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Media Platforms Design TeamOur phones and our cars are colliding. Despite the National Transportation Safety Board’s recent call for a nationwide ban on ­in-car cell­phone use, car buyers are increasingly demanding smartphone-style connectivity. And carmakers are scrambling to provide interactive systems that harness or imitate the features of popular handsets. These so-called infotainment systems, such as Ford’s Sync and Toyota’s Entune, have voice control and Internet connectivity, and they can run apps such as Pandora....

Nathan Sawaya is a real pro at building things in tiny bricks. But his newest project stretched out to half a million bricks. The end result is a sleek full-size replica of the Batmobile, based on a design by Jim Lee, one of the most famous comic artists working today. The Batmobile will be part of a traveling exhibition called Art of the Brick: DC Comics, which features giant busts of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Joker, and more....

NEW YORK, Nov. 13 – Across the table from me is a man with pucks strapped to his wrists. It’s a technology called Lightglove, which uses accelerometers and image sensors to detect the movements of your wrists and fingers. “It lets you type in mid-air,” says Bruce Howard, who has been promoting the technology he developed since 1999. “It could help with carpal tunnel syndrome.” Indeed, it could, but Howard needs funding, and partners, and, most importantly, someone to pay attention to his idea....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Northeast is reeling from Hurricane Sandy’s blow to the largest population center in the United States. Along with the harrowing images of the Jersey Shore underwater and the creepy two-faced nature of a half-powered Manhattan skyline, one of the eeriest pictures of the storm is the broken construction crane dangling above 57th street.The mangled mass of metal and cable atop a half-finished luxury residential skyscraper caused whole city blocks to be evacuated....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the great conundrums of war and technology is the odd fact that there is no such thing as a permanent first-mover advantage. Commodore was an early leader in personal computers, developing and marketing the world’s best-selling desktop computer, the Commodore 64; it went bankrupt in 1994. The Ottoman Turks were the first to successfully master the use of gunpowder in fluid battle plans, becoming a powerful empire that spanned three continents; soon after, their armies were routed and they were pitied as “the sick man of Europe....

Channellock 421 PliersMedia Platforms Design TeamA pair of Channellock 421 pliers begins life as two pieces of high-carbon steel. Drop-forged and heat-treated, they are wedded together with a nut and bolt. Thereafter, the halves are joined for life. The jaws grip tenaciously without slipping. Maintenance? Practically none. Use an awl to clean gunk from between the teeth.Stanley PowerLock Tape MeasureMedia Platforms Design TeamEvery tool reaches a point of perfection–any development thereafter is detrimental....

Media Platforms Design TeamSometimes you just want to reach out and touch something. But product designers don’t always want to let you.Not so long ago, if I wanted to adjust the heat in my car, or the volume on my car radio, I could grab a nice, simple knob. Turn it to the right, and the car got warmer, or the radio got louder. Turn it the other way, and the opposite occurred....

Media Platforms Design TeamWould-be urban gardeners faced with the space constraints of a tiny terrace or fire escape typically rely on planters designed expressly for that purpose. But a large wooden planter from a home and garden store can easily set you back hundreds of dollars—a fairly ridiculous expense when you consider that they are really just empty containers. Fortunately, there’s a cheaper—and in many ways, superior—way to grow plants in small, outdoor spaces that lack natural dirt: 5-gallon drywall buckets....

A hacker calling him or herself “Body” broke in to at least 20 websites as of Sunday afternoon, targeting blogs as well as well-established news outlets such as LiveScience and Space.com. The same image–an illustration of “The Crow,” the white-faced, black-streamed comic book and movie character–appeared on all of the hacked pages, along with a string of shout-outs to (we assume) other hackers, and an occasional comment on security. For example, at www....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe human ear is a finely tuned device, capable of appreciating the nuanced genius of Yo Yo Ma or picking up the maddening drip of a faucet from many rooms away. So when Swedish scientists sought to learn more about our wondrous hearing apparatus, they looked in that most logical of all places: thefossilized remains of a prehistoric fish. Their research, based on the 370-million-year-old remains of the Panderichthys, indicates that the ear may have begun, somewhere down the evolutionary chain, as a breathing apparatus....

Media Platforms Design TeamI came across the idea of converting a chest freezer into a hyperefficient fridge while trolling the Internet. All you need to do is bypass the freezer’s internal thermostat with one set at a higher temp (around 40 degrees). It’s efficient because cold air is heavier than warm air, and it settles naturally into the freezer cavity. Very little is lost when you open the lid. I bought a secondhand, 8-cu....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen we set out to design our island, we aimed for something more than a kitchen-cabinet clone stranded in the middle of the room. Instead, we took our cue from the classic worktables of rural America, and blended in the utility you’d expect of a modern cabinet. The result is a counter-height work-station with drawers, a pullout waste bin, a storage shelf and a drop-leaf top. Best of all, our island isn’t nailed down-you can relocate it to suit the occasion, and take it with you if you move....

