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The Panama Canal is a century old today. And it’s still growing: It must if it wants to keep up with not only the ever-increasing sizes of cargo ships, but also the plans to create a new passage to rival it.Work continues on a $5.25 billion project, started in 2007, to create a new, wider lock and mechanical gate system to allow passage for newer and larger vessels. That work, though, isn’t going swimmingly, though—a common theme throughout the canal’s history—with the project already more than a year behind schedule....

Q In 12 years we’ve lost three mailboxes and one post to snowplows. Is there any option that can take a hit?A: Your simplest choice is to shield the box by leaning a piece of plywood against it. Stake it in place and brace it with construction lumber. Although these shields can get slammed and ruined along with the box, most hold up okay.The second idea is to let the mailbox move with impact....

Philip Polgreen, MDIowa City, IowaAge: 42Years on Job: 6 Most outbreaks begin with one unlucky person, who’s typically not easy to find. At the start of the 2002 SARS epidemic, epidemiologists relied on hospital logs and patients’ memories to identify the first victim and trace the path of exposure. But Philip Polgreen, who worked in a virology lab at the University of Iowa at the time, believed that technology could more accurately track how diseases spread....

Tonight, the Draconid meteor shower peaks. But don’t worry – you don’t have to stay up late to see it. In fact, the best time to see them is right at nightfall. Accuweather put this graphic together to show the best places to see them. It looks like the east coast and great plains are in great shape; other places are not so much. Media Platforms Design TeamThe meteors will be coming from the direction of the constellation Draco, hence the name....

The town looks eerily similar to my own: sparsely populated, with a river running through it. But unlike Iowa City, Iowa, this place has a subway and an endlessly growing population. And unlike a regular transit system, beset by service changes and construction-related delays, this one is malleable. That’s the point: To build a public transportation system that takes riders where they want to go and leaves as few of them waiting around as possible....

Today, two-fifths of our crew are on their way back to PM HQ in New York. For the rest? Get back to work. Yesterday was all action. We drove 300 miles to accumulate combined city/highway PM test fuel economy numbers. For the whole story, look for an upcoming issue of POPULAR MECHANICS magazine. In the meantime, though, here are a few more of our first and second impressions with these low-price cars:Unanimously, we all gravitated toward the Honda Fit time and time again because it’s the most fun to drive and has the most inviting ergonomics....

Media Platforms Design TeamSir Richard Branson and explorer Chris Welsh (L) atop the Deep Flight Challenger on April 5, 2011. (Photo Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)Richard Branson’s space mission is struggling. And now his plan to dive to the bottom of the sea has been shelved.Three years, Branson announced plans to go 37,000 feet below the surface of the ocean in the Deep Flight Challenger, a one-man submersible that engineer Graham Hawkes originally built for the late adventurer Steve Fossett....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen you got the job, did you feel a lot of pressure to deliver on the effects? The Thing is the shining example of amazing practical creature effects.TOM WOODRUFF: Youre right, especially for our world. We dont do visual effects, we only build practical stuff. The Thing was the big movie in 1982 that reoriented everybody toward bigger, louder, crazier, wilder effects. It was way above and beyond what we had seen up until then....

This complete LEGO sound system is called “The Planet,” and it’s the masterwork of Korean designer Hayarobi. The set contains 2,405 pieces and is powered by a LEGO Power Functions Battery Box and a LEGO Power Functions M-Motor.Huh Magazine says the only piece here that isn’t LEGO is the needle. That’s an Audio Technica phono cartridge, though we assume LEGO is working on its own for a future vinyl set inspired by Hayarobi’s creation....

Twenty Questions is a simple game of yes or no questions. But that simple game gets a lot more complicated when the players don’t speak to each other and their responses are taken strictly from their brain signals.That’s what a group of researchers at the University of Washington set out to accomplish. They used a non-invasive brain-to-brain interface (a fancy way of saying they transmitted signals without digging into either person’s brain) to have a player ask the question of another person, see that person respond, register that response, and so on....

