Media Platforms Design TeamA month after Apple presented the iPhone that surprised no one, it did the same today with its new shrunken tablet. The is just what its name implies: a smaller iPad. iPad miniThe price, though, isn’t much smaller; the base-level iPad mini, which comes with 16 GB of storage, will cost $329. The most expensive version, with 64 GB of storage and cellular capabilities, will go for nearly twice as much....
Media Platforms Design TeamThanks for taking the time. Youre almost two months out from premiere, you must be pretty busy.Yeah, just a little bit. Its the last day of filming ever. We just finished last night, and were driving to the scoring now to splash in all the music, then were doing visual effects reviews, and then editing and publicity. Its a very privileged position to be in, to make a movie like this....
NASA wants to save airlines big money by keeping away the bugs.On a commercial jet airliner, insect guts can drag down fuel efficiency down by as much as six percent by altering airflow and creating additional drag. It’s a messy, inefficient situation, which is why NASA is testing technology to coat plane wings of a plane with non-stick materials that could make the bugs slide right off.NASA is currently testing six different coatings to see which one keeps them away best....
Media Platforms Design TeamDetroit now produces some of the largest passenger vehicles in history, among them the Chevrolet and GMC Suburbans. These SUVs are for people interested in hauling kids and cargo comfortably. In our survey, owners cited roominess as their primary reason for buying a Suburban. And for many of our respondents, this Suburban wasn’t their first. Nearly a third owned Suburbans before.These derivatives of Chevrolet and GMC full-size pickup trucks can carry up to nine adults on three rows of bench seats....
Q: I live in an area where they use a lot of chemicals on the roads in winter. I have noticed the alloy wheels on both my Jeep and my truck are getting pit marks on the rims, and there are more severe marks where there used to be wheel weights. Any cure for either problem?A: Virtually all alloy wheels are painted with silver paint and/or clearcoated. Wheel-balancing weights that clip on scratch that paint, letting corrosive moisture and road salt get to the underlying aluminum....
Media Platforms Design TeamTwo possibilites: An exomoon around a planet, or an exoplanet around a faraway star. Image: NASA/JPL-CaltechWith all due respect to Mars, the most interesting places in the solar system aren’t planets at all. It rains hydrocarbons on Titan, which has great lakes near its north pole. Europa has water ice on the surface and may have an ocean underneath. New evidence has backed up the existence of an ocean on Enceladus feeding the geysers spraying from its south pole....
In the movie The Martian, based on the novel by Andy Weir, an astronaut stranded on Mars has to figure out how to survive on his own. And that means figuring out how to get enough water to survive, and to grow potato plants. But it turns out that Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon in the movie, might not have had such a hard time in real life.Scientists announced on Monday that they had found evidence of flowing liquid water on Mars, contained in a briny mixture that pops up seasonally on the planet....
Media Platforms Design TeamIs texting “work”? It’s one of those curious questions of the modern age that fall to Jewish rabbis, who must decide what Orthodox Jews are and are not allowed to do on the day of rest. Now, there’s a Kickstarter fund for an app called Shabbos that claims it would allow the faithful to use a smartphone on the sabbath without violating religious prohibitions—though many rabbis aren’t too pleased....
The old adage says dog is man’s best friend, but Cornell University entomologist John Losey begs to differ. Insects, he says, provide far more valuable services. In the first analysis of its kind, a study Losey co-authored in the journal BioScience estimated the economic value of various jobs the six-legged creatures routinely perform. It found that insects are food for wildlife that supports a $50 billion recreation industry, provide more than $4....
Beginning March 31, 2018, all new vehicles sold in the European Union will be required to carry an emergency call system that automatically dispatches assistance to the scene of a crash.The “auto SOS” system, dubbed eCall, was approved by European Parliament yesterday after two years of debate over privacy concerns, reports BBC News. In the event of a crash, the device calls the E.U.’s 911 equivalent (112) and transmits to authorities important information including location, time, and number of passengers in the vehicle....
Recording Hi-Fi From the Sky Q. I’m interested in one of the new portable satellite radios that also play MP3s. Can I record broadcasted songs directly with these machines? Also, can I offload these songs from the machine?Devices such as Pioneer’s inno ($400) and the Samsung Helix ($400) can record XM Satellite Radio. But according to Pioneer’s Jaed Arzadon, “You won’t be able to transfer [recorded XM] to any other device....
