Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: January 2012Price: $27,990 - $33,230 Competitor: Nissan LeafPowertrain: 49 kw (66 hp) AC synchronous electric motor; 16 kwh lithium-ion battery pack; RWDEPA Fuel Economy/Range: 112 mpge; 62 milesWhat’s New: The Japanese domestic market (JDM) version of the i has been on sale in Japan as the i-MiEV since July 2009. Mitsubishi put the popular i on a sumo’s diet to beef it up for the U....
Media Platforms Design Team1. Prices Will Probably Go UpI’m not the first person to make this point, so I won’t dwell on it, but T-Mobile is known for its low prices. The dissolution of the brand into this new mega-carrier will likely end its practice of offering rock-bottom prices. 2. It Will Present An Opportunity For Prepaid CarriersThe purchase of value-priced T-Mobile creates an interesting opportunity for prepaid carriers, such as MetroPCS and Virgin Mobile, to step up and scoop up budget-minded customers....
Okay, as promised here’s what we found out from DaimlerChrysler: the regional techs replaced the entire throttle body on the Liberty’s little Italian-built 2.8-liter four-cylinder turbodiesel because of either 1. the possibility of temperature swing-induced leakage at the clamping areas, or 2. possible stripped teeth on a motor-driven, spring-loaded air management valve integral with the throttle body.We believe that’s a fair assessment because 1. No matter how many diagnostic trouble trees a tech completes, sometimes he just has to start thinking past his nose and let his black magic experience take over, and 2....
What’s going on with convertibles nowadays? Some expensive cars like Jaguar and BMW are sticking with fabric tops, while less pricey models like Pontiac and Mazda offer steel roof retractable models. It’s a fact that the hardtop roofs are complicated mechanisms and cost much more than the fabric type.Talk to Jaguar about their continued use of a fabric roof for the XK convertible, and they tell you that the classic lines of their prestige vehicle cannot be easily copied when done in steel....
Media Platforms Design TeamSummer is great, but it’s dirty. Before you know it, mud, pollen, mildew, dried grass clippings, and the greasy film from air pollution can cover everything in sight. The pressure washer makes short work of tough cleaning jobs and solves other problems such as removing flaking or blistered paint.While you might have some intuitive sense for how much size and power you require from a tool like a lawnmower, most homeowners are less familiar with pressure washers....
Media Platforms Design Team Borrego Springs, Calif.–The Raptor promises to be the most off-road-capable F-150 Ford has ever built. This pickup is like a street-legal Baja prerunner. In other words, the SVT Raptor promises to smooth out the worst high-speed desert terrain, fly over jumps and handle slow-speed four-wheeling better than just about any production truck. Tall order? Perhaps not. We had a chance to spend a day riding along with the SVT team as they put a group of preproduction Raptors through an arduous development loop in the California dessert....
So the Pres met with the CEO’s of the big three automakers today. I’d love to have been a fly on that wall… did he give them the tongue-lashing they deserve? Look, it’s no secret that the big three have been asleep at the switch. GM is showing some signs of life with their commitment to the Volt plug-in electric platform, but that’s still three or four years off, best case scenario....
Clean Out the GarageSo you’ve decided to turn your garage into a haunted house. Great! There’s still time before Halloween rolls around. The bad news: You need to clean it out for once. Take this moment to get some hooks or other storage solutions and get organized, even if that means moving your garden tractor and snow blower completely out of the garage until after Halloween. Visitors should be scared by your decor, not by the state of your lawnmower....
Someday, there will be no human staff at the upcoming Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki, Japan. There will be no keys. Instead, a robot will check you in. You’ll open the door to your hotel room via facial recognition technology. The rooms will sense body heat and adjust temperature accordingly. The hotel is currently going through a soft launch with humans working alongside the robots. But those humans know their days are numbered....
View full post on YoutubeConcrete is easier to work with than you think. With the proper mold you can make almost anything, including a planter in the shape of a stormtrooper helmet.To make this planter you’ll need plastic clamshell packaging from a stormtrooper mask, a bag of Quikrete cement, and a plastic cup to create the space for a succulent or plant. A non-stick spray will make it much easier to remove everything from the mold....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen nature can’t supply raw ingredients for next-generation hardware, scientists create their own. Man-made “metamaterials” are going beyond the lab and into real-world applications. Scientists use existing composite materials, like the gold and gallium-arsenide mixes used in electronics, to create complex, though tiny, structures. These nano-size bumps, crosses, holes or ridges manipulate electromagnetic waves that hit them. Early prototypes of invisibility cloaks, which would guide light around an object to be shielded, have generated some technobuzz....
