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View full post on YoutubeSay hello to Russia’s latest battlefield bot. According to Sputnik News, a state-owned site, the robot seen here in a driving demonstration is meant to serve as a sort of field avatar for soldiers. Think of this four-wheeling helmeted friend as an android sent into combat situations too dangerous for soldiers. According to Sputnik, it’s being designed not only to fire weapons but also to render first aid....

Two years ago, when Vice President Joe Biden announced the U.S. government would give a $528 billion loan to Fisker, he heralded the new firm as a company that would create jobs by building cars in an old GM factory near Wilmington in Biden’s home state of Delaware. But Fisker’s first car, the Karma, is being built in Finland. That fact, along with some other bad press about the company, led some observers to wonder whether Fisker shook down the government when it got that money....

About 140 miles from the Antarctic coast, the scientific research ship JOIDES Resolution is drilling deep into the ocean floor. The objective: To find out how Antarctica changed from a warm and vegetated continent, as it was 50 million years ago, to the frozen, ice-covered continent we see today. The story of Antarctica’s ice is written in the muddy sediments that have been laid down and slowly buried under the surrounding ocean floor, and I am one of the 33 marine geologists onboard the Resolution who are trying to decipher it....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: Fall 2014Base Price: $38,000 (estimated)Competitors: Audi A4, BMW 3-Series, Cadillac ATS, Lexus ISPowertrains: Turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-4, 241 hp, 273 lb-ft of torque; Turbocharged 3.0-liter V6, 329 hp, 354 lb-ft; 7-speed automatic. RWD or AWDEPA Fuel Economy: N/A Upon seeing last year’s debut of the CLA-Class, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Mercedes-Benz project planners had hit the Jägermeister a little hard. The sub-$30,000 sedan was sleeker yet cheaper than the aging C-Class, making the CLA a no-brainer alternative to its supposedly upmarket stablemate....

Solid Oxide Fuel CellsMedia Platforms Design TeamIn the bill: Fuel cell technology is considered a means of efficiently generating electricity according to the Clean Energy Bill. The technology: Solid oxide fuel cells are one of the most promising technologies proven in labs today.Current research: Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are one promising fuel cell technology which use a porous, ceramic material to generate electricity from propane, butane, natural gas, hydrogen and even some of the liquid fuels....

Media Platforms Design Team Although the words “pipe” and “tubing” are often used interchangeably, they are not synonymous. A pipe is a cylinder that is joined to another cylinder with threaded fittings or slide-fit joints. It has a thick wall. In residential applications, pipe may be made from copper, cast iron, steel or plastic. In commercial applications, it may even be made of concrete. Tubing, in contrast, is thin-walled and may be rigid or flexible....

If you’ve always wanted a drone but can’t be bothered hauling a hulking quadcopter around, there could be a tiny, folding solution to your problem on the way. Researchers at EPFL and NCCR Robotics have developed a drone that not only folds down into a pocketable square, but actually opens itself up and flies away when you turn it on.The arms of this adorable little drone are made of fiberglass and inelastic polyester, and when the propellers at the end of each arm turn on, the force of the rotors pulls each foldable arm out into its extended position where it’s held in place by magnets....

Aspiring engineer Ahmed Mohamed became a household name after he was arrested for bringing a clock, mistaken for a bomb, to school. Activists rallied behind him, #IStandWith Ahmed went viral, and he received internship offers left and right. And now, after meeting President Obama, he and his family are leaving the United States. The Dallas Morning News reports that Ahmed, 14, was offered a full scholarship from the QF Young Innovators Program, located in Doha, Qatar....

Media Platforms Design TeamMy chair is rolling away from the table as I write this. I’m on the ARSV (Antarctic Research and Supply Vessel) Laurence M. Gould and we’ve entered the Drake Passage—the stretch of ocean between the tip of South America and the outstretched finger of Antarctica’s western peninsula. (Palmer station, located along the peninsula on Anvers Island, is only accessible by boat.) All of the energy contained in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, as it squeezes through that narrow channel, has expressed itself in giant swells rolling west to east....

Media Platforms Design TeamBAGHDAD, July 13 — After rumbling in a massively armored Rhino bus from Camp Victory to the International Zone through some of the world’s most dangerous real estate, I clamber aboard a Black Hawk—my first ride since I sat shotgun in one for most of my 2005 trip. It’s time for the first stop of a tour with Gen. David Petraeus, recently appointed to be the commander overseeing all U....

