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Media Platforms Design TeamWhether you drive a 500-hp sports car or a 96-hp economy hatchback, all that potency under your car’s or truck’s hood is useless if the engine’s torque doesn’t get to the drivewheels through a complex maze of gears.In fact, the drivetrain may be the least understood part of a vehicle. New innovations in four-wheel and all-wheel drive have only made that confusion worse for many drivers. Here’s a primer to help explain that mystery under the floorboards: what really happens when you press down on the accelerator....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeIn a display of tire tread terror and peak auto performance, Ken Block showcases the adrenaline-pumping pastime of Gymkhana, an increasingly popular motorsport requiring a driver to traverse a complex course of obstacles and sharp-angled turns. This video is the sixth installment of the YouTube series sensation. Block’s last video, in which he raced his Ford Fiesta through the city streets of San Francisco, attracted 54 million views....

Media Platforms Design TeamA study published today in shows that ultrathin patches of electronics—less than half the width of a human hair—can be placed onto the skin to measure the electrical activity of the heart, muscles and brain. And using the same principles behind removable tattoos, these devices could be affixed to the skin with minimal or zero adhesives, staying there for hours or longer.Science"We view this as the first step in blurring the distinction between an artificial, manmade system like a piece of electronics and a natural biological tissue like the skin," John Rogers says....

American researchers Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello have been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of RNA interference, a wildly popular method of controlling the expression of specific genes. The process has been identified as a potential weapon in the fight against viruses from cancer to AIDS, from heart disease to hepatitis. RNA interference effectively prevents harmful DNA from directing the creation of proteins, putting the silencer on genetic information that had confused scientists for years....

Just got back from a morning of press conferences at the Javits Center for the New York bike show taking place this weekend (it actually opened to the public at noon today). And what a pleasure, because the show organizers have finally organized things for us in the press with official times for actual product introductions, a far cry from the free-for-all it had always been. And, of course, there’s something for everyone–from Harley to that other American bikemaker (Victory by Polaris) to the four big Japanese brands to the smaller Europeans to the practically unknowns to the choppers....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen I was a kid, a chainsaw was still a special tool—and by no means a necessity. As the son of farm-raised parents who cooked and heated with wood, we cut the old-fashioned way, with a two-man bow saw and an axe. It all seems incredibly antiquated today, but we actually enjoyed it. Cutting down trees and turning them into firewood was considered good, clean, manly fun, akin to the hunting and fishing we also enjoyed....

Media Platforms Design Team America’s moonshot in 1969 stands as testament to great engineering and organization. However, all plans are subject to change. As early as 1962, Popular Mechanics was analyzing NASA’s concepts for the Apollo program. The launch vehicle was to be a “white-and-silver shaft jutting majestically 185 feet into the still-cool morning air,” a description that paralleled the three-stage construction of the Saturn V rocket, but underestimated the eventual design by nearly 200 feet....

Virtual reality software developers Immersive VREducation have successfully crowdfunded a simulation of the Apollo 11 mission on Kickstarter. On Saturday, the company published a progress update that says multiple sections of the VR experience have been completed and the full product will be available around the same time that major VR headsets are released—sometime in early 2016. The simulation will have a few interactive segments, but will primarily provide the opportunity to observe while you cruise on a Saturn V rocket, touchdown in the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, and walk out onto the virtual surface of the moon....

The Fire Scout is arguably the smartest unmanned aerial vehicle ever built. Unlike remote-operated drones such as the Predator, this helicopter is a true robot, with enough computing power to take off, fly and land on its own. Last year a pair of test Scouts made history, landing on the deck of a moving ship without help from human pilots. Slated for use by the Army and Navy, the chopper is undergoing flight tests, but this on-schedule and on-budget UAV could be ready to gather intel and relay targeting data as early as 2008....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast year, PopMech got to tour the Philadelphia headquarters of bikemaker Christini and learn . Now it’s time for a test ride. We took one of their bikes on an off-road adventure through Amish country to see how it handles many rough miles. how its all-wheel-drive motorcycles workThe event: A weekend-long adventure ride put on by AltRider, an adventure-parts manufacturer. AltRider laid out a big main loop through the scenic countryside on asphalt and dirt roads....

