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Media Platforms Design Team(1) This is what defense looks like in the war on terror.When it comes to deterring terrorists who want to commit spectacular crimes like blowing up airplanes, there are two basic approaches. One is defensive; the bad news here is that there are an infinite number of targets to protect. The second: Go on the offensive, targeting the people who plan and execute such attacks. An effective security strategy demands elements of offense and defense; the trick is finding the right balance....

Ever wonder what would happen if you cryogenically froze a live fish a la Han Solo? (Spoiler alert: he survives.)Luckily, the same laws that helped the Millennium Falcon captain survive his intense ordeal would also come in handy if you ever want to flash freeze a fish, as exemplified by this YouTube video. The video shows a man transporting a fish from a bucket of nice fish-friendly water to a container filled with an unspecified substance (we know it’s not liquid nitrogen, as the temperature is shown at -35 in the beginning, which is too warm for nitrogen to still be in liquid form, no matter the unit)....

VILNIUS, Lithuania, Oct. 24 – It rained constantly today as we drove over 600 kilometers to here from Warsaw, Poland. That’s less than 400 miles, but Eastern Europe’s former Communist bloc countries don’t have the kind of infrastructure we enjoy in the U.S. or Western Europe. For most of Day Four on the Mercedes E-Class Experience from Paris to Beijing, the road was two-lane, with constant truck traffic making the 110-km/hr national speed limit mostly unobtainable—especially when you’re trying to pass a truck through a blinding curtain of spray....

If you’ve ever wanted to watch a presidential debate live in “3D immersive virtual reality,” you’re about to get your chance. CNN says it will stream its Democratic presidential debate to the Samsung GearVR headset.It’s not the first time CNN has filmed a debate for VR. The network partnered with NextVR previously to film the CNN Republican debate, though that was only available on demand. The Democratic debate in Las Vegas on October 13, on the other hand, will be available live....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Lindsay France/Cornell Chronicle Photography)The Progressive Automotive X-Prize competition is just over 6 months away, and entrants are getting serious about readying their 100-mpg-hopeful vehicles to win the 200-mile race. Cornell University’s all-student team (the only university team in the mainstream competition) has been racing against deadlines to get its vehicle, a slimmed-down Honda Civic body on a Subaru Sambar chassis, ready for battle. “It’s been a little bit of a time rush, I’m not going to lie,” says Jon Liu, Cornell’s business team leader....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn the GroundRussia has deployed troops on the border of eastern Ukraine, either as part of an invasion force or as a threat to gain diplomatic leverage. Russian troops and Russian-backed militia are digging into the Crimea. There have also been reliable reports and photos of minefields being planted in Kherson Province in Ukraine, a few miles away from Russian military in Crimea.To counter Russia’s moves, on Friday the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—former client states of the Soviet Union—signed a military pact creating a unified defense force....

So the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that it can’t sidestep that authority without providing a scientific basis for doing so. Taken at face value, this is surely a good thing; it only adds to the legitimacy of human-induced climate change. And perhaps it will actually lead to federal mandates. But the cynic in me wonders: How hard might it be for the EPA to find the “scientific basis” it needs to keep its hands conveniently tied?...

There’s no need to throw away an old PC or Mac after you upgrade, even if they seem as slow as Babe Ruth running the bases. Neverware, a company based out of New York City that refurbishes computers, released its own version of the Chrome OS to turn your computer into a Chrome or Chromium laptop. (As Ben Popper at The Verge reports, Google wants to keep the name Chromebook for its line of branded computers....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: John Lund/Getty Images)Frank Swain, who has been going deaf since his 20s, hacked his hearing aid to detect something (probably) no other human can hear: Wi-Fi. As Swain writes in New Scientist, he hears the sound of Wi-Fi emanating from apartments as he strolls around London, and senses the noises fade to nothing when he climbs on board Wi-Fi-free public transit.Swain, in collaboration with artist Daniel Jones, modified the hearing aid as part of the Phantom Terrains project, which aims to make the invisible hum of wireless radio waves audible to the world....