Cody GustafsonDubois, Wyo.Age: 27Years on Job: 8 Cody Gustafson drives 80,000 miles a year to visit bridges, factories and coal silos–and then he destroys them. The 27-year-old (whose father and grandfather are also active blasters) has demolished more than 75 structures in 40 states, not to mention 300 Minuteman II nuclear missile silos. Gustafson loves walking high steel and riding in a crane basket to place explosive charges. But the real payoff comes with the blast itself, the slow-motion milliseconds when charges explode into a lattice of smoke with a chest-rattling ka-boom–and the whole shebang crashes down into heaps of rubble and dust....

Media Platforms Design TeamI just came back from a short tour of wineries around therecently floodedvineyards Sonoma and Napa Counties in California. Fortunately for me, wine comes in waterproof bottles, and I was able to enjoy a tasting and get a few bottles to go while walking the muddy roads along the . Twenty miles south of my visit, the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco was in full swing. There, IntelliScanner Corp....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week, a firestorm of protest broke out after it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security was soliciting bids for a . Using cameras with optical character recognition software networked to the motor vehicle database, these systems would allow police to track cars wherever they go. In the face of public outcry DHS has now backed off from that plan. But, given the way bureaucracy works, there’s likely to be another effort, perhaps with less publicity, at some point in the future....

Media Platforms Design TeamLet’s hope you can build rockets and design Teslas with four fingers, because Elon Musk is coming to Springfield. The Tesla Motors and SpaceX chief will appear on “The Simpsons” this Sunday as a yellow version of himself.Bloomberg Businessweek has the rough outline of the episode’s plot: True to his world-saving nature, Musk tries to turn the town into a wonderland of self-driving electric cars and hyperloops, and doesn’t seem to mind when the utopian venture loses $50 million....

Media Platforms Design TeamAlaska Airlines Flight 75 from Seattle was about 30 minutes from Juneau when the pilots heard from the control tower: The airport was fogged in, and visibility was less than 400 ft. In that kind of late February weather, the crew normally would divert rather than try to land at an airport ringed by 2200-ft. mountains and buffeted by winds from the Gastineau Channel.Instead, the Boeing 737-400 stayed on course....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe 2015 Ford F-150’s aluminum body is a big deal, but there might be even more innovation under the hood. The twin-turbocharged EcoBoost 2.7-liter V-6 is full of tricks, such as reducing overall mass by using iron and aluminum only where each metal’s properties are most beneficial. The result is more than 300 hp in an extremely compact and lightweight design.Media Platforms Design TeamA. Upper BlockThe most novel element of this engine is the two-piece block, with a single iron casting for the upper block, which includes the cylinders, and the main bearing caps (only the lower half of the block is aluminum)....

Researchers have used gene-editing to create mosquitoes that are almost entirely resistant to the parasite that causes malaria, Plasmodium falciparum. Scientists used a DNA construct containing multiple genes to alter the mosquitoes’ genomes. The mutated mosquitoes passed their malaria-resistant genes on to 99 percent of their offspring even when they mated with normal mosquitoes. The process that results in malaria-resistant mosquitoes is made possible by the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing tool. Cas9 is an enzyme that can “snip” out segments of proteins from a DNA strand....

Media Platforms Design TeamWell, it’s official. The new Hearst Tower, PM’s home as of late June, has officially been certified with a “Gold” rating by theU.S. Green Building Council—the nation’s leading accrediting body for environmentally sustainable buildings. This makes the Tower the first office building in New York City to be recognized for high environmental performance on both its interior and exterior, and only the second certified “green” office building in the city’s history....

Media Platforms Design TeamAstronaut Luca Parmitano was about 44 minutes into a space walk in July 2013 when —water inside his helmet and on the back of his head. He and partner Chris Cassidy continued their work on EVA-23 (EVA means extra-vehicular activity, which is NASA-speak for a space walk.) But shortly thereafter, water moved to Parmitano’s face and went up his nose, and he lost some communication with the ground....

Media Platforms Design TeamNevada’s $700 million project to tunnel beneath Lake Mead may need to be rerouted. The pipeline, which would provide a backup water supply to the drought-ridden Las Vegas Valley, has repeatedly flooded with water, rock and muck, causing authorities to consider drilling a new starter tunnel.Extending from a 600-foot vertical shaft near Lake Mead, a 350-foot horizontal starter tunnel was blasted into place to make room for the massive, custom-made tunnel-boring machine that would drill a 3-mile path to the deepest part of Lake Mead....