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A new DARPA air support system will enable military members to call an air strike from a tablet. The tablet interface, called Kinetic Integrated Low-cost SoftWare Integrated Tactical Combat Handheld (KILSWTICH), uses Android and can zero in on an airstrike target within a few moments.DARPA calls the program Persistent Close Air Support. The plan is for the tablets to use satellite positioning for more exact targeting and calling in UAVs to perform the strike....

Apple introduced its latest iPhone, the 3GS yesterday. The new phone will be priced at $199 for 16 GB and $299 for 32 GB (with a new, two year AT&T contract), and its most visible new feature is that its new, 3.0-megapixel camera can focus and take video, a first for the iPhone. On the inside, the 3GS will boast a faster processor. Most of the iPhone 3GS’s new functionality is already available on the Palm Pre, which costs $199 (after rebate, also with a contract)....

Media Platforms Design Teammoonlightbulb/FlickrIf you live in Los Angeles, you might be able to earn a few extra bucks and leave behind the dreaded job of mowing the lawn in one fell swoop. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has a program that actually pays property owners for eliminating turfgrass from their landscape.Traditional lawns may be aesthetically pleasing, but they also require lots of maintenance and copious amounts of water....

A security hole in Android could allow an app to track you anytime, even without access to your GPS signal. All an attacker would need to do is use an app—any app you download onto your phone—to track your phone’s battery information. Stanford University and Rafael, Israeli’s DARPA equivalent, found the vulnerability, which could be used to track a user without the person’s permission and report their location with 90 percent accuracy....

Media Platforms Design TeamHardcore motorcycle tourers are so fanatic about adapting to varying levels of daylight that unless they own a helmet with a built-in, fighter pilot-style retractable shield, they’ll routinely pack an extra, untinted helmet visor in their saddlebag for when the going gets rainy or dark. AMA SuperBike racer Josh Herrin doesn’t have the luxury of swapping shields while aboard his Monster Energy Graves Yamaha YZF-R1, so the professional knee dragger wears a not-so-secret weapon while battling the field of literbikes: clipped to his Bell Star Carbon helmet is a Transitions shield that can go from fully clear to completely dark in about 10 seconds....

Media Platforms Design TeamThough car manufacturers tout small vehicles engineered with sophisticated crash protection and umpteen airbags, the “bigger is better” argument just got a boost: a study by Insure.com suggests that large cars and trucks rack up fewer injury claims than do smaller vehicles, based on insurance rates for personal injury protection and medical payments. According to Insure.com editorial director Amy Danise, “[the rates] reflect real-world claims for crashes and injuries....

Catenary Solar ReflectorReader: Tho X. BuiPhoenix, Ariz. It’s not just a hanging sheet of steel, it’s a solar reflector. Tho Bui’s project may be rudimentary, but to him that’s its biggest benefit. He took the familiar shape of a hanging chain, realized it could be used to concentrate solar energy, and began experimenting with solar reflectors shaped only by their own weight. The “catenary” shape materials take on in this position is similar to a parabola, but with a few key differences, including the key ability to focus light even when it doesn’t come from just one angle....

This oblong building with a hollowed out center, looking like a cross between a Bajoran emblem and an onion ring, is the Museum of the Future. Set to open in Dubai in 2017, the wonder building fits in quite well with Dubai’s goal of promoting itself as a futuristic city in the desert. View full post on Twitter"Museum" is something of a misnomer, because the creators intend for this place to be just as much a tech incubator, with robotics and drone demonstrations abounding....

“Remember Sputnik? Everyone stopped and realized how far America had fallen behind,” said Popular Mechanics Next Generation Award winner Kelydra Welcker, though at 18, she was looking forward more than she could possibly remember back. “One hunk of metal made the entire American public open their eyes.“With American high school seniors performing below the international average for 21 countries in math and science as that big ball of Cold War scientific innovation turns 50, top students and educators agreed today that even another Sputnik doesn’t come along, there needs to be an ambitious plan to increase awareness of scientific education....

Media Platforms Design TeamGodzilla, released today, marks the 60th anniversary of the legendary movie monster’s first appearance in Ishiro Honda’s 1954 . Having grown up watching Godzilla’s earliest adventures on WKBS Channel 48’s Creature Double Feature in Philadelphia, I was cautiously optimistic when Legendary Pictures tapped British director Gareth Edwards to helm their latest installment. It couldn’t be worse than 1998’s , right?GojiraGodzillaI say cautiously only because Edwards only had one film to his credit: the indie feature Monsters, a post-apocalyptic disaster movie about a crashed space probe and the subsequent mutations it releases into the world....

Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Newscom.com)It’s been over a year since we were first introduced to the iPhone. In that time, Apple has barely touched its initial handset (the only notable hardware update was a recent memory boost), giving the competition ample time to play catch-up with new products—tons of which are on display at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona this week. And while the post-iPhone hardware offerings from the likes of Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson are certainly solid, there’s nothing yet that will drive gadget fanatics—or even a new base of industry-weary fair-weather fans—into any sort of line-up-in-the-cold frenzy....

Tomorrow is Google I/O, Google’s big yearly shindig for developers. But it’s not all classes and coding powwows. We’ll be getting some juicy announcements, too. So what can we expect from the big keynote speech tomorrow? A whole ton of stuff including a new version of Android, probably some new smartwatches, and more. Here are the rumors and theories that are floating around, ranked roughly by the likelihood they’ll actually happen....

NASA administrator Michael Griffin has apologized to a top group of engineers and scientists for the controversial comments he made last week about global warming. “Unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it,” he said in a close-door session at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Griffin’s earlier remarks made us revisit NASA’s changing priorities regarding earth-based research, but we plan to hear from NASA’s chief himself this weekend at the big Atlantis Shuttle launch....

Crosswind landings—when the wind is blowing sideways across the runway—are harrowing to watch. Planes just don’t look right when they slide like that. But for all the nail-biting, it’s always fantastically satisfying to see one go off without a hitch. Especially when plane in question is an Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane in the world. View full post on YoutubeThe flight, on its way in from Dubai, made its careful landing at Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport....

Q: There’s a big oak tree in my yard that I’m going to have removed. I want to turn its trunk into lumber for a woodworking project. What do I do with the logs after the tree is cut down?—Noah H., HoustonA: The first challenge will be finding a sawmill willing to saw the tree into planks for you. Many will not bother with this kind of wood. Yard trees, as they’re called, can be loaded with hardware: old eye screws from a hammock, spikes from a tree fort, barbed wire....

Yesterday morning, Los Angeles dodged another bullet. The earthquake that originated near Chino Hills, roughly 35 miles east of downtown L.A., was powerful enough to rattle homes and damage a hotel near the epicenter. But with a magnitude of 5.4, it was classified by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as a moderate quake–one of 39 such events in the country this year. A moderate earthquake could pose a serious threat in some regions, particularly in places like New York City, where many brownstones were built more than a century ago....

LAS VEGAS — Greetings from The National Hardware Show in Las Vegas where more than 3,300 exhibitors from all over the world have come to show off their latest products in the hardware, tool, and lawn and garden industries. As I was walking the crowded aisles earlier today, I was struck by the wide variety of products on display. Have you ever looked at your plain white toilet seat and thought, “Gee, that sure could use some embelllishment?...

As promised a couple weeks ago, here’s our first report on Victory’s current lineup. The Hammer, introduced last year, is a muscle cruiser for the straight line performance-minded rider. And it doesn’t come up short in the acceleration department. In fact, I feel like a hooligan on this bike, because I just wanna pull the trigger all the time to hear belching exhaust notes from the optional Arlen Ness pipes. They seem to be more styled than tuned, but the attendants down in PM’s parking garage here in Manhattan don’t mind the Hammer’s roar as much as that other patron’s painful straight-shot “mufflers....

Media Platforms Design TeamDuring its big event on Wednesday, Microsoft gave a peek into Project Spartan, its new web browser that is primed for the release of the upcoming Windows 10 OS and designed to work with the Surface tablet and its stylus. Microsoft says the browser is designed to easily integrate with other Microsoft apps, including OneDrive. It also features the ability to annotate a web page and share those annotations with other features....

Media Platforms Design Team→ Entering Turn One after the 3,330-foot front stretch, cars are generally running at 225 mph, but the drivers keep the gas pedal floored. Tire scrub reduces speed to a still-insane 220 mph.→ A driver running flat out sustains more than 3 g’s in all the turns. So a 160-pound driver presses against the side of the cockpit with 480 lbs. of force.→ Because Indycars rev up to 16,000 RPM, they provide a brutal test for consumer engine oils....