LAS VEGAS – We’re enjoying our Honda Fit long-term test car. It’s comfortable, gets great mileage and has genuine sportiness found on very few sub-compact cars. But we never thought it would be the darling of the SEMA show. We saw Fits all over the place this year. Now, most were wearing the typical sport compact accoutrements—dropped suspension, big wheels and tires, and the obligatory body kit. But a few had genuine performance under the hood....
As if strengthening the levee system protecting New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was not already a difficult task, scientists have revealed another geological challenge facing engineers: The city and much of the Mississippi Delta is sliding slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. While satellite images have already shown a massive redistribution of land, a new study actually measuring the slide has revealed that the unstable coastland is sliding into the ocean at a rate of approximately 2....
View full post on YoutubeNot every Super Bowl ad is for a fast car or a watery beer. Every once in a while, there’s one for a bomber.Two contender are vying to build the Pentagon’s next bomber—which might be the last human-piloted bomber for at least the next few decades. There’s Boeing-Lockheed, then there’s Northrop Grumman, which just released this tease for its design, with a hangar view of the behemoth Long Range Strike-Bomber....
The Claim: “Sealing your bathroom can be a disaster,” says the ad, revealing a wide shot of a man slathered in silicone. “Your fingers were never meant to be used like this!” Pro Caulk’s three flexible polymeric disks use 12 corner shapes to smooth a bead of caulk to a crisp, clean edge. “Any edge, any corner, any joint—Pro Caulk gives you a perfect finish in minutes.” The Test: Applying silicone caulk over several exterior window casings, both in straight runs and in challenging corners....
When robot-maker Foster-Miller strapped machine guns onto a trio of bomb-disposal bots and sent them to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007, the company created the first armed robots to be deployed in a war zone. Still, no robot has ever actually fired a shot in combat. “Weaponized robots represent a new technology that is only in the developmental stages,” says Duane Gotvald, a deputy at the Pentagon’s Robotic Systems Joint Project Office....
Media Platforms Design TeamIn all of the furor over the president’s new space policy, announced in February with the release of its planned NASA budget, and with all of the hyperbolic commentary about how commercial space isn’t ready to take on the tasks of delivering astronauts to orbit, one stark fact has received far too little attention. Simply put, NASA has not successfully developed a new launch system in three decades....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhen a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti last year, 80 percent of the buildings at Grace Children’s Hospital in the capital, Port-au-Prince, toppled. Grace’s inpatient ward, which provided care to more than 300 children each year with tuberculosis, HIV and other ailments, was condemned and demolished. As much of Haiti’s critical infrastructure crumbled after the disaster, the hospital pushed on by stringing up tarps outdoors and salvaging old cribs and beds so it could continue helping patients, including those sickened by cholera, the first outbreak in the nation in decades Around the same time the quake hit, a Massachusetts-based organization called Containers2Clinics (C2C) and its partners were busy overhauling two 8 x 20–foot shipping containers into a maternal-care clinic....
Media Platforms Design TeamHere it is: the first image from the long-time-coming Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). That dot you can clearly see is Beta Pictoris b, a young planet that orbits a star about 63 light years from Earth.GPI, which has been in development for about a decade, is an instrument used on the Gemini South telescope in Chile. (As the name would suggest, the Gemini Observatory comprises a pair of telescopes, each one measuring more than 26 feet across....
“Stingrays” are small devices around the size of a briefcase that pretend to be a cellphone tower to trick unwitting phones into handing over identifying information. Government agencies like the NSA and the FBI have been using them to surrepticiously track people for years, and new documents obtained by The Guardian show that even the IRS has had its hands on this tech. Heavily redacted invoices obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request show that in 2009 and 2012, the IRS made purchases from Harris Corporation, which makes Stingray devices....
DETROIT — When we began our coverage of the Detroit show this weekend, we pointed out that the real value of this event lies not in the new models or concepts that are shown here. Rather, the true importance of the Detroit show is that it is an accurate indicator of the mood of the auto industry at the beginning—or, if you’d rather, end—of the year. And that mood has, basically, not been a good one....
