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Media Platforms Design TeamBy year’s end, an Indiana company says it will be making plastic from algae, substituting up to half of the material normally derived from fossil fuels with biomass from the aquatic plants, and selling the product to manufacturers. As the bioplastics industry surges, a search for alternative feedstocks led Cereplast CEO Frederic Scheer and his colleagues to algae, which he says is close enough to the starches the company already turns into plastics—like corn, wheat and tapioca—to go commercial after just 18 months of R&D....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat drew you to the story of Flight 232? One day, I was in the library doing research for a completely different project and I pulled a book off the shelf that had a picture of an airplane. It was a self-published memoir by a guy who had been on United Airlines Flight 232. It occurred to me that all these people were alive and nobody’s ever told their story....

Since 2012, the Curiosity rover has been touring the area around Gale Crater, building mounting evidence for ancient lakes there. Today, that effort got a big boost. A paper published in Science by a Caltech-led team shows that Mars was once a world of long-lasting lakes that could have survived for hundreds to thousands of years, evaporated, and renewed themselves again. The discovery fills in the gaps between the watery Mars of 3....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen we asked readers to submit their coolest, craziest, most all-consuming DIY projects, we knew we’d see some off-the-chart innovation (with video, plans and more). After all, when it comes to welding, building, modding and wiring brainstorms into reality, who does it better than Popular Mechanics readers? This year’s winning inventions range from a submarine to a beer dispenser to a jet-powered go-kart, but they all have one thing in common....

Microsoft’s corporate campus is a sprawling affair, with more than 100 buildings scattered over 261 acres. To make sense of it all, you have to navigate by numbers. The Microsoft Visitor Center, for instance, is in Building 127, north campus, while the Microsoft Conference Center is in Building 33, just down the road from the company soccer and baseball fields. About 4 miles away, however, there is an unnumbered building that is decidedly “off campus....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Courtesy AP/BBC News/Twitter)Virgin Galactic’s suborbital commercial spacecraft SpaceShipTwo has crashed during a test flight in the Mojave Desert about 95 miles north of Los Angeles, according to NBC affiliate KGET. The California Highway Patrol has confirmed that one of the two pilots aboard the vehicle is dead; and the other is in critical condition.See also: Everything You Need to Know About the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo Disaster.Virgin Galactic tweeted that SpaceShipTwo suffered an “in-flight anomaly....

The cause of the U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker crash in northern Kyrgyzstan today—and the fate of the crew of three—is unknown at this time. But today’s news is likely to reopen questions over why the United States is dependent on aircraft that were developed in the 1950s to extend the range of its warplanes, and what is being done to replace an aircraft that the Air Force acknowledges uses obsolete parts and aged avionics....

Think back to your favorite old NES games, and you’ll remember not only their pixelated visual styles, but also the distinctive bleeps and bloops that played in the background, the primitive digital music that defined multiple generations of video games. Why did they sound like that? There are a couple of things that lend different systems their different sounds, as the 8-Bit Guy explains. In the early days of video games, most consoles or computers would have a dedicated sound card to control the different noises it could make....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe BeautyIt scratches easily and it has less capacity than the 6GB iPod Mini that it replaces, but we can’t help ourselves: We love the Apple iPod Nano 4GB ($250) for its looks. Available in traditional white as well as black (which may explain why scratches show), the Nano is entirely solid-state and weighs in at a scant 1.5 ounces. www.apple.comMedia Platforms Design TeamThe BeastAn intimidating combination of power and precision, the Hitachi 12-in....

Media Platforms Design TeamHumans gestate in the womb for about nine months. Some elephants need more than two years to be born. But robots—they take years, even decades, to incubate, generating headlines about their bright, busy futures while toiling away at repetitive, diagnostic tasks in labs they’ll never actually leave. Don’t feel sad for the machines—pity the humans, forced to make do with semi-autonomous vacuum cleaners and mincing toys, while the robot revolution is deferred for another year....

As someone who likes to work on his own cars and motorcycles, I miss those old-style owner’s manuals that told you how to do maintenance and repairs. For example, the 1939 Ford owner’s booklet actually explains how the ignition points work and gives the correct point settings–there’s a detailed cutaway that tells you how to adjust the distributor vacuum brake. Just in case, it also says, “Your Ford dealer will make this adjustment for you,” but the assumption is that you could–and likely would–do it yourself....

