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Q: I lost the top cap to my USB thumb drive. Do I need one?A: Not really. Dozens of USB drives have been floating around my drawers for years without caps, and if they’ve suffered any damage, I haven’t noticed it. The fact is, USB connectors are made entirely of metal and stiff plastic. That’s tough stuff, and there’s not much that can really damage them, short of being crushed.Still, if you do go without a cap, it can’t hurt to give the drive a quick once-over for dirt before plugging it in....

Oregon Scientific ATC2K | $130This updated version of a hands-free helmet-cam we tested in February ‘06 records digital video onto SD cards, at up to 640 x 480 resolution. www2.oregonscientific.com –>Media Platforms Design TeamSamsung LN-T4665F 1080p LCD | $2800Thanks to superb contrast control and black levels, this is the closest we’ve seen to a perfect, 1080p-resolution LCD. The price tag is monstrous, but it still feels like a bargain. samsung.com –>Media Platforms Design TeamNikon D40x | $750 w/lensIt’s great that the D40x has a 10....

MORE BRAND-NEW REPORTING FROM PM’S GEEK THE VOTE SERIES* ENVIRONMENT: After River Pact’s Backfire, McCain Counters Obama on Water* INFRASTRUCTURE: Clean Tech Overshadows Obama-McCain Disparity1. What is the proper role of emerging technologies, such as biometrics, in securing the borders and monitoring foreign visitors to the United States?2. New military technologies are frequently designed to win the last war, not the next one. What’s your approach to breaking that pattern? And what critical R&D should be supported now to prepare for future conflicts?...

Apple iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox are supposed to provide a convenient way to share data and network resources without being tied to specific computing device. But last week we saw the dark side of storing your data on the cloud, when attackers released a trove of NSFW pictures of celebrities stolen from their iCloud accounts.How the hackers struck and what vulnerabilities they exploited is still a topic of debate. But here’s a few things we do know....

Media Platforms Design TeamAs the Kepler telescope expands its catalog of confirmed and possible exoplanets, astronomers find solar systems in a growing variety of shapes and sizes. They’ve seen a solar system like ours, with multiple planets orbiting a star on the same plane. They’re seen many newly found systems with smaller, rocky planets like ours. They’ve seen a “Tatooine” planet the look like Luke Skywalker’s fictional homeworld, orbiting a pair of twin suns....

Media Platforms Design TeamFirst up was Steve Jobs himself, after taking a leave of absence from Apple and handing over the day-to-day operations to Tim Cooke, the company co-founder still came onstage to MC the launch of the next-gen iPad. As expected, the device has a faster chip and dual cameras, front and rear. That chip is the next generation of Apple’s own A5 processor, now dual-core 1GHz, which should close the performance gap with Nvidia Tegra 2-powered devices such as Motorola’s Xoom....

Ever hear of the double-slit experiment? It’s one of the most bizarre experiments in modern physics, and cuts to the heart of the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Basically, waves that pass through two narrow, parallel slits will form an interference pattern on a screen. This is true for all waves, whether they’re light waves, water waves, or sound waves.⚡️ Science explains the world around us. We’ll help you make sense of it all—join Pop Mech Pro....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe happiest place on Earth will soon have drones buzzing above it. As first reported by the blog Stitch Kingdom, Disney’s merchandising arm has filed three patents for devices that use drones for entertainment. All three involve “aerial displays” or air shows. One would shoot colored lights and another would create projection screens. But the coolest one by far would use drones to move large puppets, sort of like massive marionettes....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Relay Fuse SwapMedia Platforms Design TeamMy 4x4 quit suddenly, on the side of a mountain. My wife and I were looking at a potential 20-mile hike, until a guy on an ATV came by and fixed it in 5 minutes–without any parts. How did he know, and what did he do? He moved this little box-shaped thing in the fuse box underhood from one place to another....

