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Well, he’s hearing how fast you’re going, anyway. According to a report in New Scientist, law enforcement agencies may soon have a new tool for catching speeders: hidden roadside microphones. The speed-sensing system is currently being developed by the University of Tennessee and the Battelle Institute in Oak Ridge, Tenn, according to patent application documents uncovered by New Scientist. The concept is that microphones mounted in road signs, guard rails and other roadside locations can record the sound of passing vehicles, filtering the recording to isolate only the sound of the vehicle’s engine....

THE ESSENTIALSLights for Late NightsNiteRider MiNewt Mini-USB, $99Media Platforms Design TeamLights are crucial to keep the dusk or dawn rider safe. The NiteRider is a seriously bright light in a small package. The USB-charged lighting system pumps out more than 110 lumens and mounts to the handlebar. Its lithium-ion batteries get about three hours per charge, and the whole device weighs just over 6 ounces.The Blackburn Flea, $55Media Platforms Design TeamThe Flea is another, cheaper (and a bit dimmer, at 40 lumens) USB-charged bike light....

Media Platforms Design Team(Illustration by Dogo)The SubmarinerCal Giordano; Juneau, AlaskaBuilding a personal submarine may seem as fanciful as a DIY jet pack—but Cal Giordano proved that with a little ambition, and a recycled 500-gallon propane tank, most anything is possible. “After drawing a zillion sketches, it occurred to me I could actually make this,” the longtime boat mechanic says. The 32-foot semi-sub, which is fashioned from an industrial buoy cockpit welded to the propane tank, dives by pitching its 4-foot-long bow planes forward....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you say something with the right authority, you generally get what you want. This week on , demands are finally being taken seriously (and great references are being dropped).Halt and Catch FireTo further reduce the weight of his portable PC, Gordon (Scott McNairy) suggests that the team at Cardiff Electric replace the usual CRT (cathode ray tube) screen with an LCD (liquid crystal display). LCDs were wildly expensive in the early 1980s; IBM didn’t even use them....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe FIRST Robotics Competition that inventor Dean Kamen created more than two decades ago is about “gracious professionalism”—a way for teams of high school engineers to collaborate while building agile, amazing machines. But it’s also about being the best. So at about noon on Sunday, most of the 66 student teams that had gathered at Manhattan’s Javits Center for a weekend of competition sat biting their fingernails.Alliance selection is where the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) regional gets real....

Media Platforms Design TeamChemists have found a greenhouse gas that is 7100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in terms of contributing to global temperature change, according to a recent study. Thankfully, though, the amount of perfluorotributylamine, or PFTBA, in our atmosphere is relatively low, so there’s nothing to be worried about.“The overall impact of this compound is much lower [than that of CO2] when you can take into consideration atmospheric levels,” says Cora Young, a chemist at Memorial University, in Newfoundland, who was a lead author on the recent study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe metaphorical light bulb above Tim Leatherman’s head clicked on while he was touring Eastern Europe on the cheap in 1975. Desperate for a way to turn a stripped radiator handle in his freezing hotel room, the 27-year-old, unemployed, newly married mechanical engineer looked long and hard at the overmatched Boy Scout–issue knife in his hand. “Wouldn’t it be something if I could add a pair of pliers to a pocketknife?...

We may not have developed the transporter or the warp drive yet, but Qualcomm wants to make sure that at least we’ll be able to diagnose our disappointment with the future in a Star Trek way. The American telecom and chipmaking company has just announced the final 10 competitors vying for their $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a contest in which each team is trying to create a working version of the medical tricorder, the Star Trek universe’s all-in-one handheld hospital....

Infiniti Eco PedalWe’ve long known that driving behavior has a significant impact on fuel economy, which is why Infiniti’s new Eco Pedal makes so much sense. When switched on with a console-mounted dial, this pedal gently resists quick or long dabs of the throttle pedal, encouraging more prudent acceleration. The driver can easily override the feedback, but it’s a constant and effective reminder of good hypermiling techniques, and as a bonus it helps erratic drivers smooth their driving style....

Face it: Every single human being for all history has lived in a thin skin of atmosphere clinging to a spinning ball of dirt called Earth. Meanwhile, just 60 miles up (not very far) begin the vast reaches of outer space. What seems like a cold, dead void is actually filled with blistering, unfiltered sunlight; lethal radiation from ancient, distant stars; and swarms of dust-projectiles whizzing by at nearly the speed of light....