In this rough economic climate, it appears Volvo has weathered the storm. In September, Ford’s Swedish car-making arm, Volvo, showed a 16 percent sales increase over last year—one of only nine automakers to do so. And the Swedes are showing a firm embrace on the latest environmental technologies, even if the company doesn’t quite have the wherewithal to put them all into production right now. What will be in European showrooms next year is the plug-in hybrid V70 wagon with the capability of traveling 31 miles in electric-only mode....

Media Platforms Design Team NICE, France — The first-generation (1998-2004) of Mercedes-Benz’s entry-level sports car, the SLK, was always a little too cute and soft around the edges—especially when compared to the muscular Porsche Boxsters and BMW Z3s of the same period (1998-2004). But a full SLK remake in 2005 brought with it a brawny new look—part Benz F1 racer, part hyper-expensive SLR McLaren. The freshened-up 2009 model goes one step further: a slightly more authoritative face with a bigger three-pointed star; a more aggressive air dam; and wider fog lamps balanced with a sharper, diffuser-style tail....

Media Platforms Design TeamMORE BREAKING NEWS FROM THE 2008 L.A. AUTO SHOW• 2008 LA AUTO SHOW: All of Our Updates and Analysis in One PlaceHyundai says it plans to beat the timetable for NHTSA’a 35-mpg car-fleet average by an unbelievable five years, which, if true, means the company will meet the standard by 2015. That’s a bold statement from a company with no hybrids in its lineup. Hyundai’s first hybrid, a version of the mid-size Sonata sedan will appear in early 2010....

The Ukrainian army’s 24th Mechanized Brigade had just passed through the village of Zelenopillya at 4 a.m. last July when the sky detonated. Dozens of 122-millimeter rockets fell on the convoy in an area claimed by Russian-backed separatists, each rocket carrying about fifty pounds of explosives in warheads built to fragment into shrapnel. Within moments nineteen soldiers lay dead and scores more wounded. Vehicles were shredded. The rebels likely used a BM-21 Grad, a six-wheeled vehicle with forty launch tubes that can all fire within seconds (grad means hail in Russian)....

Crown molding may not be easy to install, but taking a steady methodical approach will help you get it up accurately and will yield results to be proud of. And, I might add, that the right approach helps you get the job done without needless trips up and down a ladder.The first time I installed crown molding was decades ago; really I wasn’t installing it at all—I was just handing my dad tools....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe L-39 Albatros was once a jet fighter of choice in the Eastern Bloc, back when there was an Eastern Bloc. Now, it’s largely seen as a training jet or air show staple. It’s a subsonic aircraft regarded as easy to handle. Most people fly them pretty responsibly. That is … not the case here. Aviators Theodore Wright III and Troy B. are in the cockpits of these planes....

HALO UV-ST UPRIGHT$499 /// gethalo.comThe Claim: A built-in ultraviolet light acts like a death ray for bacteria, instantly wiping out 99.99 percent of microbes.The Reality: After running the ultraviolet light over an E. coli-contaminated surface, it still tested positive for microbes in a lab. The likely reason: The light only works on what it hits, so tiny shadows under carpet lint can serve as sanctuary for bacteria.Media Platforms Design Team>DYSON DC16 ANIMAL HANDHELD$200 /// dyson....

Just as your swing makes or breaks your golf game or baseball skills, improving your cast is key to fishing success. If you’re new to fishing and looking to increase your odds of reeling in some great catches, perfecting your cast could be the breakthrough you need.What makes the perfect cast depends on what kind of gear you want to use, as casting a spinning rod is a whole different kettle of fish than casting a fly rod....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe wasp taps the rock-hard fruit with its antenna, listening for the telltale reverberation of its prey locked inside. When it hears the sound it’s searching for, the hunter suddenly stops and stretches its abdomen into the air in a cartoonish fashion—unsheathing a thin, flexible syringe more than twice the size of the insect’s body. As the wasp vibrates this tool, its serrated edges slice through the plant’s skin, bending and twisting through the fruit....

Between lightbulbs, circuits, and body armor, the wonders of graphene just never cease. Scientists at the University of Trento in Italy now have discovered that if you spray a bunch of spiders with a coating of graphene-laced water, they’ll spit out silk that could be strong enough to catch a falling plane. Spiders sprayed with the solution containing 300-nanometre-wide graphene particles somehow worked the graphene into their silk. Researchers still aren’t entirely clear how....