Mars may never feel like home, but technology is already being planned to make astronauts comfortable there. In this illustration, CG models of potential habitat pods and greenhouses meld with panoramic photos from actual Mars rovers.Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s your first hike on Mars, and so far things seem to be going well. A robot scout in a nearby canyon sent pictures of what looks remarkably like a mat of microbes....

Media Platforms Design Team"The Monster Squad," from Left to Right: Drew Brees, Xzibit, EA’s Chris Erb, Nick Cannon, Tyson Beckford, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Sheila E.Monster CEO Noel Lee rolled into the second day of pre-CES presentations on a Segway, promising to unveil new pieces of the “pure Monster sound.” But for all the glitz and celebrities of varying relevance, Lee’s company—still trying to recover from the loss of Beats by Dre, which didn’t renew its contract with Monster at the end of 2012—didn’t have much to show by way of actual audio quality....

Media Platforms Design TeamRare earth elements, a group of 17 metals that make up the powerful magnets that are so vital to our gadgets, tools, and electric/hybrid powertrains, aren’t quite as rare as the name would imply. But they difficult and dirty to extract and refine from the Earth’s crust, which makes our growing use of them a growing concern.Take dysprosium. From the Greek “dysprositos,” meaning “hard to get,” dysprosium is one of the toughest to extract, making it one of the most expensive and scare elements on the planet....

Makai Ocean Energy produces power by ocean temperature. The unique program doesn’t quite have legs yet – it can power about 120 homes per year right now – but it could open the doors to bigger facilities and more capacity for this unique form of clean energy. The plant runs on Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, wherein a series of pipes are filled with ammonia and run through the ocean. Because ammonia has a low boiling point, the surrounding warm water at 77 F is enough to boil it into a vapor, wherein it turns a turbine, as happens with most fueled power plants (like coal and nuclear) when water is poured on them....

Media Platforms Design TeamCompeting with re-thought training wheels, parachute recovery systems, automatic candle extinguishers, off-road wheelchairs and every “Quad Zipper” in between, the winner of the History Channel’sModern Marvels Invent Now Challenge wasn’t the flashiest invention on display in New York’s Grand Central Wednesday night—but it’s bound to make others green with envy.After a decade and a half of development, 54-year-old former construction supervisor David Ward walked away with a $25,000 grant and a featured spot on the History Channel’s Great Inventions Week series for his Strawjet, a farm implement that processes straw in the field into a mat for use as composite building panel....

Media Platforms Design Team>MATERIALALUMINUMPRODUCTS Drink cansRECYCLING RATEMedia Platforms Design Team1,440,000 tons Discarded/year45% is recycledENERGY SAVED BY RECYCLING 96%CARBON EMISSIONS PREVENTED 10 tons CO2/ton aluminumPRICE PER TON $1800-$2000BOTTOM LINEThe huge energy cost–and associated emissions–of producing virgin aluminum from bauxite makes recycling a no-brainer. Each empty can is currently worth about $0.03.>MATERIALGLASSPRODUCTS Bottles and jarsRECYCLING RATEMedia Platforms Design Team11,390,000 tonsDiscarded/year25% is recycledENERGY SAVED BY RECYCLING 21%CARBON EMISSIONS PREVENTED 0.34 tons CO2/ton glassPRICE PER TON $25-$40BOTTOM LINEThere’s only a marginal energy savings, and we’re not going to run out of sand....

We now know the options that the Augustine panel is going to present to the administration for the future of NASA human spaceflight, because the summary was released on Tuesday. While the full report is not yet available, the next release will just flesh out this outline with details. The verdict is grim for fans of NASA’s current implementation of the most recent President Bush’s plans to expand into the solar system starting with the moon, which, in the words of the previous NASA administrator Mike Griffin, is “Apollo on Steroids....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamANAHEIM, Calif. — One of the first announcements at this year’s three-day DARPATech conference is going to be hard to top: the first portable, self-contained surgical robot will be deployed in the next two years. Brett Giroir, director of the research agency’s Defense Sciences Office also announced that the system, called Trauma Pod, has successfully “treated” a mannequin during a test, with no complications. A single human will operate the robot remotely during surgery, but Trauma Pod will be able to perform a number of functions, such as fluid administration and surgical assistance, autonomously....