Media Platforms Design TeamSilent Guardian uses radio waves to heat up flesh-and-blood targets, but only enough to cause pain. The 45 x 45-in. beam-firing antenna can rotate 360 degrees. The entire 5-ton system can be mounted on a ground vehicle or on a ship.No longer a gleam in the Pentagon’s eye, ray guns — or radiofrequency (RF) weapons, to be exact — officially have arrived. As troops are increasingly forced to serve as an ad hoc police force, nonlethal weapons have become a priority for the military....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe new 2015 Audi A3 rides atop the same MQB chassis structure that underpins numerous vehicles from the Volkswagen Group, including the upcoming . It’s a versatile and well-engineered vehicle platform, albeit conventional—it’s ordinary stuff, from the steel unified body to the MacPherson strut front suspension and four-link independent rear suspension. While front-drive is available as a 1.8T paired with a 170-hp turbocharged 1.8-liter four, most A3s will be equipped with Quattro all-wheel drive and a 220-hp, 2....
Forget doing a cool airbrush painting of wizards, dragons, or unicorns. What your sweet VW van really needs is a paint job that makes it look like R2-D2. This Instructable is here to help. The Brazilian creator of the design took a 1992 VM bus and turned it into the droid van we’re looking for:We decided to recreate all the objects on R2D2 and adapt them to fit the bus. All the measurements and computer work took about 50 hours, plus vinyl wrapping till we lost count....
Avalanche AirbagsMedia Platforms Design TeamDozens of snowmobilers and backcountry skiers and snowboarders die after being buried in North American avalanches each year. Backcountry Access is the first U.S. company to introduce an airbag a user can inflate when an avalanche begins, hopefully giving users enough flotation to stay on top of the sliding snow. Even with good skills and the best avalanche gear available, digging someone out of tons of avalanche debris before they run out of air is very, very difficult–and it only helps if the victim survived the initial blunt trauma....
STEALTH"I’m addicted to visual speed," says Rob Cohen, whose previous adrenaline rushes came from directing The Fast and the Furious and XXX. His latest film, Stealth, stars Josh Lucas as a fighter pilot who, fearing that unmanned aircraft will render human pilots obsolete, refuses to send one to destroy a terrorist stronghold in densely populated downtown Rangoon. (The city’s stand-in for the film is Bangkok.) Instead, Lucas’s character takes on the mission himself, piloting a hypersonic AFG Talon jet–a fictional, supersleek stealth fighter constructed of graphite, fiber, ceramic and metal....
In the new thriller Untraceable, agents in the FBI’s cybercrimes division must find a killer who uses the Internet–and its users–to commit gruesome murders. The more people who visit the villain’s site, the faster his victim dies. But tracking down the bad guy isn’t as easy as your average geek might think: His exploitation of proxy servers and Wi-Fi networks–not to mention superior hacking skills and an innate sense of cunning–make him nearly impossible to find....
Media Platforms Design TeamEvery year Americans buy 4 to 5 million . And when you consider the long summer ahead—and how much of it you’ll spend behind a mower—you’ll want to choose your machine carefully.walk mowers"The three things that most people look for in a mower are performance, comfort, and durability," says Jeff Salamon, director of marketing for outdoor power equipment manufacturer Cub Cadet. Whenever possible, have a look at the assembled mower in a hardware store, home center, or dealership....
Media Platforms Design TeamBy the simple act of putting its biggest six-cylinder engine into its smallest car, BMW has built a spunky new hot rod—the 135i. The pint-sized Bimmer uses exactly the same inline 6-cylinder engine as the larger 3-Series-based 335i. It’s a 3.0-liter, twin-turbocharged and intercooled smoothie that makes 306 hp and 295 lb./ft. of torque. What’s most impressive about this engine is that it makes the same amount of torque from 1300 up to 5000 rpm....
Looking for Halloween yard ideas that will give your neighbors chills? “You can never go wrong with zombies,” says Mike Kroll, visual merchandise manager at the nationwide chain Spirit Halloween. “Over the past couple years zombies have become a mainstream and staple character in all forms of media.“You could walk into your local Halloween prop store and load up on animatronics to create all the zombie creepiness you could want. But here’s what to do if you want to build the Walking Dead the DIY way....
