulties in 2015, affected units either having been completely lost, or having sustained over $2 million in damage. Worse, hunter-killer Reaper drones are apparently vulnerable to mysterious electrical failures that threaten to knock them out of the sky without warning. Of the 20 loses, a full ten were Reaper drones, unceremoniously taken down by electrical failure....

Media Platforms Design TeamFootball season is going strong. You’re ready to kick back and watch the game, but you can’t enjoy your Sunday afternoons at home if your TV isn’t ready for football season. Whether its screen is too small, its resolution is good enough, or your set is simply too old, you need a new HDTV, and you’d love to have one in time for kickoff. But when exactly is the best time to buy a new TV?...

The mystery that is known as yeti and migoi in the Himalayas—and Sasquatch and bigfoot in the Americas—now has a bunch of new names, according to scientists. Those names? Bear, raccoon, horse, cow, sheep, canine, deer, and many others. That’s according to the first systematic genetic survey of hairs credited to these cryptozoological creatures.Although numerous eyewitness reports and footprint evidence have led many to claim such “anomalous primates” are real, mainstream science remained unconvinced, given the lack of testable bodies or fossils....

Media Platforms Design TeamMy father learned how to read English from comic books and pulp sci-fi novels. He would tell me stories that were thinly adapted Conan tales. He also exposed me to a lot of technologically utopian thinking.My grandparents were Eastern European Jews living in Toronto, so it was mandatory they spend their winters in Florida, and we’d go down to seem them. Of course we went to Disney World a lot, and when we were there we’d talk about the robots....

Media Platforms Design TeamSymmetry is naturally occuring and inexplicably pleasing to the human eye, but it’s not always the best choice for optimum mechanical engineering. Take the simple yet deceptively advanced 249.6cc single-cylinder engine found in Honda’s CBR250R, which was recently adapted for use in their new dual-purpose CRF250L motorcycle.The mill has plenty of original design elements and incorporates no fewer than 9 new patents, but one simple way it runs more efficiently is the how the crankshaft spatially relates to the cylinder....

Most violent scarecrowMedia Platforms Design TeamIn 2006 a team of undergrads at the University of South Florida developed a robotic scarecrow intended to protect Florida’s fish farms from wading birds. The “Intelligent Scarecrow” used a micro-PC and surveillance camera to detect incoming poachers, and was programmed to discriminate between intruders and farmers. Assuming that farmers were wearing an orange vest, the team developed the system to recognize the color. If something not colored orange enters into a 40-foot range, water cannons are triggered, as is a series of prerecorded hawk screams and gun blasts....

View full post on YoutubePlayStation has the Gran Turismo franchise, with GT6 set to come out on the PlayStation 3 later this year. Xbox has Forza, its long-running series of driving simulation games, the fifth installment of which will come to the new Xbox One. Yet realistic driving sims need not be shackled to consoles.2K Sports, the company behind titles including the NBA 2K Series and the MLB 2K Series, says it is climbing into driving games....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design Team Major League Baseball’s opening day has arrived—and so has PM’s new book, Why a Curveball Curves—so it’s high time to check in with the supreme geek of America’s pastime. The 83-year-old sterling professor emeritus of physics at Yale University—and former official physicist of the National League—caught up with us on stat-heavy analysis, the mystery of the gyroball and a season without steroids. —Davin Coburn It’s often been said you wrote the book on the physics of baseball because, frankly, you did....

To say that MythBusters host Adam Savage is a fan of The Shining is a bit of an understatement. The skilled craftsman is such an expert on the film that when he visited a Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he immediately noticed that their architectural model of the movie’s famous maze wasn’t completely correct. So, of course, he built his own. The film actually employs several mazes, but Savage used the one that Jack Torrance looks over in The Overlook Hotel, since that scene gives the greatest and most intricate sense of its scale....

A tiny star and its tinier brown dwarf companion passed within one light year of our solar system 70,000 years ago, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. The object passed through the outer reaches of the Oort Cloud, a shell of icy objects at the edge of our solar system, before reaching its current location about 20 light years from us.Scholz’s star is a red dwarf, meaning it’s smaller than the sun but will live longer....

War-game tests by Iran of long- and medium-range missiles sent shock waves across the globe today, with tensions centering on a potential attack on Israel and, ultimately, the country’s nuclear ambitions. Among the nine ballistic missiles fired was an upgraded Shahab-3 with GPS guidance, 450 pounds of carrying capacity and an estimated 1250-mile range–already a potent threat to Israeli cities and bases, even before nuclear warheads enter the equation. What’s more, Gen....

Media Platforms Design TeamEvery few months, it seems scientists sifting through data from the planet-hunting Kepler telescope announce the most Earth-like world yet. Today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, they announced eight very Earth-like planets.Kepler-438b is the most exciting of the finds. Based on its size—just 12 percent larger than Earth—scientists says there’s a 70 percent chance that it’s a rocky world like ours rather than a mini-Neptune....