What were the most critical issues for TSA while you were in charge there?The strategy was the most important piece. When I came in, in 2005, I thought it was a management job . . . and I started about that work until the intelligence world intervened and made me aware that there were real ongoing immediate threats to blow up airplanes. So my academic approach . . . turned very tactical within a couple of months of getting there....

The French Minister of Ecology and Energy, Ségolène Royal, has announced that the country plans to cover 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of roads with solar panels, according to the Global Construction Review. A 1-kilometer segment of the surface, called Wattway, can generate enough power for a town of 5,000 people, according to Colars, the manufacturer of the panels. This means the energy-generating road surfaces could provide power for as much as 8 percent of the French population, or about 5 million people....

During the end-of-year holiday travel crunch, many of us will wade slowly through the glacial process of boarding a flight. Every year airlines add extra flights to handle the spike with decidedly mixed effectiveness. But to some forward-thinking engineers, the problem isn’t the planes. Airport terminals, with their labyrinthine security lines and seemingly endless hallways, aren’t built to get you to your plane on time. To ease the groan factor of waiting in airport lines, engineers are now making terminals smarter by employing new thinking and technologies, from optimized layouts to crowd-simulation software....

(Image: The U.S. Air Force’s X-37B unmanned spaceplane that orbits for hundreds of days at a time on classified missions.)Lawmakers within the House Armed Services Committee have introduced legislation that would require the U.S. Air Force to establish a “Space Corps” as a distinct branch of the military by January 1, 2019, according toSpace News. The proposed legislation would create a Space Corps to serve “as a separate military service within the Department of the Air Force and under the civilian leadership of the Secretary of the Air Force....

For three decades, Army and Marine HMMWVs or “Humvees” have been the symbol of American military power everywhere U.S. forces have put boots and tires on the ground. First produced in 1985 by AM General, the Humvee has not only carried hundreds of thousands of Americans to and from combat, it has become a cultural icon. Like the legendary Willys Jeep, the Humvee is part of the language and even spawned a consumer product the Hummer....

In a few weeks, Mercedes-Benz will show this Ocean Drive Concept at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It’s essentially a four-door, convertible version of the Mercedes-Benz S600 with some unique styling touches—enough to make it look like a stunner to us. But why has it taken a manufacturer so long to rediscover this stylish class of car?We’ve been waiting patiently for the return of the four-door convertible since… 1967....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photo Credit: Dean Morley/Flickr)Plants may not be able to scream, but they can tell when something is chewing on one of their leaves—and respond accordingly.Whether or not plants “hear” or feel “pain” is a vexing question that scientists have been exploring for a while now. Rex Cocroft and Heidi Appel of the University of Missouri took on the problem in a new study of the thale cress, a plant related to kale....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today.Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday Oculus VR, the minds behind the anticipated Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, agreed to acquire Carbon Design Group for an undisclosed amount of money. The name may not trigger any immediate recognition, but there is a good chance that you’ve held at least one of Carbon’s products in your hands—they built the Xbox 360 controller....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen it comes to turning sunlight into electricity, today’s technology leaves lots of room for improvement. The most efficient solar cells on the market, which are made of silicon, convert less than 20 percent of the light that hits them into electricity, and the theoretical maximum efficiency of these cells is around 31 percent. One reason for this low efficiency is that much of the incoming light contains energy that is too high for solar cells to capture, so it’s lost as heat....

Despite robotic rovers and seemingly endless analysis, NASA’s long observation of the Red Planet has rarely sent home as stunning an in-progress geological change as this: not one, but four avalanches tumbling from the Martian north pole. These images, taken from the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and released with a bevy of new photographs today, shows a union of ice, dust, and large blocks separating from a cliff and colliding with the land below....

Climate Change Chatter Talk about global warming today is at levels unseen since Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” turned activism behind emissions reduction from a green crusade into an international buzz this summer. A top economist’s report released by the British government today argues that the benefits of coordinated action to address climate change on a global scale far outweigh the “economic chaos” that could follow later in this century. A front-page story in The New York Times, meanwhile, breaks down energy experts’ increasing frustration with limited federal funding in the U....