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Media Platforms Design TeamASUS’s first blockbuster product, the diminutive and inexpensive Eee PC laptop, put its maker on the map and spawned so many competitors that the category it created—the netbook—was commodified almost instantly. This time around, ASUS’s new Eee Pad Transformer has been quick to the Android Honeycomb tablet market, but not first: The ASUS was released alongside the Motorola Xoom, the Acer Iconia, the LG G-Slate and a new Samsung Galaxy Tab, just to name a few....

Media Platforms Design Team>DESIGNER: Glen L. WittTYPE OF HULL: Three-Point HydroplaneLENGTH: 8 ft. 2 in. Over-allBEAM: 54 in.WEIGHT: 74 lbs.COST TO CONSTRUCT: $25MAXIMUM HP: 20SPEED: 33 m.p.h. with 14-hp. McCulloch motorturning 7-1/2 x 10 two-blade prop; load included 175-lb. driver and 5 gal. gasCONSTRUCTION DRAWINGS: George Blow, PM Art Dept.WHILE NOT INTENDED for an assault on world speed records, Saucy Shingle is basically the same breed as those big record boats....

Cable subscribers fork over $19 billion a year on something they don’t need: cable box rentals. But the industry has done its damnedest to make sure cable subscribers don’t go out and buy their own by making it a logistical nightmare. As Bouree Lam at The Atlantic points out, though, that could maybe change, taking a cue from the phone industry. In the early days of landlines, subscribers rented their phones from Ma Bell....

Media Platforms Design TeamRadio JOVEAstronomy doesn’t get much more hands-on than building your own radio telescope. A network of citizen scientists is helping NASA study bursts of radio emissions from Jupiter and the Sun using a $125 radio telescope kit from NASA. When charged subatomic particles in Jupiter’s atmosphere move through the planet’s magnetic field, the field accelerates the particles in a way that causes them to emit radio waves that can be detected on Earth....

Media Platforms Design Team If television crime shows and Hollywood thrillers are to be believed, criminals are intelligent, complex people. It takes a crack team to catch these masterminds who usually elude the authorities time and again.But common lawbreakers do not fit this picture. Most crime—including burglary, drug-use and homicide—is predictable and even avoidable. Steer clear of the bad side of the neighborhood or move to the nicer part of town and you can get away from much crime....

The discovery of Homo naledi, a newly discovered ancestor to modern humans, is being called one of the greatest fossil discoveries of our time.Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand, the National Geographic Society, and South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation, worked together to unveil the largest single hominid fossil find on the continent of Africa. The results, published in the journal eLIFE and in National Geographic magazine, introduce us to an ancestor we never knew we had....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe shooting down of a CH-47 Chinook by a Taliban-launched rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) did more than kill 30 Americans, including 17 Navy SEALs. It also highlighted an important vulnerability of U.S. helicopters flying in Afghanistan. Army helicopters have defensive systems that can help protect against guided missiles, but those systems are not effective against cruder, unguided threats like RPGs. New defenses are on the way, but the most advanced system is already behind schedule....

My storm door was ripped open by the wind, damaging the doorjamb. How do I fix it, and how do I prevent this from happening again?Storm doors blow open when their closers are worn out or were not properly installed, so in the course of the repair, you’ll want to put in new ones. Maybe even a heavy-duty model with more pulling force. The toughest fix is the doorjamb itself. If it’s badly cracked, you’ll have to either replace the entire thing or saw away the damaged section using an oscillating multitool....

Media Platforms Design TeamDrywall installers are practiced in making smooth, almost imperceptible transitions between one sheet and the next—even around corners. But where floor meets wall, they typically hand the job to the next guy, the trim carpenter. This pro takes care of gaps by applying baseboard trim, a long thin piece of horizontal wood with an ornamental profile cut into its top edge. To hide the location where the baseboard meets the floor, carpenters install a shoe molding....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf MacGuyver is the ultimate Popular Mechanics guy, MacGruber is his less proficient cousin. Out May 21, the film is based off an infamous Saturday Night Live sketch that has MacGruber (Will Forte) attempting to disarm a bomb with whatever household materials happen to be at hand, then letting personal issues get in the way until everything blows up. In the movie, MacGruber—joined by Vicki St. Elmo (Kristin Wiig) and Lt....

