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The EventThe Concours is on a Sunday and caps off -Monterey Car Week, which consists of many geographically scattered functions—smaller shows, group drives, auctions, and races at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Most cars arrive by Monday, and many participate in multiple events, requiring planning to keep Pebble’s roads free. SelectionsAs soon as one show is over, the selection committee begins fielding applications for the next year’s Concours. Accepted applicants are notified in April and begin working with one of two point people who coordinate national and international travel....

Following the news that a nurse diagnosed with Ebola had flown on a Frontier Airlines jet while possibly contagious, Frontier took the extraordinary step of furloughing two pilots and even ripping out seat cushions from the plane in question. And that’s just the beginning. As airlines brace for the inevitable fallout, economic and otherwise, some are taking serious measures to try to prevent ebola from spreading on their planes. Are they overreacting?...

Media Platforms Design Team Browse expert reviews and compare info on the 9-3 at the Media Platforms Design Team Restyled to show off the bold look of the Aero X concept, the new 9-3 is actually more new than you might think. Saab told us that many of the components are all-new or upgraded—bodywork forward of the A-pillar is fresh, plus updates on all lights and both bumpers. It’s available as a sedan, convertible or Combi (station wagon for us ‘Murricans), but the biggest news is that Saab’s finally getting with all-wheel drive....

Media Platforms Design TeamTwo soldiers were wiping, waxing, polishing and shining their Hummer H3 up to military specifications. This H3 is a lot more comfortable of a ride than their real Humvees.RELATED STORIES• PLUS: 2010 Acura TSX V6, 280 HP in Small Sedan• FIRST LOOK: 2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe R-Spec Drift Racer• EARLIER: 2010 Dodge Ram Has Aggressive Style and Towing Capacity• 2009 CHICAGO AUTO SHOW: Check Out PM’s Live Coverage Here!...

Media Platforms Design TeamSeattle— Once a government-issue workhorse of communist Russia, Ural’s rugged motorcycle sidecar has evolved from an agricultural appliance to the steed of choice for certain Western recreational thrill seekers. The cult of off-road sidecar riders may be a small niche, but their enthusiasm for traversing seemingly impassable terrain is infectious. Attacking moonscapes like Death Valley, Moab and Copper Canyon, these hearty enthusiasts revel in the simple pleasures of loading up their hacks with ballast, clicking their two wheel-drive into gear, and hopping, rocking and grinding their way through topography that would make a traditional two-wheeler skulk home....

What dangers do lithium-ion batteries pose? You can get six times the energy density in a lithium battery that you can in a lead-acid battery and two or three times as much as in a nickel-metal hydride battery. Any time you pack more energy into a smaller space, your safety concerns go up. All the lithium-ion systems being tested right now use an electrolyte that is flammable, so one of the safety issues that we are very concerned about is how these electrolytes can burn when the cells have been ruptured....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe first full day of the World Science Festival came to a conclusion Thursday night with “The Dark Side of the Universe,” in which festival co-founder Brian Greene, along with other prominent experts and award-winning journalist John Hockenberry, probed the mysterious nature of the dark matter and dark energy that make up most of our universe. Scientists agree that the universe is indeed expanding, at an increasing rate....

Can people walk through walls?Fringe loves to toe the line between science fact and fiction, but this time its tilted far over onto the fiction side. In the episode, mad scientist Walter Bishop concludes that the thieves would’ve needed cutting-edge knowledge of quantum physics, plus more money than many banks’ assets combined, to make it through the wall. However, the closest thing to a scientific explanation Bishop offers is a lab demonstration with rice–when he puts an action figure on top of a bowl of uncooked rice, it can stand on top, but when he shakes the back it sinks to the bottom....

It was NASA’s Halloween nightmare: The most ambitious International Space Station (ISS) construction mission yet, STS-120, stalled in midflight late last month when an unfurling solar-array wing suffered critical damage. As the crew extended the delicate, 120-ft. array, a frayed guide wire in the deployment mechanism snagged and tore two accordionlike panels, threatening to fatally weaken the power array. Discovery’s mission and the eventual completion of the space station were riding on NASA’s ability to come up with a fix....

Media Platforms Design TeamSuzuki Jimney. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Tennen-GasYesterday American Suzuki Motor Corporation filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. That means we’ll no longer see new Suzuki cars and trucks on our roads after the current inventory has been sold, though sales of Suzuki’s motorcycles, ATVs, and marine products will continue.It didn’t have to be this way if Suzuki had decided to sell proper Suzukis in the United States.Suzuki’s cars and SUVs have sold unimpressively for years....