Lawnmower manufacturers have studied the habits of lawnmower owners, and they’ve discovered something about us: We’re not maintaining our mowers. In fact, these machines are one of the least maintained items that a homeowner regularly uses. We’ve heard stories that the vast majority of mowers never have their oil changed and rarely get a clean air filter or even a fresh spark plug. Kind of scary. And a sharp blade? Forget it....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/XPI5BXR97_g&hl=en_US&fs=1[/youtube]Pity Justin Bieber. Not since his fellow mop-toppers ignited the world with Beatlemania five decades ago has a pop star had so much trouble getting from cab to curb. New video footage shows poor Bieber being overtaken by fans while frantically throttling a Segway (top speed 12.5 mph). He and his mother were also recently mobbed at an airport in New Zealand; a riot at a CD signing at a Long Island mall resulted in injuries and the arrest of Bieber’s manager for “reckless endangerment and criminal nuisance”; and after a show on the Fourth of July, he fled bare-chested with the kind of police escort usually accorded to Third World dictators....

Media Platforms Design TeamNATO Rescue sub Submarines have become so advanced that it is easy to overlook the dangers inherent in their operation. However, a recent Russian accident is—once again—serving as a reminder of the technology’s risks. In this case, a safety system killed at least 20 of the crew of a Russian nuclear sub this weekend when fire fighting equipment malfunctioned and flooded the craft with fire suppression gas. The world learned a grim lesson about the complexities of deep-sea rescue in August 2000, when the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank during an exercise....

Media Platforms Design TeamSomething strange is afoot at Gale Crater.As the Curiosity rover drives around this region of Mars, it’s been measuring the levels of methane in the atmosphere. This is crucial data because those measurements could tell scientists something about whether Mars is, or ever was, inhabited—most methane on Earth comes from biological sources.So far, the rover has typically found levels a little lower that what scientists expected. But then, out of nowhere, Curiosity has seen the methane levels on Mars spike tenfold....

In backyards all across America, the summer landscape is once again blooming with above-ground swimming pools. According to the National Spa and Pool Institute, there are about 3.5 million of these opaline oases scattered from coast to coast, and 190,000 new ones are sold annually.It’s easy to see why above-ground pools are so popular: They’re affordable, quick and easy to install and require minimal maintenance. However, to get the most enjoyment out of your above-ground pool you need a wood deck that surrounds it....

Christmas tree lights can be hung on a tree in a variety of ways. It’s really up to your personal preference as to how you like your tree to look. Christmas tree lights come in all sorts of varieties, from white to color and from LED to incandescent. No matter what type of light you choose, the process of putting lights on your tree remains the same.Check Your BulbsOnce your tree is secure and arranged where you like it, the first decoration you should add is the lights....

Very few drones are built to kill. Even the missile-firing Predator UAV was originally designed for aerial reconnaissance, with some units later modified for combat duty. But for the Israeli-manufactured VIPeR (Versatile, Intelligent, Portable Robot), delivering firepower isn’t an afterthought — it’s practically job one. Designed to act as a partner to dismounted troops in urban environments, the 9-in.-tall, 25-pound VIPeR can accept various sensor packages, including infrared cameras and software that maps buildings as the drone moves through them, as well as an explosives sniffer and a device that shoots jets of water to disarm bombs....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: University of Leicester/ Beagle 2/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)We’ve finally found where the Beagle has (crash-) landed. Beagle 2 was a British Mars lander that launched along with the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission. On Christmas Day 2003 it made its descent to Mars, but communication with the spacecraft was near-immediately lost. The lander hadn’t been seen since.Now, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the long-lost craft....

Media Platforms Design TeamBerlin—Like all carmakers, Mazda must face constricting emissions standards and the need to squeeze more miles out of each gallon of fuel. And though the company will be borrowing Toyota’s hybrid system in 2013, in the meantime, it has brought forward some refinements to its gas and diesel engines that promise to increase efficiency while retaining Mazda’s “zoom-zoom” character. We got a sneak peek at two new engines and a chance to experience them in two prototypes....