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Media Platforms Design TeamHonda is one of the most invested carmakers in hydrogen fuel cell technology, and its spaceship-like FCEV concept is meant to show off the company’s latest progress while also hinting at a future vehicle. Promising to launch a 2015 hydrogen fuel cell sedan with a driving range greater than 300 miles and capable of refilling in under 3 minutes, Honda says the fuel cell pack in the FCEV is 35 percent smaller than the pack in its previous FXC Clarity concept and the complete powertrain fits under the hood....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhile training in an intensive-care unit during medical school, Laura Niklason got a graphic view of a persistent problem. “The surgeons spent a lot of time digging around in the patients’ legs or arms looking for veins to replace main arteries,” she says. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way.“According to the most recent National Hospital Discharge Survey, doctors in the U.S. performed 408,000 coronary artery bypass procedures in 2007, all of which required vascular grafts....

border=“0” cellspacing=“2” cellpadding=“0”>ABOUT PM’S LONG-TERM TESTS POPULAR MECHANICS auto editors drive more than 200 new cars and trucks (plus motorcycles) every year. We subject the newest, most significant ones to the rigors of a long-term test–typically for 12 months. Our regimen includes real-world driving under a variety of conditions–city, country, suburbia, empty and full. Our testing also includes a thorough assessment of the cost and difficulty of getting the vehicle serviced at the dealership....

Media Platforms Design TeamStop-motion animation has given us King Kong, Jack Skellington in , the AT-ATs in , and others. But compared with the puppets in , out August 17, those characters are primitive. LAIKA, the studio that created ParaNorman, blended old-school methods with 3D rapid prototyping, which prints an object layer by layer, to build more expressive puppets. The result is a film that looks more like animation than stop-motion....

Media Platforms Design Team Las Vegas– Far away from the main action at CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center, buried deep in the back of the Sands Convention Center are hundreds of little gadget companies that exist on the periphery of the consumer electronics world, just waiting for their big break. There are no industry-changing smartphones here, just earnest little manufacturers who’d really like it if some retailer brought their products to stores the United States....

A day after the ever-expanding Apple empire announced it would integrate the iPod into flights on Delta Air Lines and other carriers, US Airways said today it has bid $8 billion for its bankruptcy-protected rival. The potential acquisition would create the country’s biggest airline, though bigger isn’t always better when it comes to jumbo jets.While a Canary Islands volcano collapse could still trigger a tsunami in the Atlantic, fears of another massive wave disaster in the Pacific blew over Japan and Russia today after a strong undersea earthquake....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe world’s largest online drug black market, Silk Road 2.0, has just been seized and shut down by the Feds.Sound familiar? It should. Back in October of last year, the same thing happened to the original Silk Road. This time around, the alleged San Francisco-based ringleader of the e-bazaar—Blake Benthall, who is known online as “Defcon” and formerly worked for SpaceX—has been arrested, and now faces 10 years to life behind bars....

The Israeli startup DouxMatok—‚which means “double sweet” in Hebrew—has created a new sweetener that could drastically reduce how much sugar you need to make something taste sweet. By coating inert mineral particles that have no caloric value with sugar molecules, DouxMatok developed a sugar substitute that (allegedly) tastes just like pure sugar. DouxMatok is “a new sugar-based sweetener that allows for lower caloric intake, better health profile, while retaining the very same sugar experience,” says DouxMatok CEO Eran Baniel....

Media Platforms Design TeamMain mass of the Chelyabinsk fall at the Chelyabinsk State Museum of Local History shortly after recovery from Chebarkul Lake. Credit: Science/AAASEver since February, when a fireball appeared over the sky in central Russia and created shock waves that shattered windows before the meteor plummeted into the ground, scientists have analyzing the Chelyabinsk incident to try to determine where it came from and why they couldn’t see this damaging space rock coming....

View full post on YoutubeIf you were a kid growing up in the ’90s, you probably loved to play ‘Operation,’ the “wacky doctor’s game in which you’re the wacky doctor!” Basically, the game consisted of going around and taking turns picking the organs out of a terrified-looking man with a sharp set of tweezers (how has this not been turned into a horror film yet?). If you touched the sides, his clown nose buzzed and glowed bright red, and you had to forfeit your turn....

