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Michael BednarkBrooklyn, N.Y.Age: 28Years on Job: 5 Michael Bednark got the bug for building sets in high school. “I started with the local drama club doing The Wizard of Oz, Fiddler on the Roof, all the classic musicals,” he says. “I liked creating—building stuff with your hands.” Now the 28-year-old’s Bednark Studio specializes in constructing sets and props for TV commercials and print-advertising photo shoots. Bednark—who has put Stephen Colbert’s head on a faux Mount Rushmore for Rolling Stone; made a ray gun out of a plunger, PVC pipe and silver spray paint for Skittles; and placed a chef’s head on a platter for The New Yorker—must make a client’s vision come to life in his own way....

Shuttle May Require Repairs Astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour will use a laser imaging system to size up damage to the Shuttle’s exterior today, after NASA engineers spotted a gouge in its thermal tiles. The space agency believe the scrape was caused by a chunk of foam that broke free from a bracket during liftoff, hitting the tiles on its way down. The test will be added to the to-do list for today’s routine spacewalk to replace a gyroscope....

This morning, the three astronaut residents of the International Space Station scurried for safety in a Soyuz module, preparing for a possible impact with a piece of space junk–a 1/3-in.-wide part of a motor of a satellite-carrying rocket. If struck, the station could experience a drop in air pressure that could kill all inhabitants. NASA usually moves the ISS out of the orbit of debris, but some junk with erratic orbits can defeat tracking and surprise mission control, as happened during this incident....

The Skreemr supersonic jet concept could be the passenger airliner of the future, making the Atlantic seem more like a lake than an ocean. If this wild creation ever gets off the drawing board, that is.Designer Charles Bombardier and concept rendering creator Ray Mattison envision a jet that is launched from a magnetic railgun at speeds close to Mach 4. The Skreemr would then ignite liquid oxygen or kerosene rockets to increase its altitude and speed until it was traveling fast enough to fire up a scramjet engine....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt all started back in 1948 when, in the post-war boom, Idahoans began expanding outwards and building new homes further into the beautiful wilderness. Unfortunately, these areas were already home to hundreds of beavers. Turns out, it was a problem ultimately only solvable by airdrops. According to Boise State Public Radio, which resurfaced and confirmed the tale earlier this year, there was a perfect new home for all these newly infringed-upon beavers, but no roads went that far into the wilderness....

Hoverbikes—like hoverboards—are a sci-fi staple, but soon they could be both real and militarized. As reported by Reuters, the US Army has entered into a partnership with Malloy Aeronautics to create usable hoverbikes for deployment. While functional hoverbikes aren’t just around the corner or anything, the technology that will make them possible seems reasonably sound. Malloy Aeronautics has already run a Kickstarter to create tiny scale models of its quad-prop hoverbike, and has undergone preliminary tests including the manned (but tethered) ride seen above, and more extensive unmanned tests....

Media players are shrinking at a rate that’s both mind-blowing and slightly hilarious. Since trimming ounces and millimeters means sacrificing some of the features found in full-size players, the current field of mini competitors is surprisingly diverse. Here’s how five of the latest players, which can each store hundreds of songs, measure up.Apple iPod Shuffle 1GBMedia Platforms Design Team>SIZE:1.62 x 1.07 x 0.41 in.WEIGHT:0.55 ouncesBATTERY:12 hoursPRICE:$79, apple.comNOTES:This screenless, zero frills microplayer spawned the whole category....

.For more than a century, Popular Mechanics has provided life-saving advice for outlasting storms, surviving outdoors, and preparing for disaster. Find out how to survive anything right here.It’s tornado season, and according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, nearly 1,200 tornadoes will touch down in the U.S. alone in 2019. While many will take place in the infamous Tornado Valley in the central U.S., many tornadoes often find their way outside this tumultuous zone as well....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s been a hard few weeks for Toyota. At first, the company recalled millions of cars for a sticky accelerator pedal and then the world’s largest automaker announced it would stop producing affected vehicles as it searched for a remedy. Now, Toyota has its fix. Here are the details.The fix is basically a shim that Toyota is calling a steel reinforcement bar. When installed between the pedal assembly and firewall, the shim changes the relative position of two halves of a friction device....

