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Media Platforms Design TeamAfter more than four years of controversy, the Obama administration is expected to make a final decision this summer about whether the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline can be built in the United States. If the administration green-lights the project, which was proposed in 2008, it will go from hotly debated idea to a monumental engineering undertaking.The pipeline would run 875 miles from the Canadian border to Steele City, Neb....

Media Platforms Design TeamLooking up in Iraq is still a dangerous proposition. Mortar blasts continue to penetrate—with rare deadly force—the Green Zone and other protected areas because militias can find them, like rockets and other indirect-fire weapons, on the cheap, and fire them from shoot-and-hide platforms. In an attempt to shore up its safe havens in the war zone, the Pentagon asked Boeing a year ago to develop a preliminary design for a system that could control a laser beam—but not just any laser beam....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn the phone front, 2012 is the year that LTE cements its place as the 4G standard. The Consumer Electronics Show is silly with LTE phones this year. Now that AT&T has finally rolled out enough its LTE 4G network in enough cities to plausibly market these devices(26 so far, but the company is expanding quickly these days), it announced seven phones and one tablet to take advantage of it....

Media Platforms Design TeamRocket launches create a fiery spectacle, but they also creates a problem for NASA engineers. Those scientists want to see exactly what happens to a rocket, down to the finest detail, when the countdown clock hits zero and the engines ignite. The fury of blastoff, however, shrouds the scene in exceedingly bright flames and far dimmer smoke.Now, with a clever six-camera setup, NASA has found a way to see through a rocket launch or other blast....

Media Platforms Design TeamNintendoThe Big NewsAfter waning Wii sales in 2011, Nintendo made it no secret that it would unveil the Wii’s successor today. It’s called Wii U (the “U” stands for “you”). And it’s been announced in an incredibly confusing fashion. Nintendo didn’t even show the Wii U box during its press conference. Instead, they focused entirely on the Wii U controller. The controller is big. It looks a lot like a dual-analog stick Sony PSP crossed with a tablet....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Enrico Piaggio let the world’s first Vespa scooters loose on the winding roads of postwar Italy, convenience (which, by the way, does not translate directly to Italian) meant a 2-wheel machine that wouldn’t get the rider’s clothes dirty, could carry a passenger and was simple and unintimidating to ride. The formula still holds true today. And with traffic congestion in every major metropolitan city in America getting worse every day, it’s a formula that’s starting to make more sense with every 1 cent increase at the gas pumps....

You can run from the robot invasion, but you can’t hide–not even in prison. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) signed a deal this summer with Minneapolis-based ReconRobotics to help field-test the company’s throwable robot, the Recon Scout. The dumbbell-size device is already used by law enforcement agencies across the country and military personnel in Iraq–ReconRobotics won’t specify how many it has sold outright, though CEO Alan Bignall told PM that “250 of them are in use around the world....

Media Platforms Design TeamI keep seeing the insane videos from Russian dash cams. Considering how crazy drivers are getting in the U.S., should I have a dash cam in my car?Videos of nearly cataclysmic meteorites or a livestock truck losing its load of cows do have a way of bringing light to a little-known subject like dashboard surveillance cameras. Their ubiquity in Russia owes to high rates of insurance fraud and the need to have irrefutable evidence in a court of law....

Let’s get one thing straight: I do know how to spell “conventional.” And it’s not “convential.” With that cleared up…News stories abound about the price of gas. Drivers wringing their hands. Business owners wringing their hands. Politicians wringing their hands. No one really sure what to do, except snap up all the Honda Civics (http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1190182,00.html?cnn=yes) and point fingers at the oil companies whose profits, as a percentage of sales, are actually LESS than many other corporations that don’t draw nearly the same level of disdain (does it sound like I’m defending Big Oil?...

Astronaut Heaves Space Junk Into Orbit Zero gravity may make life difficult for astronauts aboard the International Space Station to go about their daily activities, but it also has some advantages—namely, giving the illusion of superhuman strength. U.S. astronaut Clayton Anderson recently had the chance to hurl an antiquated, 200-pound camera mount into space, because there won’t be room for it to return to Earth on upcoming shuttle missions. Next up: a 1400-pound ammonia tank....

