More comments from the peanut gallery. Keep ’em coming!Comment: I thought that it was interesting that the vehicle would get 150 mpg, I assume that is on a full charge of its batteries from the public electric power utility. But what no one seemed to mention was that the electricity to charge those batteries from the public utility was most likely generated by a fossil fuel powered (coal, natural gas, etc....
Media Platforms Design TeamA bowl of anelloni, consisting of ring-shaped spaghetti made from linguine. Credit: Davide MichielettoIf you see anelloni pasta on grocery store shelves anytime soon, you can thank two physicists from the University of Warwick in the U.K. Davide Michieletto and Matthew S. Turner cooked up this new pasta shape to demonstrate a bizarre configuration of polymers that could lead to new and remarkable materials.Here’s what it boils down to: Ring-shaped polymers tend to bunch up and become entangled, and physicists aren’t entirely sure why....
Silly Putty is great for making weird fart noises and copying newsprint, but you know what it can’t do? Swallow metal. While you can buy magnetic putty online, you can also make it at home with this MakeZine guide. (There’s also a much more specific Instructables here.) The process is simple, though you’ll want to wear some gloves to do it. All you need is some Silly Putty or a generic equivalent and black iron oxide, available in art supply stores....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe view from space is amazing. But your vision in space—well, maybe not. As long as humans have been going to space, scientists have been studying the weird physiological effects that weightlessness has on the human body. One clear change is in the eyes, and for a new study, eye experts worked with NASA to investigate longtime anecdotal complaints from astronauts that lengthy missions were damaging their eyesight—and to propose a clever techy solution....
Farnborough Airshow, held just outside London every two years, is one of the aviation industry’s biggest gatherings. A staggering amount of business is done here; last time around there were estimated to be more than 130,000 trade visitors, with $88 billion of new orders announced during the week-long show. But what strikes the visitor now is that a lot of the excitement and innovation has moved away from the manned sector to the unmanned drones....
Dubai lends itself to daredevils. A few weeks after a group of BASE jumpers safely plunged off a 1,300-foot apartment building, two men strapped to jetpacks are taking in the city in an even more adventurous way.Yves “Jetman” Rossy and his protege Vince Reffet cruised high above the iconic skyline with custom-built carbon fiber jet wings that span six feet. The four Jet Cat P200 engines were powerful enough to boost them to speeds of 125 miles per hour....
Media Platforms Design Team It’s been over 20 years since GM’s excitement division, Pontiac, last offered a rear-drive sedan with a V8. And it’s been even longer since any Poncho with more than two doors was truly exciting to drive. Instead we’ve had two solid decades of front-wheel-drive sedans and V6 power—and a handful of years with one rather uninspired, front-drive, V8-powered Grand Prix GXP. It’s hardly been the stuff of our muscle car dreams....
On-Sale Date: April 27, 2013Base Price: $53,550 to $64,750Competitors: Jaguar F-Type, Mercedes-Benz SLK, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, BMW 1-Series M Coupe, BMW Z4, Chevrolet CorvettePowertrains: 2.7-liter H-6, 275 hp, 213 lb-ft; 3.4-liter H-6, 325 hp, 272 lb-ft; 6-speed manual, 7-speed dual-clutch automatic, RWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/hwy): 21–22/30–32 (Cayman), 20–21/28–30 (Cayman S)What’s New: It’s hard to believe that the Cayman is just 8 years old, having been sold in the U.S. since 2006....
Don’t get us wrong–we’re just as excited about the new 3G iPhone as the next Apple geek, and we’ll have Pete Mortensen from “Cult of Mac” live blogging Steve Jobs’ keynote Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern. But as is often the case with Apple’s early adopters, current iPhone owners are feeling a bit left out. The die-hards out there are already hawking their first-generation iPhones and preparing to line up for the new model–the Web is awash with “how to sell your iPhone” features, and eBay is flooded with Apple auctions....
Live Photos—the moving pictures Apple debuted with the launch of iPhone 6S this fall—are finally coming to the Facebook mobile app. Apple announced today that it will begin to roll out the feature to a small percentage of users today, and the number will grow into the new year. You’ll be able to share these images across “any iOS device running iOS 9 or later, Apple Watch and Mac running El Capitan,” Apple says....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhere did you come up with the idea to do a movie about a bunch of hoodlum kids and the aliens attacking their building?JOE CORNISH: It was a combination of three things. I was mugged in my area where I grew up that I dearly love, and it was the first bad thing that had ever happened to me. So that was where the idea for the inciting incident came....