The Peruvian village of Compone lies 11,000 ft. above sea level in El Valle Sagrado de los Incas, the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Flat but ringed by mountains, the tallest capped year-round in snow and ice, the valley is graced with a mild climate and mineral-rich soil that for centuries has produced what the Incas called sara—corn.The farmers of Compone feed corn to their livestock, grind it into meal, boil it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and stockpile it as insurance against future unknowns....

Media Platforms Design TeamEric Schweikardt loves Legos—and Erector sets, and creating his own Capsela machinations, too. From an early age, he was building. Now, after receiving an advanced degree in architecture, he’s building something new to inspire the next generation of potential engineers, architects, and scientists. “The great thing about construction kits is that they abstract something away to make it easier for kids to build cool stuff,” says Schweikardt, CEO and design director of Modular Robotics....

Media Platforms Design TeamBarbara Campbell is going to see . A lifelong New York City resident, she loves the theater and has been attending Broadway shows for nearly 40 years, ever since she was a teenager growing up in Queens. During that time, her vision has steadily deteriorated. At first, she could distinguish the actors onstage without a problem. Then, the details began to blur, so she started using a small telescope to see their faces....

Media Platforms Design TeamToday, one-fifth of America’s electricity comes from nuclear power. The federal government wants to gradually expand that fraction in order to phase out greenhouse-gas-emitting coal-fired plants, which generate most of our energy. But nuclear power plants take a long time and a lot of money to build. That’s why the Department of Energy is pushing a new technology called the small modular reactor (SMR). Last week, the department announced that it would invest $452 million toward developing and licensing a smaller and sleeker nuclear reactor....

Media Platforms Design TeamOculus Rift, the massively Kickstarted virtual reality headset and PopMech Breakthrough Award Winner, is going mobile with Android compatibility. Chief executive officer Brendan Iribe announced the integration yesterday during the GamesBeat 2013 conference in Redwood, Calif. The mobile Rift headset will be much lighter than its PC-tethered counterpart, and the team announced that it hopes to launch both sets next year. The company’s blog also says that Oculus Android development kits are already running....

View full post on TwitterRivers in Colorado are a strange, mucky orange today following an accidental spill of over one million gallons of mining wastewater on Thursday.The spill started from the Gold King Mine where the Environmental Protection Agency had a clean-up team working with heavy machinery. According to a statement by the EPA, the contaminated water was hiding out behind debris near the mine entrance. It poured out into a nearby creek, eventually leading to a river where the spill spread....

I’ve gotten a couple of comments recently that I thought I’d post. Comment: I recently hooked up a 1970’s Tyrollia cook stove to our 80 gallon hot water tank. Our problem has been that this stove has a water jacket that is so efficient that we can’t use the water fast enough and have to let the stove burn out so it won’t boil and pop the temp/preasure relief valve. I have previously used a return bend water coil in the fire box of a cast iron cook stove and kept a 40 gallon tank hot enough to need to install a tempering valve to prevent scalding....

Robonaut 2, delivered to the International Space Station back in February, is part experiment and part butler—a research project aimed to find out the viability of a robotic helper in space. “I always caution people, this is an engineering research experiment, this isn’t a space station system yet,” deputy project manager Nic Radford says. Nevertheless, once it’s fully operational, Robonaut 2 will be able to perform some impressive feats, such as grappling its way around the ISS and learning on the job....

Media Platforms Design TeamReciprocating saws cut through just about everything short of a rock. It’s the go-to tool for remodeling and demolition. With a recip saw (also called a Sawzall, the brand name of Milwaukee’s tool), you can cut through lumber even if it’s embedded with nails. It can also cut all common forms of metal: steel, aluminum, copper, and cast iron. But to get the most out of your tool, you’ll need a few extras....

Media Platforms Design Team1. Break the sound barrier first.On Oct. 15, 1997, high in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a sonic boom cracked the air as Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green raced past 747 mph, the speed of sound, at the location’s 4000-foot elevation and ambient temperature. The Thrust SSC jet car’s twin Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans—also used in the F-4 Phantom fighter—produced 40,000 pounds of thrust, pushing the car to 759....