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Media Platforms Design TeamWell, the last press conference is over—fittingly, it was Pirelli announcing a production 30-in. light truck tire and wheel package. Yep, this is the country’s biggest auto show, this is the Big Apple—where better to send us all home with images of a 315/30R30 tire on a TIS wheel?As the Javits Center prepares to handle crowds of tire kickers and gawkers, we can look back on the past two days to make some sense of what these folks will be paying their good money to see....

Media Platforms Design TeamWith Acura’s new MDX hitting the market by mid-year, this MDX prototype should be pretty close to the production version. For this newest iteration of the carmaker’s popular luxury SUV, Acura says it put a heavy emphasis on aerodynamics and technology. The MDX prototype’s lower, wider profile and fluid lines reduce drag by 16 percent over the current model. Interior volume remains the same, but second row legroom increases and there’s easier access to the third row....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe annual Consumer Electronics Show is typically a hotbed for embedded automotive technologies and cutting edge gadgetry. But next week’s Las Vegas-based proceedings will feature the debut of two automated cars from major manufacturers, kicking the arms race for driverless vehicles into high gear.While Google’s self-driven Prii have been stealing headlines for the better part of two years, upcoming offerings from Audi and Toyota will likely focus on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication technology....

Fury, the new film from David Ayer that debuts today, Oct. 17, contains many familiar conventions of war movies: the flinty, seen-it-all field leader (Brad Pitt), the saucer-eyed rookie (Logan Lerman), and the battle-scarred unit whose members scuffle and insult each other but circle the wagons for the against-all-odds climax. The film is set in Germany in April 1945, as the Allies summon a final push to dispatch Hitler. It’s raw, hair-trigger, R-rated fare, interspersed with intriguing moments in which the characters struggle to cling to shreds of their humanity....

View full post on TwitterYou need only remember the Miracle on the Hudson to realize how much can go wrong when a plane meets a bird or a group of birds. But looking at these photos, its hard to believe that the nose of this Turkish Airlines plane was collapsed by a bird strike and not, say, running into a moose.Flight-Report tweeted numerous images of the 737-800, which was making a short hop from Istanbul to Nevşehir, Turkey, yesterday when it got popped right in the nose....

Media Platforms Design TeamMercedes-Benz has the most comprehensive line of high performance models of any car company. Is there a Mercedes-Benz that doesn’t have a AMG variant? We can’t think of one. And that’s just fine with us–the more power the better.So its a no-brainer that Benz would create an ultimate version of its GLA 250 sports crossover. This racy-looking Concept GLA 45 AMG will morph into a real production car next year....

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more heartwarming than Robert Downey Jr. delivering a bionic arm as Tony Stark to a handicapped boy, someone decides to throw Legos in the mix.Carlos Arturo Torres, a student at Sweden’s Umeå University, has developed a prosthetic arm that children can customize with their own Lego attachments. The idea behind the project is, according to Torres, “for children to explore and empower their creativity in a playful, social and friendly way....

Continuing in my current vein of bashing prominent political figures with the proverbial energy stick, I’d like to explain my views on Mr Gore a bit further. We live in a working class community; we are surrounded by dairy farmers, carpenters, and plenty of folks who just “get by” in the Vermont tradition of wearing whatever hat will garner a paycheck on that particular week. Many of these people have an innate distrust of politicians....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday, NASA revealed its plans for the new heavy-lift launch system intended to carry large payloads—including, perhaps, missions to send humans beyond Earth orbit. The SpecsThe NASA authorization bill that Congress passed nearly a year ago demanded not only that NASA build a new heavy-lift rocket, but also that the new system use space shuttle components. The new program, called the Space Launch System, didn’t disappoint in that regard....

Fighting off the morning chills is a simple enough process. For most of us, it involves pressing some buttons on a thermostat and enjoying the comforting heat as it bubbles out of some unseen vent connected to a furnace in our basement. It’s something we take for granted every day.But for 365 days while living on a rustic farm without modern conveniences, it wasn’t that simple for Popular Mechanics contributing editor Logan Ward....