After Wednesday’s rather somber post, I’ll keep things light to day and give an update on our off-grid systems. We’ve had a few super-cold nights (15 below), and for the first time, had some significant freezing on the bottom shelf of our cold box. But all we lost were a few zucchini, so no one shed any tears. Otherwise, it continues to work like a charm. The wind has been very on-and-off; last weekend, though, we made about 15 kilowatt hours with our Whisper 100....

Media Platforms Design TeamMichael Patrissi, a lighting and production specialist at Popular Mechanics’ parent company Hearst Magazines, tests the color temperature and lux of a compact fluorescent light bulb. (Photo by Matt Sullivan)The compact fluorescent light bulb revolution nearly occurred back in the early 1990s. When CFLs first hit the market in force, consumers bought them in large numbers – but they hated them. The bulbs were too big for many fixtures, expensive (up to $25 each) and they threw a dim, antiseptic light that paled next to the warmth of good old-fashioned incandescent bulbs....

Media Platforms Design TeamTuesday morning saw Iran’s second major earthquake in a week, which measured at 7.8 But this time—despite expert speculation that hundreds had died, and an early reported death toll of 40—no one was killed on Iran’s side of the border. At least 13 (update: sources now say 34) people were killed in neighboring Pakistan, but the final death toll is currently uncertain. In any case, it seems to be much lower than those early reports suggested....

Media Platforms Design TeamGetty ImagesThe great pyramid of Memphis could have become a megachurch. Or an outpost of the Smithsonian Institution on the banks of the Mississippi. Instead, the bizarre West Tennessee eyesore will become your go-to destination for crossbows, fly fishing essentials, and all the orange hunting gear your heart can handle.Yes, the Pyramid is becoming an outpost of Bass Pro Shops.The strange and much-maligned structure began construction in the 1980s and opened in 1991....

Controvertial Pentagon security camera videotapes that captured the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001 were released yesterday for the first time. The crash killed 184 people.The Department of Defense handed footage from at least two cameras to Judicial Watch, a nonprofit public interest group that filed a Freedom of Information Act in December 2004, and a lawsuit in February 2006, to access them. The group bills itself as “a non-partisan, educational foundation” that is “dedicated to fighting government and judicial corruption and promoting a return to ethics and morality in our nation’s public life....

Anyone doing serious production work on a computer, from photo and illustration retouching to 3D animation, needs to try the Cintiq 21UX from Wacom. As cool as this $2500 21-in. LCD touchscreen sounded—you can write and draw directly onto the screen (using a stylus), leaning, clicking and poking as hard as you want, and rotating the entire display up to 180 degrees as you work—we expected a slew of hardware issues and bugs....

In the new movie Hector and the Search for Happiness (out now), Simon Pegg plays a therapist who goes off in search of his own happiness. If you can get through the early parts, when Hector has the frantic visual structure of a music video, it’s a good movie—funny, thanks to Pegg, with legitimate insights. Like: “Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness.” And: “Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story....

One of the undersung pleasures of our growing appreciation for formerly quotidian beverages like coffee and beer is uncovering people who were doing them right before the rest of us cared. Before anyone had any idea what a third-wave coffee shop was (first wave = Folgers, second wave = Starbucks, third wave = hipsters), Gerard-Clement Smit founded Technivorm and started making a coffeemaker that got water hot enough and dispersed it effectively enough to yield quality coffee at home....

ATLANTA—The major automotive manufacturers may finally be regaining some traction after two disastrous years. In fact, when the exhaust fumes clear and auto execs get the full picture of the industry’s financial ruin, they are bound to declare the past 24 months the worst the industry has ever endured. But “they” won’t include Tom Loveless, the vice president of sales for Kia, whose U.S. and global sales have increased 16.3 and 10 percent, respectively, since 2008....

Low-tech underwater mines are easy to place undetected, but are powerful enough to damage modern warships. To clear these hazards, Northrop Grumman is developing a helicopter-based technology, called the Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System (RAMICS). It locates mines with laser scanners and destroys them with supercavitating cannon rounds that can cut through water (which is about a thousand times as dense as air), thanks to a carefully designed blunt tip. “The tip creates a shock wave that vaporizes the water ahead of the projectile,” says Bob Klein, vice president of maritime and tactical systems for Northrop Grumman....