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NEW YORK — The annual Memorial Day weekend tradition of Fleet Week began yesterday in New York City, as 11 Navy ships arrived in the harbor to berth on Manhattan’s West Side and on Statten Island. We were waiting as the USS Kearsarge tightened her dock lines after a short, two day sail from Norfolk, VA. With an escort from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), we boarded moments after the gangplank rolled out, bucking a tide of Sailors and Marines anxious for some Manhattan liberty time....

Media Platforms Design TeamA close call between a hobby drone and a Chinese jet fighter was captured by the drone’s camera. The encounter occurred over an unspecified city in China. The fighter, which appears to be a Shenyang J-8 “Finback”, does not seem to notice the hovering quadcopter drone as it passes by at a distance of only a few hundred meters, and at virtually the same altitude. For your average driver, a few hundred meters is plenty of distance, but for even a slow moving jet, that’s dangerously close....

The future of space could soon belong to private companies—the soon-to-be retired space shuttle is being replaced by private launchers, space tourists are snapping pictures from the International Space Station, global positioning systems are ubiquitous, and entrepreneurs are building suborbital craft destined for use by paying customers. But the mood at the Space Business Forum, an annual gathering of investors and space geeks held in New York City, was impatience to get the feds out of the way so the private sector can attract investments and grow quicker....

Media Platforms Design TeamAndy Casagrande had dreamed of swimming with sharks ever since he was a kid growing up in a small town near Pittsburgh. He finally got his chance in 2005. Armed with nothing but a Sony Handycam in a DIY waterproof case and his own nerve, Casagrande slipped over the side of a boat and into the waters known as Shark Alley, off South Africa’s Western Cape province.Within seconds Casagande’s dream was coming all too true: A great white shark came gliding toward him....

With the discovery of the Japanese battleship Musashi, sunk in the Sibuyan Sea off the Philippines in October 1944, one of the lost legends of World War II—and one of the biggest warships ever constructed—has been found.The search was funded by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder. It took eight years. Last year, Allen’s team closely sonar-mapped the Subuyan seafloor. This year, they sent an autonomous underwater vehicle to investigate sites of interest the survey had revealed....

The way water comes in and goes out of the home is one of those processes we take for granted–until we can’t take a shower or make the toilet flush properly. A call to a licensed plumber can mean an expensive hourly fee, but the science of plumbing is fairly straightforward, and most problems are simpler to solve than you might think. So grab a mop and then turn the page–you might just be able to fix that dripping faucet on your own more quickly and with less effort than it takes to find a pro....

Q: I have a problem with the ABS in my 1992 Buick Park Avenue. One day as I was driving, the car just started to slow down all by itself. After a lot of looking and trial and error, I unplugged the rear wheel sensor and the problem stopped. My question is, since I unplugged the sensor do I still have all-wheel braking?A: If your ABS (or at least the system on your Buick) packs up, you’ll still have brakes on all four wheels, but without the benefit of the antilock feature....

Media Platforms Design TeamLand of the Lost: The Complete Series Seven-Disc Box Set (2009)Media Platforms Design TeamLand of the Lost: The Complete Series has been out of print for some time and is now being re-released to coincide with Will Ferrell’s big-budget spoof of the classic ’70s Saturday morning TV show. Produced by the legendary Sid and Marty Krofft, the show was an update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and, thankfully, the Krofft brothers were able to bring on several talented sci-fi writers including Star Trek alums David Gerrold, Larry Niven and Ben Bova....

If you’re a person who hates washing your car as much as I do (and I really, really do) you might think General Electric’s latest development, superhydrophobicity, is just about the greatest thing ever. Inspired by the lotus leaf – which uses a rough nano-wax to repel water, dust and just about everything else - the GE researchers developed a hydrophilic polymer that’s resistant to even the gooiest liquids (even honey!...

Q: Will a new Wireless N router increase the range and speed of my Wi-Fi connection if my laptop only has a Wireless G card?A: Range? Probably. Speed? Less likely. Part of what gives the emerging Wireless N (or 802.11n) Wi-Fi standard its superduper speeds — up to 540 megabits per second (Mbps) with a strong tail wind — is something called Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output, or MIMO. The technology is pretty easy to understand: Multiple antennas are used to send and receive data using a number of identical signals simultaneously, increasing the overall data throughput....