(Published in the February 2003 issue)More: Turn your mountain bike into a snowmobileYamaha RX-1Ski-Doo V-1000Arctic Cat 4-Stroke TouringPolaris FrontierAs we leave base camp in central Idaho’s Payette National Forest, we’re riding into the teeth of a young blizzard. But the weather unexpectedly clears when we reach the top of the rise, and suddenly, gloriously, we’re breaking trail through 8 in. of fresh powder on top of a 10-ft. base. The four of us ride along the ridge for ages, stopping often to admire spectacular views over Payette Lake....

Media Platforms Design Team Vesta vs. nearby asteroids. Credit: Science/AAASFor the last year or so, NASA’s Dawn mission has been hanging around near Vesta, the second-larges object in the Asteroid Belt that lies between Jupiter and Mars (trailing only Ceres, which is a member of Pluto’s dwarf planet club.) A smattering of researchers from the Dawn team published their findings about the Arizona-sized asteroid in the journal Science today.The first thing they learned about Vesta: Yes, it has been bombarding the Earth....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: NowPrice: $11,399Competitors: Honda VFR1200F, Triumph Sprint GTPowertrain: Liquid-cooled 1043-cc, DOHC, four-valve inline-4EPA Fuel Economy: 41 mpgWhat’s New: The Ninja 1000 has been around since 2011, but here Kawasaki took its naked Z1000 and optimized it for the real world with a windscreen and fairings. The bike can still thrill, with a grunty 136-hp engine and a comfortable riding position.Tech Tidbit: The rev limiter is soft, so the engine can over-rev gracefully and without a sudden drop in power; coming against the limiter midcorner becomes a nonissue....

Media Platforms Design TeamPhoto by Gregor Halenda1. LensInterchangeable-lens mirrorless cameras offer unparalleled shooting flexibility compared with even the most versatile point-and-shoots. But each manufacturer has a proprietary lens mount, so when you buy a brand of camera, you’re also buying into that company’s lens lineup. Though you can exploit any of Nikon’s and Canon’s SLR lenses, some capabilities—such as auto­focus—might not work.2. ControlsWhile almost all mirrorless cameras include aperture, shutter speed, exposure, and ISO controls, lower-end cameras tend to bury these in menu screens....

Media Platforms Design TeamBefore we discuss the wonder that is the Xbox Backpack, let’s go through the reasons why such an invention isn’t at all necessary. First, there are already two respectable portable video-game platforms: Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Nintendo’s DS (with the 3DS coming out soon). These are lightweight, pocket-size, affordable and more than adequate for on-the-fly fun. Second, the Xbox 360 was never intended to be portable. It is, in fact, distinctly nonportable....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week, we covered for why the two sides of our moon are so different—that a second moon could have grazed one side of it billions of years ago, an event the scientists behind the idea call “the big splat.“a new study with a provocative explanationWe were curious to hear the take of someone who not only knows the geology of the moon, but walked upon our natural satellite....

These survival tips can help you avoid becoming just another statistic. Accidents are the leading cause of death among U.S. men 18 to 50 years old, accounting for 37,000 of the roughly 148,000 annual fatalities. Some instances of unintentional death, to use the official term, are unavoidable—wrong place, wrong time—but most aren’t. Staying alive requires recognizing danger, feeling fear, and reacting. “We interpret external cues through our subconscious fear centers very quickly,” says Harvard University’s David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really?...

Media Platforms Design Team LOS ANGELES - It’s not like five-door sedans are a new thing, but nobody has ever built one configured like the Clubman. With a body 9.5 in. longer on a chassis with 3.15 in. added to the wheelbase and consequently 3.15 in. more rear legroom, rear-seat passengers will find the interior far more capacious. Of course, it’s never fun shoehorning those linebackers into the back, but the Clubman’s rear door (singular) should make it easy....

Recently, British doctors successfully eliminated an infant girl’s cancer, Chinese researchers created ultra-muscular goats and dogs, and scientists in California made malaria-resistant mosquitos. Much of this aggressive expansion into genetic engineering research can be attributed to the CRISPR gene-editing tool that has made tweaking an organism’s DNA cheaper and more precise than ever before. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now invented a gene-editing device that will fit nicely on your desk or workbench....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe continue to receive tremendous feedback from readers who enjoyed “How I Learned to Fly (In a Week)McAfee antivirus software company,” in the April 2006 issue. An interesting e-mail arrived this afternoon from John McAfee, founder of the . Turns out, McAfee also flies airplanes. A fellow sport pilot, he’s passionate about kite wing aircraft, and founded the American Aerotrekking Society. “We’re outside the box and below the radar,” he wrote, “so most aviation folks don’t even know we exist....