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Media Platforms Design TeamIn a seemingly endless effort to differentiate the environments in which new cars are experienced by journalists, automakers go from the Costa del Sol to the untamed backroads of rural India to show off their latest offerings. Subaru already previewed their BRZ in Japan and along Southern France’s Route Napoleon, but after setting the automotive lap record at last year’s Isle of Man TT with a WRX STi (the first time a car had run the course in over 20 years), Subaru cheekily announced yet another BRZ launch, saying they “lied, begged and pleaded long enough with the organizers” to allow journalists to be the first non-racers to drive the storied road course at speed for the first time....

Everyone’s going turbocharged. Small displacement and turbochargers are the way to the high-performance future. The BMW M3 ditched its V8 for a turbo six. The new Cadillac ATS-V has room under the hood for a V8, but GM deliberately went with a turbocharged six instead. And Lexus finally smartened up and swapped the IS250’s 2.5-liter V6 for a 2.0-liter turbo four that’s way more powerful.And here, bucking the trend, we have the Lexus RC-F....

A grandfather today isn’t your father’s grandfather. He isn’t your grandfather, either. In fact, a grandfather today is healthier, wealthier and wiser than any grandfather ever before, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report called 65+ in the United States 2005. In a nutshell, the report revealed that growing old in the U.S. doesn’t mean what it used to: As baby boomers begin to reach the 65-year threshold, aging only continues to redefine itself....

Media Platforms Design TeamNASDAQ, long known as the marketplace for companies based in Silicon Valley, added TSLA to its index on June 29 when Tesla Motors sold 13.3 million shares at $17 per share, raising just over $226 million in the Palo Alto car company’s initial public offering. Interest was so great that Tesla increased its planned offering by 2.1 million shares at the last minute. Investment banks notwithstanding, much of the hype surrounding this particular IPO was due to a single investor: Toyota Motor Company....

Media Platforms Design TeamAh, the past. Some parts of it are forgotten, other parts involve the British Empire, and then there’s the small portion of it that was caught on video. Take, for instance, the video below, an NBC news segment from 1996 exposing the “dangers” of playing virtual reality games.Reporter Kerry Sanders starts by suggesting that virtual reality games “make the impossible possible,” even though the graphics are terrible and boring....

US gasoline inventories dropped by 5,000,000 barrels for the week ending March 30. Why is that a big deal? It’s a big deal because analysts were expecting a modest, 300,000 barrels and it’s a big deal because this is the time of year when we should be building stocks in preparation for the summer driving season. Instead, we now have gasoline stocks in the lower range of average. Can you say $4 gas The other big news on the energy front is today’s front page treatment of Mexico’s supergiant Cantarell field in the Wall Street Journal....

Some may say that the worst is over for Toyota. Its company honchos have endured the ritual humiliation on Capitol Hill. The death-machine headlines have abated. And dealers are fixing recalled cars. Perhaps the storm has passed. But questions still linger—notably, what will be the ultimate consequence of Toyota’s nightmare episode? One outcome, according to Toyota, is the implementation of a standard company-wide brake over-ride system. This system will close the throttle whenever the brake pedal is pressed....

The X15 flamethrower is a personal, consumer flamethrower that exists purely because of course it does. Who hasn’t wanted to stand with a tank on their back, arms akimbo while spewing great gusts of fire into the sky? Now you can, for $1,600.When I asked XMatter, the folks behind the X15, why they decided to sell consumer flamethrowers, co-founder Quinn Whitehead immediately responded, “Why not? This is America, land of the free,” before laughing and digging into his real pitch....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe driver sits on the right side of this vintage racer, a 1929 Ford Roadster from New Zealand.>RELATED STORIES* FIRST LOOK: British Steam Car Hits Road for 170 MPH at Bonneville* COMPLETE COVERAGE: Follow Daily Galleries From Speed Week 2008!Media Platforms Design TeamDown under they call these car/truck hybrids “Utes.” This 1952 Chevrolet “Ute” was used as a support vehicle for a team of racers from New Zealand....

You’ve heard about the earmarks in the recent $700 billion bailout, but what about the recently passed 2009 Defense Appropriations Bill? It’s not all about tanks, fighter jets and bullets: The defense bill has traditionally been a magnet for earmarks (also known as pork barrel or member projects) that tend to benefit companies or initiatives in the lawmakers’ home districts or states. Congress, in approving the budget, appropriated billions of dollars to R&D programs that the Pentagon did not ask for....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design Team He’s certainly best known for inventing the Segway in 2001, but before that Dean Kamen had already come up with a stair-climbing wheelchair called the iBOT—not to mention lightweight medical devices to grant mobility to cancer and diabetes patients. He’s been developing breakthrough technologies for improving lives in the poorest parts of the world ever since, racking up 440 patents and a secure status as one of America’s top engineers....