A few years ago, I was fastening lumber storage racks to the shop wall with 4-in. lagscrews. And, for the first time in a long time, I reached for a real 1/2-in. drill to crank them in—one with a cord, and a direct connection to the Northeast power grid. The effect was like popping the clutch in a muscle car of my youth after years of commuting in a hybrid. Face it— if you really want power, find an outlet....

To make a robot swim faster, just mimic some of the fastest swimmers out there. A Singaporean robotics team just did that by taking a few cues from some remarkable octopuses. The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) team built a bot that copies the octopus’ method of propulsion to generate the speed. This involves the octopus blowing out its mantle cavity in a balloon-like fashion and quickly expelling the air to propel itself along....

Media Platforms Design TeamGoogle’s head-mounted information display, Glass, has gotten most of the news—and —when it comes to wearable tech. Today, tough, the center of attention for on-body technology has turned to the wrist, with both Samsung and Qualcomm announcing connected smartwatches.mockerySamsung held an event in Berlin, Germany, to unveil its new Galaxy Gear device, which goes on sale in early October for $300. The Gear is the more Dick Tracy-ish of the two watches revealed today....

Move over, Europa. It looks as though the most life-friendly habitat ever discovered outside of Earth is Enceladus—Saturn’s sixth-largest moon.Astrophysicists working with NASA’s Saturn sweeping Cassini spacecraft have just announced that Enceladus has a warm ocean at its southern pole with ongoing hydrothermal activity—the first ever discovered outside of Earth. This new research, published in the journal Nature, builds upon last year’s discovery of the moon’s 6-mile-deep ocean, which is also believed to contain many of the chemicals commonly associated with life....

In the series “The Experimenters,” the team at Blank on Blank resurrects older interviews with historic notables. This video, featuring the famed physicist Richard Feynman, takes audio from a 1966 interview with the Caltech professor and popularizer of theoretical physics. The five-minute interview excerpt was animated by Paul Ruttledge.In his trademark thick New York accent, Feynman discusses how he became involved in the sciences. It’s the foundation of a rich public life, filled with turtles....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe unassuming, windswept town of Otaki sits on the western coast of New Zealand about an hour north of the country’s capital, Wellington. Among its residents is Kevin Halsall, an inventor who recently built a prototype wheelchair that’s hands-free and balances on two wheels, adjusting and moving as the person sitting in the chair leans forward, backward, and side to side.Halsall’s wheelchair, which he calls the Ogo, is actually a stripped down, disassembled, and retrofitted Segway....

10 | Dodge ZEOMedia Platforms Design TeamAutomakers are proving that a future, potentially without petroleum, can still be fun for the driving enthusiast. The ZEO is a macho little sports coupe that has Hemi-like thrust solely from an electric powertrain. We also dig those 23-inch wheels and the pillarless scissor doors. We can see this little beast rolling up to a stoplight in about five years looking for a completely silent, electric-only drag race....

Team: Zap Car: AliasClass: AlternativeDrivetrain: ElectricEnergy Storage: Lithium-ion batteriesPM Says: A solid effort from a proven electric-car builder.Odds to Win: 4 to 1Zap’s big advantage is that it actually produces electric vehicles. “Our main focus has been the fleet market,” company founder Gary Starr says. “We sell trucks to cities, corporations and military bases.” The three-wheel Alias mixes a Honda Fit windshield with a Corvette rear window. An electric motor identical to the Aptera’s drives the front wheels....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile the Curiosity rover has just begun to investigate its new home, NASA is already developing its follow-up. Yesterday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, the space agency filled in more details on its plans to go back to the surface of Mars. John Grusnfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science and a former astronaut, said the U.S. would send a new rover in 2020, at a cost of about $1....

Today is Pluto’s big day, and this is Pluto’s big week. No one should take that from the New Horizons craft, an intrepid explorer that’s giving us our first up-close meeting with the King of the Kuiper Belt. (Take that, Eris!) We now know how big Pluto is and what its polar caps look like, and we have hints that it has snow, past (and maybe present) tectonic activity, and more....