Funnyman, car guy and host of both NBC’s upcoming Top Gear USA and The Adam Carolla Show on KLSX radio in Los Angeles, Adam Carolla tells PM in no uncertain terms that the years of poor product coming from GM and the rest of Detroit brought these companies to the brink. Popular Mechanics: So do you support the idea of bailing out the auto industry? Adam Carolla: Every car guy or maybe even every American is torn because we hate to see these marques we’ve grown up with go away....
Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamAfter the successful debut of the $2500 Nano in January, Tata Motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover, and now plans to build an all-electric microcar and mainstream hybrid for the AXP (Photograph by James Vlahos)Watch out, Tesla: The world’s second-favorite darling for mega-efficient, production-ready cars on the fringe of the industry’s top tier is ready to steal your $10 million—and do it on the cheap....
Yesterday, we saw the proprietor of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel show us how to make an ancient axe with one’s bare hands. Today, he’s on to something bigger: an entire domicile.Using only simple tools and materials found in the forest, he crafts an entire wattle and daub-style hut. The wooden structure stands 2 meters tall with walls that are a meter high on the sides. Besides the wood for the the frame, he needs only vine and lawyer cane for the lashings and mud to make the daubing—the sticky material used to coat the walls....
Frost clings to Idaho’s Salmon-Challis National Forest when, one February morning, Tony Latham and Scott Bragonier follow a trail of boot prints through the snow. Latham kneels and examines a small hole–one of many that run parallel to the prints–and pulls from the bottom a frozen meatball. He drops it into a plastic evidence bag and moves on to the next hole, and the next. In one area where the snow has begun to melt, a softened meatball breaks open; a black granular substance glints in the sun....
Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: October 2013Base Price: $15,495 to $18,995 Competitors: Fiat 500L, Hyundai Veloster, Mini Countryman, Nissan Juke, Nissan CubePowertrains: 1.6-liter I-4, 130 hp, 118 lb-ft; 2.0-liter I-4, 164 hp, 151 lb-ft; six-speed manual, six-speed automatic, FWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy, est.): 24–25/29–31 What’s New: It’s hard to tell the 2014 Soul from the 2013 without a side-by-side comparison. But the 2014 is thoroughly different from the old Soul: It has new foundations, new sheet metal, new interior, updated infotainment, retuned suspension, and revised powertrains....
Media Platforms Design TeamA warm, well-insulated garage will provide you usable workspace all year round, even when the outside temperatures drop to frightening lows. But even if you’re not planning to spend much time in the shop this winter, there’s still good reason to winterize your garage: you could save yourself money and hassle later.A garage that gets too cold can damage not only to your car but also to the equipment you’re storing there....
Media Platforms Design Team5. Hamilton Beach Tango Commercial Bar BlenderFruitAfter we spent 21 seconds trying to blend a banana mixed with some soy milk and ice, almost all of the banana remained. We mixed the contents around a bit by hand and turned the Tango on for an additional 36 seconds, but its blades came to a standstill against the ice and fruit long before that time was up. We smelled smoke and cut the motor....
Archaeologists from the VU University Amsterdam claim they have found evidence that an ancient Roman battlefield in Kessel—a village in the southern Netherlands—coincides with Julius Caesar’s conquest of the Germanic tribes in northern Europe. Weapons and remains extracted in the area are the first hard evidence that Julius Caesar and his legions of troops crossed into what is now Dutch territory. In addition to traditional archeological methods, researchers used carbon dating techniques to discover the age of multiple spearheads and swords, a helmet, belt hooks, and even skeletal remains....
Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s not often I’m able to review a product that’s aimed squarely at my heartstrings, but when my one and a half year-old son audibly gasped as a small red Audi emerged from a curiously sized box left at my doorstep, I knew all objectivity was lost.Equipped with quiet 5-spoke rotor wheels, a flat-bottomed steering wheel, and a faithful reproduction of Audi’s distinctively trapezoidal grille, it would have been easy to dismiss the toy’s lack of suspension compliance, torsional rigidity, and basic creature comforts like wind protection and locomotive capabilities beyond Fred Flintstone-era technology....
Lincoln’s Alphabet The paint is hardly dry on the Lincoln Zephyr and the car already has a name change. For the 2007 model year, call it Lincoln MKZ. The change is in line with Lincoln’s policy to give its models letter names. Think MKX, its new crossover model. That car was known as the Aviator right up until just before it was unveiled at the Detroit show last month. The MKZ will have a number of new features to go along with its new designation, including a 250-hp 3....