A lifetime is normally too short to see mountains rise, rivers change course, or valleys sink—but after geologists from Addis Ababa University watched crevices part the ground in Central Ethiopia like a zipper, they realized that Mother Nature is quickly building a new ocean, and the Afar Triangle near the Horn of Africa is its construction site. In recent months, scientists have seen hundreds of these fissures split and sink a 345-square-mile chunk of desert floor across Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, allowing magma to rise from the Earth’s depths and triggering a weeklong series of earthquakes....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn the afternoon of Aug. 9, 2010, eight passengers climbed into a single-engine De Havilland Otter floatplane at a fishing lodge near Dillingham, Alaska. A light rain was falling from the low-hung clouds, and gusty winds roiled the surface of the lake, but the group was keen to press on to the next destination, a fishing camp on the Nushagak River. The poor weather had delayed them all morning, but now, finally, the pilot was giving them the thumbs-up....

Media Platforms Design TeamView full post on YoutubeRussia’s most powerful space launcher plunged to the ground Friday, destroying a state-of­-the-art communications satellite it was supposed to carry to orbit. A Proton-M rocket blasted off from Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan at 5:42 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday (Friday morning local time) and was seconds away from reaching an initial Earth orbit before the disaster struck. For the Proton-M, Russia’s workhorse rocket, these fiery crashes are happening with tragic regularity....

Geologist Trevor Williams, of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, will be spending six weeks at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, taking part in a study of the sea-floor sediments beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. The results could aid our understanding of climate change. Williams will be filing reports here throughout the project. CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand, Nov. 19 – It takes a long time to get to Antarctica. A day and a half of flights, from New York to Los Angeles to Sydney to here, gave me the opportunity to watch “You, Me, and Dupree” eight times over....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast night, some 60 of our friends and colleagues got together to salute Don Chaikin as he moves into retirement. Yes, after 15 years as Popular Mechanics’ automotive editor and three decades in the magazine industry, Don Chaikin is hanging up the keys to the Popular Mechanics test fleet.Don achieved his success as Popular Mechanics’ automotive editor the old fashioned way: He earned it. Don is a former high school English teacher turned Detroit Diesel/Allison service technician....

It’s a mystery that dates back at least 15 years: The makeup of the Sun looks totally different depending on how exactly scientists study it. In fact, the amount of heavier elements in the sun can appear to vary by as much as 20 to 30 percent.A new theory proposed by a team of astrophysicists, including Pat Scott at Imperial College London, explains that the cause could be related to a patch of dark matter at the Sun’s core....

Media Platforms Design TeamImages via NASA.Since it reached the orbit of Saturn 10 years ago today, the Cassini spacecraft has captured mind-blowing images and collected invaluable data about the ringed planet and its multitude of moons. Launched from Earth in 1997, the probe was originally approved for a four-year mission, but that mission has now been extended three times. Good thing, too. With so much time spent in orbit of the sixth planet, Cassini has studied not only the gorgeous gas giant but also moons such as Titan, with its great hydrocarbon lakes, and Enceladus, with its jets of ice....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a quiet morning in San Francisco, with soft sunlight illuminating patches of thick fog billowing over the Golden Gate Bridge. A solitary unmanned aircraft—a 4-pound, battery-powered wedge of impact-resistant foam with a 54-inch wingspan, a single pusher-propeller in the rear, and a GoPro video camera attached to its body—quietly approaches the landmark.Raphael “Trappy” Pirker controls the aircraft from a nearby hill. The bridge is within sight, but the 29-year-old enjoys the scenery through virtual-reality goggles strapped to his head....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week, a team of Iowa Girl Scouts earned $20,000—and it wasn’t by selling Thin Mint cookies. The girls, who call themselves “The Flying Monkeys,” are the first recipients of the Global Innovation Award, a new annual competition from FIRST Lego League (FLL). FLL, a division of the FIRST Robotics competition for younger participants, challenges 11- to 14-year-olds to invent solutions to global problems. The FLL Global Innovation Award was established to help FLL teams patent and prototype their creative solutions to each year’s Lego League Challenge....