The unmistakable feel of metal scraping skin forces me to look down at my right hand. I see blood welling up from the middle knuckle of my index finger. I had thought that the space beside the transmission tunnel of Local Motors’ Rally Fighter (think: a street-legal version of Mad Max’s desert racer) could accommodate both my hand and a seat track. But it couldn’t—at least not while I was trying to wrestle the seat into position and bolt it to the floor—and now I have a slice in my flesh....

Rollercoaster Tycoon is one of the best ways to live out your dream of being a rollercoaster designer. It’s almost trivial to build rides so terrifying no one will ever ride them, or to build coasters that will thrill riders up until the second it kills them. The easier and most popular way to do that is just to make your coaster end in mid-air, but one mad genius found a more interesting way: make a coaster so slow and so long that its passengers would starve to death....

Media Platforms Design TeamIn the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the federal government was ready to investigate solutions to nearly every terrorist threat to civilian aviation. Nearly 10 years later, there has been a subtle shift away from some high-tech solutions to real but low-probability threats. In the case of shoulder-launched missiles aimed at commercial airliners, the government has changed tactics from gadgetry to policy; the White House and Congress this year quietly stopped funding laser-jamming equipment that could scramble missiles as they track the heat of aircraft....

It’s a grinding noise that follows you around town–at least it sounds like it’s following because the sound is coming from the rear of your vehicle. You only hear it when you use the brakes. You grab a flashlight to check the thickness of the rear pads–but then realize you’ve got rear drums, not discs. Well, it’s time to fix the problem, because you’ve worn out the linings on your rear brake shoes, and that grinding noise means the shoes are going metal-to-metal with the inside of the drums....

Media Platforms Design TeamYou submitted a proposal to NASA in late January for the next phase of the commercial crew programtaking astronauts to the International Space Station. What will the contract look like if you win?Two things that happen in the contract. One is that we, working together with NASA, would produce and certify a vehicle that’s ready for flight. So if it was an airplane, for example, it would be the FAA certifying a Boeing 787 Dreamliner....

Media Platforms Design TeamChances are you’re never going to get to take a flight in the cockpit of a P-51 Mustang. Chances are even slimmer that you’d be able to do the same while a F-22 Raptor shadows you as your wingman.Luckily, there’s this bit of 360° video from YouTube and the Heritage Flight Museum, in which you can jump in the back seat of a P-51 and a take a sunset flight, all while looking in any direction you please....

Media Platforms Design TeamWithin the past year or two, performance-minded hatchbacks blew up in the U.S. The Fiat 500’s American introduction served as a quasi-litmus test for the segment as a whole, and now even GM and Ford have brought their own souped-up subcompacts stateside.But the progenitor of all this hot hatch hullabaloo in the U.S is the one against which all others are measured: the 1983 VW Rabbit GTI. And ahead of the Geneva Motor Show, today Volkswagen released the vitals on the next generation of its high-performance hatch: the 2014 Golf GTI Mk VII....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe mountaineers were giddy as the sunrise revealed the conditions they had been so patiently waiting for: a clear, cloudless sky blanketing the Rooftop of the World. It was Aug. 1, 2008, and the two-dozen extreme sportsmen had been biding their time in the hopes of summiting K2, the second-highest peak in the world and one of the most challenging and dangerous climbs there is. After weeks of delay, the window had arrived....

Media Platforms Design Team10. Ironman Resolution Vibration Trainer | $2000"Finally, a type of exercise everyone can stick with." So says the product page for the Ironman Resolution Vibration Trainer. There are at least two problems with that statement. First, it’s not an exercise–you get on the machine, and it vibrates. You can do sit-ups or push-ups or squats, but let’s be clear: Being vibrated is not an exercise. And second, we challenge anyone to “stick with” this so-called exercise....

Media Platforms Design TeamU.S. Air Force photo by Sarah CorriceVehicle to grid technology is easy to explain. Parked electric vehicles plug in to recharge, but can also feed juice back into the grid when they have plenty and there’s a grid demand for more. But demonstrating a real, working version of the concept is much harder.Better leave it to the Air Force.Perhaps surprisingly, the U.S. government’s leader in electric vehicle tech is not the EPA nor the Department of Energy, but the Air Force....