You hear Harvard University and think: Smart people there. They ought to know how to preserve great art. So it was baffling and a little tragic when, in the 1960s and ’70s, the university allowed the irreversible damage of five murals by the American Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Commissioned in 1962 and hung in a student-center dining room, the paintings were faded by sunlight, dinged by furniture, and even marred by graffiti....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn most werewolf movies, men endure a bone-cracking, skin-splitting transformation from human into wolf. But in The Twilight Saga: New Moon, male members of the Native American Quileute tribe–descended, according to legend, from wolves–phase into horse-size wolves by popping out of their skin. And that posed a unique challenge for Phil Tippett, founder of Tippett Studios, which created the werewolves. “We characterized it as the 5 pounds of crap in the 2-pound bag' problem," he says....

Airports are ungodly loud. At a distance of about 80 feet, the engine noise of a jet at takeoff is 150 decibels. That’s enough to rupture your ear drums. But that ludicrous noise could have an upside, if Boeing has its way. The scream of engines could be used for power. A new patent issued to Boeing outlines the basics of how this might be possible. The first step would be to line runways with “acoustic wave collectors....

Time: 30 minutes (or less)Ages: 6 to 12Materials1 Pair flexible plastic safety goggles2 1½-inch PVC reducer fittings1 Brightly colored bungee cord1 Cleaning pad1 String mopTools Hot-melt glue gunScissorsInstructionsMedia Platforms Design TeamStep-by-step1. Use a hot-melt glue gun to fasten the reducer fittings to the goggles.2.Cut bungee cord to length, then wrap and glue the cords around each fitting, gluing the ends to prevent fraying.3. Use scissors to cut the cleaning pad into two arch-shaped “eyebrows....

Media Platforms Design TeamEarlier this year, Union Pacific quietly ran a record-setting “monster” freight train over its Sunset Route, from Dallas to Long Beach, using the 3.5-mile-long behemoth during a one-time test of new distributed-power configurations that may help make long trains even longer. Distributed-power units (DPUs) are extra locomotives that are placed between or behind freight cars on very long trains to help them haul long, heavy loads without derailing....

Media Platforms Design TeamCredit: NASA/JPL-CaltechOur celestial neighbor holds an unending number of mysteries. What happened to Mars’ atmosphere? What did an ancient Mars look like? Could the planet have supported life? Now there’s a new question puzzling the scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,—Where did that rock come from?The photo above, taken from the Opportunity rover, compares the same terrain on the Martian surface only 12 sols (Martian days) apart....

Media Platforms Design TeamSuunto may be the dean of high-tech gadgetry in the outdoors industry. Often, the technology is fascinating but the prices are too high for any but truly dedicated athletes: A dive watch introduced around a year ago that costs $1700 has legitimately great functionality, but obviously lacks in mass appeal.The company’s new golf watches (yeah, golf is sort of an outdoors sport) are remarkable even to a nongolfer like myself....

Media Platforms Design TeamDynolicious Auto Performance Meter for iPhone and iPod Touch Cost: $12.99 (not including the iPhone or iPod Touch) The Promise: Using the Apple device’s built-in accelerometers, the Dynolicious application measures vehicle acceleration (0-60 mph, 1/4-mile trap speed and elapsed time, etc), and cornering and braking grip. With that data, the software can then calculate the amount of horsepower delivered to the road. There’s also a speed readout screen and a handsome graph that plots—in real time—lateral and longitudinal acceleration, expressed in g-force....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Black and White House built by Team Spain, from the University of Madrid, intentionally “has a lot of things in it that express opposites,” says team member Luis Burred. Not least of which is the distinctive roof: an inverted pyramid balanced on a ball and socket mechanism above a cube-like main structure. (It is also tethered with wires at each corner for security.) The roof, which holds both 50 solar panels and solar thermal collectors, tracks the sun throughout the day, eliminating the role of a home’s latitude in maximizing its solar efficiency....

PM contributing editor Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column on Tech Central Station today discussing what he calls “The Silver Bullet Fallacy.” He’s talking about our society’s tendency to look for simple, one-fell-swoop solutions to huge, complex problems like energy shortages or global warming. When promising technologies in these areas do emerge, their backers too often tend to hype their potential, and an uncritical press plays along. Then, when the technology fails to deliver on those inflated claims, disappointment sets in....

The first large-scale experimental study of web censorship in China is now revealing what the government suppresses and what it permits online. The researchers even went undercover, creating their own social media site in China to reverse-engineer how the country manipulates information.The Chinese government has implemented what watchdog group Freedom House calls “the most elaborate system for Internet content control in the world,” deploying hundreds of thousands of people to control the flow of information in China....