Monday was the first day open for business at the University of Michigan’s $10 million M City, a 32-acre test facility for driverless cars. Filled with intersections, building facades, defaced traffic signs, faded road lines, sidewalks, a traffic circle, and even robot pedestrians, M City was built as a place for researchers and car companies to safely test their autonomous vehicles in a controlled environment.Faculty at the university designed M City to replicate a modern metropolis so the researchers could see how well autonomous vehicles can handle the madness and surprises of a real city....

In the age of Instagram and iPhones, it would have been easy to say Polaroid was dead in the water. But with their surprisingly popular products like the Polaroid Cube and thePolaroid Z2300, the brand has shown surprising resilience in a world that seemingly gave up on analog a long time ago.Now, by teaming up with with Ammunition (the design firm that brought you the Beats headphones and the afore mentioned Polaroid Cube), they’ve come up with the Polaroid Snap, an instant camera with the slick looks and ease of use that may just wean you off of your Instagram addiction....

Media Platforms Design TeamSarah Polley in Splice. (Photograph Courtesy of Copperheart Entertainment)Splice[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/K8Bvei9Gi0I&hl=en_US&fs=1&[/youtube]Splice is Frankenstein for a new era. Scientists Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are known for combining the DNA of different species into bizarre creatures. Eventually, they want to take their experiment further. Ignoring the ethical codes of both science and society, they successfully combine animal and human DNA. The result is Dren, a chimera that grows from infant to adult in a matter of months....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn a recent Thursday morning, Mike Lin pulled a cherry-red, 59-passenger bus up to the curb along Allen Street in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown. A handful of people had gathered on the sidewalk, and as they climbed into the coach, Lin stepped down from the driver’s seat to help a bearded young man load an oversize green backpack and a pair of wooden stilts into the luggage compartment. For the past four years Lin has worked full-time for a small bus company called Eastern Coach, usually driving a daily New York-to-D....

Media Platforms Design TeamFaster-than-light travel is one of those little necessities of sci-fi. Space is so vast that without such ludicrous speed our heroes would never interact with anyone. So Star Trek’s Enterprise, Star Wars’s Millennium Falcon, and the Battlestar Galactica all travel faster than the speed of light. With modern propulsion technology, humans can’t even begin to approach a speed that would make interstellar travel feasible. But the biggest obstacle for FTL is the one kids learn in school: light speed is the galactic speed limit....

Mark it in your calendar, folks: The world is going to end on Saturday. At least, that’s according to David Meade, a numerologist who has predicted that the end times will begin on September 23. Needless to say, we’re not holding our breath.Meade takes his inspiration from the Bible’s Book of Revelations, specifically Revelation 12:1–2, which reads:A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head....

The latest in a steady stream of meaningless digital distractions from the specter of unavoidable mortality is Pancake, a non-winnable game about flipping flapjacks over and over and over. Pancake is free, like so many other easy-to-clone games in the long line of repetitive and deceptively difficult titles like Flappy Bird.Gameplay goes like this: A pancake falls on your skillet, and you have to flip it as many times as you can before it falls off....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs president of his Delavan, Wis., high school science club in the 1950s, William Borucki helped build a device–a magnetometer coupled with ultraviolet and infrared transmitters–to contact UFOs. The technology was sound, but the test subjects never showed up. However, Borucki, now a space scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, didn’t abandon his preoccupation with aliens. For two decades, he has argued that by taking pictures of planets as they pass in front of their home stars, scientists could identify likely sites for life in other solar systems....

Tech blogger Michael Arrington wanted a low-cost tablet computer–something to handle basic Web-oriented tasks from the comfort of his couch. No company offered one, so he designed it himself. The Linux-based PC, which is edging toward release, is promising–but the best part is the proof that today a tech fanboy can take the director’s chair and quickly prototype a smarter product.Update: On Nov. 30, 2009, CrunchPad’s Michael Arrington announced that the product introduction was being canceled, owing to a business dispute....

Media Platforms Design TeamGeneral Motors offers a number of changes in the 2008 model H2 Hummer, including a new powertrain, revised instrument panel, safety enhancements and a fresh face for the front. The new version of GM’s go-anywhere utility vehicle goes on sale next fall, but the details of the changes have been introduced leading up to the New York auto show.Among the highlights are a new 6.2-liter, 393-horsepower V8 engine; a new six-speed automatic transmission; all-new interior trim and IP layout; full-length air curtains for three rows of seats; and larger air intakes in the seven-slot grille and lower fascia....