Media Platforms Design TeamAs exercise goes, it doesn’t get much simpler than running—just strap on a pair of shoes and hit the road. Wrong. Never before has the non-Olympic runner had such a wealth of data available, from GPS-based workout computers to complex heart-rate monitors. The problem, besides information overload, is that people don’t come with peripheral ports, and external sensors such as heart rate monitors have been traditionally bulky, strap-and-buckle affairs....
The Saturn brand disappeared from the market in 2009 with little fanfare. This 1998 Saturn SL will soon disappear with great fanfare, at least for folks in the community of Iron Mountain, a small dot of habitation in Michigan’s vast Upper Peninsula.Strategically parked on a frozen pond along US 2, just a few miles from the Wisconsin border, the used-up sedan is the focal point of a local fundraiser. Give $5 to the Rotary Club of Iron Mountain–Kingsford, and you can submit your prediction (by mail if you’re from out of town) for when exactly—to the minute—the spring thaw will cause the now-orange Saturn to slip underwater....
The hardest part of this riddle is figuring out what the treasurer planned to do to survive and trick the pharmacist into losing the contest. Once you figure out the treasurer’s scheme, it’s easier to figure out the pharmacist’s plot to thwart him. Remember: In the end, the treasurer dies and the pharmacist lives—and the king doesn’t get what he wants.See the original question here.Solution The treasurer, realizing he could never make a more potent poison than the pharmacist, figures out a way to set himself up for success....
Media Platforms Design Team01 DIY AIRSTRIKESThere are times in an operator’s career when close air support or heavy artillery is not available and a target must be eliminated from a distance. In 2011, SOCOM asked industry for a missile system capable of striking enemy personnel, moving vehicles, and light structures at a range of 9 miles. The system’s total weight is to be 65 pounds—light enough for a team to carry in rucksacks....
Media Platforms Design TeamBoeing will remain the company that builds the president’s personal plane. The Air Force just announced that the next Air Force One will be built on the Boeing 747-8 platform.The current presidential planes are VC-25s, a military variant of the long-lived Boeing 747-200. The 747-8 is a much newer platform—it debuted in 2005. The new Air Force Ones are scheduled to arrive starting in 2018, so it’ll be President Obama’s successor who gets to enjoy the new ride....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen you think about Mozart, you probably don’t imagine a computer. But artists Marc Downie, Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshakar hope you’ll do just that: Their installation Enlightenment, running as part of Lincoln Center’s 40th annual Mostly Mozart Festival, is an analysis, reconstruction and performance of the five-part fugue of Mozart’s last symphony – all performed completely by computer.Downie, who earned his Ph.D. in artificial intelligence (AI) last September, explains that Enlightenment is an algorithm that allows AI to analyze the coda and figure out how it’s put together, using methods similar to DNA sequencing and Google searching....
Media Platforms Design TeamForget the yard of bricks, the winner’s bottle of milk, the Purdue University marching band, and Jim Nabors singing “Back Home Again In Indiana.” When the gentlemen and ladies start their engines for the Indianapolis 500, what matters are the drivers, the cars, the pit crews and the tools they use. Plenty is written about the drivers and cars, and the crews get to shine during the pit stop competition, but no one pays attention to the tools....
At first glance it looks like a sports energy gel—one you can flex, squeeze, and practically bend in half without breaking it. But this malleable packet is actually a futuristic new battery—one with more voltage than your average AA and a practically unheard of recharge time of around one minute.The new aluminum-based battery is the work of an eclectic team of chemists, material scientists and engineers led by Hongjie Dai of Stanford University....
No. 1 Favorite: Quick LookIt takes a certain kind of user to care about Quick Look, which lets you preview one or more files by selecting them and then hitting the space bar. Instead of opening each corresponding application, such as Word for text documents, Photoshop for images and Acrobat for PDFs, Quick Look pops up a window with a slightly zoomed-out view. You can switch to a full-screen mode, which bumps up the size of the previewed files, and you can scroll through each file (if there are multiple pages), cycle through them as a slideshow or look at a contact sheet-style index of the entire collection....