It’s a three-letter word that’s become synonymous with the war in Iraq – IED, or improvised explosive device. While no vehicle is IED-proof, the Marines have placed an order for 1000 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs), which are better armored than a Humvee, and feature V-shaped undercarriages that partially redirect explosive blasts around the vehicle. The $490 million contract, the biggest MRAP order so far, calls for 300 Cougar 4x4s (pictured above) and 700 of the larger, six-wheeled Cougar 6x6s....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeThirteen-year-old Shubham Banerjee isn’t just building with Legos. He’s inventing. Banerjee is the brain behind a braille printer made of Lego that costs a fraction of most.Banerjee used a Mindstorm set, which comes with programmable electronics. It prints braille by imprinting the familiar dots onto receipt paper by poking it with a pin that sits underneath rather than using raised ink. It cost Banerjee around $350 in total to produce the printer compared to $2000 it takes to build an ordinary one....

Media Platforms Design Team(Illustrations by Dogo)The Army’s RQ-5A Hunter, a 23-foot-long unmanned aerial vehicle, is too small to carry the 100-pound, antitank Hellfire missiles used by larger aircraft. Instead, it is armed with the Viper Strike air-to-ground missile (above). This laser-guided weapon glides for 6 miles, weighs a third as much as the Hellfire and causes less collateral damage. How small can air-to-ground weapons get? Air Force officials are publicly suggesting the development of 1-pound munitions that could kill an individual in a crowded area without harming innocents standing nearby....

Media Platforms Design Team(Published in the February 2000 issue)Plus, we’ll teach you how to give your bike a tune-up If, as they say, a New York City cabbie would run over his own mother to beat out another cab for a fare, imagine what a road bike fanatic would do to cut a few ounces off his ride? Richard Bryne, CEO of Speedplay, one of the hottest pedal makers in the business, has put together a bicycle that weighs only 11....

Media Platforms Design Team, Vectrix’s plug-in electric scooters that debuted on Friday at the 2009 NY Motorcycle show held their own against traditional bikes. In fact we saw quite a few folks ogling these clean-running two-wheelers as they might a new Harley. No, there isn’t an audible “vroom” when you start these scooters up. But people were digging them all the same. Even the New York City Police department recently bought ten VX 1-Es for fleet use....

2009 Nissan GTRUnless another manufacturer pulls the wraps off a surprise supercar, the production Nissan GTR will be the star of the show. At this point, all we’re allowed to show you is this photo of the concept, and all we can say about the technical specs is what’s rumored. The GTR, in case you’ve missed out on video games like Gran Tourismo over the years or haven’t followed the sport compact car scene too closely, is Nissan’s supercar....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Christopher LaMarca)>Leadership AwardENGINEERING FOR A DEVELOPING WORLDInnovator: Amy B. Smith, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyEngineering Equation: brilliant design + broad experience in developing countries + passion = a movement to tackle complex problems with simple technologyD-Lab occupies a former shipping area in a basement beneath MIT’s famous Infinite Corridor, which connects many of the university’s buildings. Scattered about the room, beneath a jumble of pipes and ductwork, is a curious collection that includes corn shellers, grain mills, solar panels, piles of red-speckled corncobs, sooty charcoal briquettes and one large plastic container labeled “Holly’s Bovine Faecal Matter—Do Not Remove Please....

Have you ever tried pinch-to-zoom on a photo within an app like Facebook or Instagram only to find that it doesn’t work? It’s jarring. That sensation is evidence of how much we’ve become accustomed to the interfaces Apple has taught us to use. Pinch-to-zoom’s intuitiveness was an example of Apple design absolutely nailing it, so much so that we expect everything else to follow. No, Apple doesn’t have a patent on it, but when it came out with the iPhone in 2007, it became woven into the brand’s design identity....

As part of its much-anticipated update on New Orleans’ levee system nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers has unveiled a Google Earth map overlay for public distribution, demonstrating continuing flood risks on a block-by-block basis. The overlays, which constitute only a part of the Corps’ mammoth forthcoming report, offer residents – and potential investors and insurers – the opportunity to visualize predicted flood levels at their homes in the event of 152 different storm situations, ranging in severity from a 50-year storm to a 5,000-year storm....

Media Platforms Design TeamYear after year, a TV steals the show at CES. This is the show Panasonic used, way back in 1974, to show off its 1125-line experimental analog TV. It’s where the first modern HDTVs showed up in 1998. It was the venue, in 2008, in which Panasonic unveiled a 150-inch plasma TV. It’s where Sony, in 2008 and 2009, showed off the first Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) TVs, starting with the 11-inch XEL-1....