Media Platforms Design TeamI’d like to give my old phone to a friend, but when I pulled it out of storage, the battery was completely dead. It was fine when I put it away. What happened?A Lithium-ion batteries are the problem child of modern electronics. They leave your laptop juiceless after just a few hours. They send you hunting for power outlets at the least opportune times. They’re the reason “sorry, my phone’s about to die” has become as common a sign-off as “goodbye” in modern cellphone conversations....

Media Platforms Design Team ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Despite roller-coaster fuel prices, there are, in fact, plenty of folks who need a vehicle that can haul copious amounts of stuff and tow a trailer or camper as well. Last year GM debuted a pair a full-size sport utes—the GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe—with gas-electric hybrid powertrains that promised to offer all the expected capabilities in a more efficient package. If the EPA ratings of the 2WD GMC Yukon Hybrid model we tested—21 mpg city and 22 mpg highway—aren’t earth-shattering, those figures represent a 31 percent improvement over nonhybrid versions....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released its analyses of the first asteroid samples ever transported back to Earth. Looking deep into the chemistry of the loose surface material, or regolith, that JAXA’s Hayabusa spacecraft recovered has revealed clues about this particular asteroid, the origin of the meteorites that fall to Earth and perhaps even a little about the history of the solar system. JAXA launched its autonomous lander, Hayabusa, in 2003 and aimed it toward asteroid 25143 Itokawa, 200 million miles away....

That was a question addressed in a couple of different sessions at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in St. Louis this weekend. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets—the two biggest wild cards in scientists’ ability to predict sea level rise—are beginning to increase their contribution to the world’s oceans.Greenland’s glaciers are now marching faster toward the ocean, says Eric Rignot from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory....

Luxury sport sedans have historically been the undisputed turf of German and Japanese automakers. America simply never had the right car to stand toe-to-toe in that ring. Until now. This is the Cadillac sport sedan we’ve been waiting for. The new CTS is a perfectly proportioned design wrapped around a world-class rear-drive chassis. Caddy can now stand tall next to any comparable sedan from Mercedes-Benz or BMW. The new CTS comes in either rear- or all-wheel drive with two versions of its 3....

Media Platforms Design TeamDETROIT — On the eve of the company’s 100th anniversary and weeks before the Paris Auto Show, General Motors revealed a very notable vehicle—a small car that just might match the appeal of Honda’s Civic and Toyota’s Corolla. The new car—dubbed the Cruze—was also joined by a small sport-ute concept called the Orlando. Both looked crisp and stylish, and it’s a good sign that Chevy has more up its sleeve than just the production Volt, which is scheduled to be unveiled here on Tuesday morning....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Environmental Protection Agency recently announced its approval of 15 percent ethanol blended fuel for cars made since 2007. The decision to approve ethanol only for some cars but not others has attracted criticism from both sides of the ethanol debate. Automakers think it’s unwise to approve the new blend before testing is complete on older cars. Ethanol producers fear the partial approval will discourage consumers from embracing ethanol blends....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Edward Snowden:“First of all I would call him a felon. Let’s be honest here, I’m the former director of Central Intelligence, the former secretary of defense, I’m not exactly an unbiased or completely independent person when it comes to these issues. But I will tell you this. As a result of the scandals that affected the CIA in the early to mid 1970s, the United States government—all three branches, both political parties—has spent 35 years erecting institutions of oversight on intelligence operations....

Media Platforms Design TeamAmericans are willing to push technology and sometimes their wallets to the limit in pursuit of energy frugality. But saving fuel could be as easy as examining your plate. The power that it takes to grow food, move it around the country, process it, sell it, store it and eventually scrape it into the trash is a major sinkhole in the United States. It accounts for as much as 2 percent of the national energy budget, according to new research from the University of Texas–Austin....

The flat-panel television has changed our expectations of what a home theater looks like. What once dominated a room is now as unobtrusive as a painting on your wall, yet most home theaters still require an awkward stack of metal boxes (receiver, DVD player, game system, set-top tuner). When I moved my home theater into the den of my new home, I decided to keep the machinery to a minimum in the den and exile my components to a closet....

PREVENTING LOCK JAMSWe may all know that doing routine maintenance around the house is the right thing to do. It almost always saves big headaches later. But who has the time? The busier we are, the more we let things slip, especially those things that work all right without any attention. Door locks are a good example. Even an average-quality lockset will deliver years of troublefree service. When it begins to fail, it’s easy to think the mechanism is just a little sluggish....