Media Platforms Design TeamUpdate 7 p.m. Eastern, Jan. 26: Not only did NASA spot 2004 BL86, but as the asteroid neared the Earth-Moon system, a small companion object in orbit around the asteroid was discovered. The newly discovered satellite asteroid is just 230 feet across, compared to the 1100-foot parent asteroid. A number of asteroids are known to have orbiting bodies already, including many near-Earth objects.Media Platforms Design TeamAn asteroid is heading toward Earth’s neighborhood today, but don’t worry—this space rock isn’t on a collision course....

Delta H20 Kinetics ShowerheadMedia Platforms Design TeamIt’s hard to connect the Cold War with the International Builders’ Show, but its technology is alive and well in the most unlikely place: a water-conserving shower head from Delta. Researchers back in the Cold War days attempted to modulate fluid flow to mimic electronic signals, hoping to produce an uncrackable fluidic code. The technology worked, but there were better solutions, so the government never used it....

Media Platforms Design TeamUSS New York makes her way up the Hudson River.1) Invisible InvasionsMedia Platforms Design TeamThe New York’s eye-catching shape, with two smooth cone shapes jutting from the deck, attracted thousands of gawkers as it moored on the west side of Manhattan. However, this shape is meant to allow the ship to remain undetected by enemy radar. Every surface on the ship’s outside decks is faceted at 10 degree angles to prevent radar waves from bouncing back and returning a clean signal....

Stay SharpRegardless of whether you own a walk-behind lawnmower or a riding lawn tractor, it’s important to maintain sharp blades. Dull mower blades rip the grass, leaving jagged ends that easily turn brown. Sharpen your mower’s blades every spring, and they should cut cleanly throughout the summer. If you occasionally hit rocks, scalp the ground or mow through a patch of Legos, be sure to sharpen the blades more often....

Your garage is supposed to prevent trouble by keeping your car safe from the elements (and from thieves), but sometimes garages have problems of their own. Garage doors won’t open, refuse to lock or age and warp. Garage door repair is can be costly, but these basic tips will keep your garage door running smoothly all year long.The Power Goes OutThe power to your garage is out with the door shut, and you need to get your car out or you’ll have to take a bus....

Last June, 111 teams submitted entries to the Progressive Auto X-Prize. Steve Wesoloski, the Director of Technical Operations, and his group of experienced auto engineers poured over the blueprints and judged the potential safety, manufacturability, and economy of the designs. If the judges felt that a proposed vehicle was off the mark in those areas, it was disqualified. In the end, 51 cars entered by 41 teams were accepted.The 51 cars are split nearly in half between two classes....

Like a lot of kids, I grew up around old iron. Alfa Romeos, MGs, the odd Triumph—my father, Dan, an amateur racer, owned and drove more of them than I can count. But so did a lot of fathers. My dad was different. When I was a boy, he set aside a midlevel marketing job of regular moves and little passion to follow his bliss: He wanted to start his own business....

Media Platforms Design TeamPerhaps you’ve always wanted to talk to a chatbot therapist, but found that the available versions could wax poetic about the cosmos or make you feel small and insignificant enough. No more: Programmers Brian Fountain and Andrew Pinzler built the “Doctor Carl” bot, a project they created in a 24-hour period at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hackathon. The chat is based on Carl Sagan (though they should be wary of naming any tech after the astronomer)....

Media Platforms Design Team3D Video games are nothing new, but mainstream gamers generally scoff at the idea of wearing special (and expensive) glasses while they play. Nintendo is solving that problem with its .3DSAt the game industry’s annual E3 trade show in Los Angeles on Monday, Nintendo revealed its newest handheld console. The 3DS can produce a stereoscopic three-dimensional effect without requiring the user to wear glasses.Or it can revert to 2D on the fly....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe took a spin yesterday in the Ford HySeries Edge, the world’s first working plug-in, fuel-cell, hydrogen-powered car, which the Detroit automaker plans to show off as a concept at the New York auto show tomorrow. Though wafting zero-emissions exhaust in our face taught us plenty as tothe realities of a hydrogen-powered automotive experiencedrive , what really made our test special was actually being able to a car running on advanced hydrogen fuel-cell technology that can power itself with a 336-volt battery pack....