Media Platforms Design TeamCanon 50D (28-135mm IS lens pictured)Canon 50D and 18-200 mm IS lens /// $2098 ($1399 without lens)The Promise: Typically, boosting the number of megapixels in an imaging sensor without increasing the actual size of the chip itself results in more image “noise” (that is, more of those ugly colored flecks that often pollute low-light images). This is because the millions of individual pixels have to be smaller in order to squeeze onto the sensor, meaning they have less surface area for absorbing light....
Health-related gadgets have long been a quirky mainstay of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), with exhibitors hocking high-tech pedometers, treadmills that serve as makeshift (albeit awkward) game controllers, and more. The sideshow acts are still in attendance at CES 2013: See the irresistibly silly HAPIfork, a $99 Bluetooth-connected fork that detects when it touches your mouth and shames you with a lip-buzzing vibration if you eat too fast. But this year, a combination of cheap sensors, ubiquitous smartphones, and cloud computing’s expanding reach has transformed the category from a collective novelty act into a legitimate market segment....
Media Platforms Design TeamLincoln’s uphill battle to be relevant in the luxury segment once more continues with the MKC concept. The MKC will be the second of four new vehicles Ford’s luxury brand is producing in the next four years (the first being the 2013 MKZ). With sales of small luxury SUVs taking off, Lincoln sees potential to capture market share in the growing segment. In both styling and design, the MKC falls in line with the MKZ, with a modified version of its split-wing grille, push-button shifting, lots of leather, programmable drive control, a capacitive center stack, MyLincoln Touch, and a high level of customization—one example of which will be the ability to personalize and program the interior lighting....
Media Platforms Design TeamDespite the frenetic pace of the LA Auto Show yesterday, Wolfganag Hatz, the head of Audi/VW’s powertrain development sat with us for a few minutes to talk about the future of diesels in the United States. He also hinted at the future diesel products coming from Audi. Diesel cars were once written off as smoky, underpowered slugs, but that’s rapidly changing as we found recently on a comparison test drive of the new Jetta TDI....
Media Platforms Design TeamEvery year the Lemelson-MIT program conducts its Invention Index, a survey of Americans ages 16 to 25 to see how they feel about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and whether they see themselves as inventive people. PM talked to foundation executive director Joshua Schuler to see what jumped out from this year’s results.1. Thomas Edison Is Still the ManAlthough millions of young adults have iPhones running Facebook apps, neither Apple founder Steve Jobs nor Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg topped the list when the Lemelson-MIT survey asked who was the greatest innovator of all time....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe shift away from desktops towards mobile devices has left Intel behind in recent years, but at the company’s 2013 press conference Monday, the company announced its plan to leave no screen untouched by its chips. Intel’s Mike Bell started with a discussion of the next generation of Atom chips, Lexington and Clovertrail+, aimed at mobile devices. But the Atom platform has a long way to go before it can chip into the dominance of the ARM-based chips that are the industry standard....
Media Platforms Design TeamThe Black & Decker Workmate 425 ($150) has been a staple in garages and basement workshops for years. As one of the flagship tools of the DIY revolution, it has become the standard of clamping workbenches. But recently the tool world has seen a new style of three-legged workstation hit the market. The Rockwell Jawhorse ($177) is not the first of its kind (it’s modeled after the Triton SuperJaws out of Australia)....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhat better location to launch a new convertible than Los Angeles? The new 435i Convertible is sure to be a staple of the L.A. landscape when it arrives later next year. Under the hood is BMW’s 302-hp 3.0-liter turbocharged six-cylinder paired to an 8-speed automatic. That combination, BMW says, is good to hit 60 mph in just 5.4 seconds. Like the previous 3-Series Convertible, there’s a folding metal hardtop that looks as good up as it does stowed....
Media Platforms Design TeamLos Angeles—After years of gestation, the new Lotus Evora has arrived on our shores. With an aluminum chassis, a Toyota V6 and a close-ratio manual transmission, its maker claims the low-slung sports car handles better than anything else on the road. Heady claims for sure, especially since the Evora’s $74,675 base price also lands it right against Porsche’s Cayman S, a lauded driver’s machine that debuted in 2006....
