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Media Platforms Design TeamIn early 1903, physician and car enthusiast accepted a $50 bet that he could not cross the United States by car. Just a few weeks later, on May 23, he and mechanic Sewall K. Crocker climbed into a 20-hp Winton in San Francisco and headed east. Accompanied by Bud, a pit bull they picked up along the way, the two men arrived in New York 63 days, 12 hours, and 800 gallons of fuel later, completing the nation’s first cross-country drive....

Early morning on Tuesday, June 5th, someone a hunger for cash and a lot of guts attempted to break into an ATM machine using a backhoe that was also stolen.Investigators in Prince George’s County told the Washington Post that they are investigating a crime involving a man who stole a piece of equipment used for construction, and used this heavy machinery to pry an ATM from a drive-thru at a bank....

Media Platforms Design Team1. PascalizationLouis Pasteur’s name is synonymous with food preservation, but it’s another long-dead French scientist, mathematician, and philosopher whose research is changing the way we think about food: Blaise Pascal. Pascalization, commonly known as high-pressure processing (HPP), is a method by which food is subjected to extreme water pressure—sometimes up to 80,000 pounds a square inch—inside long, cylindrical metal chambers. This destroys living cells, including harmful bacteria such as E....

Media Platforms Design TeamOur recent test drive of the 2014 Lexus IS (which you’ll soon be reading about here) didn’t involve much traffic– giving us yet another reason to dig the town of Austin, Texas. But if it did encounter a sea of taillights, it would have been the perfect opportunity to test HD Radio’s latest predictive traffic feature, which is powered by Clear Channel’s Total Traffic Network.The technology merges an eclectic sequence of data parameters, and estimates traffic patterns 15, 30, or 45 minutes into the future....

Would a zap to the heart save the man’s life? Or would it risk dislodging a clot that could travel up to the brain and kill him? Doctors faced this question recently when a 42-year-old New Jersey man arrived in the emergency room, and they found the lifesaving answer in his Fitbit.The man had a seizure and then showed up in Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, NJ, with an irregular, sped-up heartbeat—an atrial fibrillation....

Meet the RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile. If, in some version of the future, diplomacy between Russia and another country breaks down very, very badly, it may the be one of the last things moving right before we all get to see some very large mushroom clouds.View full post on YoutubeThe RS-24 was developed in secret by Russia, but public tests of the fifth-generation ICBM began in 2007 in response to a possible missile shield being built in Europe, and the Yars became operational in 2010....

The crossguard lightsaber has been much lampooned (and occasionally defended as “exhaust ports” rather than goofy conceits), but Apple designer Jony Ive apparently gave J.J. Abrams some very specific lightsaber instructions for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.“Ive reportedly told Abrams ideas he had for a more rustic looking lightsaber. Ive reportedly told Abrams that a lightsaber could be “more analog and more primitive, and I think, in that way, somehow more ominous,” as relayed in today’s exhaustively reported New Yorker profile....

If you’ve ever used a smartphone for more than a year or two, you know that the lithium ion batteries degrade over time and refuse to hold a charge like they used to when they were new—but the reason why has been little understood. But research published today in Nature Materials could have a few answers. A group of researchers at Stanford University, the University of Bath, and MIT used the SLAC National Accelerator Lab’s facilities at Stanford to monitor the movement of ionic lithium through batteries, charting its course....

Fall is here, and if you’re like me and spend most of your time in colder climates (Vermont), then you know it’s basically winter anyway. I don’t like winter. But, there is one good thing about this time of year, and that’s pulling out the Carhartt. I’ve been wearing the jackets since I was 7, and after nearly two decades, and a lot of growing, I am only on my fourth....

A cat from Russia named Dymka has become the world’s second recipient of 3D-printed titanium prosthetic limbs after suffering from frostbite.A passerby found the cat in the snow and took her to a clinic where a team of vets collaborated with researchers from a Russian university to give Dymka a chance to walk again.Dymka has taken to her new legs and is now able to move around on her own. Things looked grim for Dymka, a cat found by a passerby on the side of a road in Novokuznetsk, a city in southwestern Siberia....

The Japanese government is granting its support to a scientist working to create animal embryos that contain human cells, and to then subsequently transplant them into surrogate animals. The decision reverses one made earlier this year, which banned the procedure.Scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi wants to create a human pancreas in rodents like rats and mice, and the Japanese government, specifically its education and science ministry, has issued new guidelines that open up the procedures to anyone....

Where were you on December 18, 2015? If you’re between the ages of eight and 50, chances are you were in a crowded theater watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But for many die-hard fans in New York, Washington Square Park was the place to be. Dozens of fans flooded the city’s iconic park in Greenwich Village Friday night to attempt a new world record for largest lightsaber battle—but the record wasn’t going to be broken by the New York crowd alone....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe small drone looks like an ordinary , the 10-foot hand-launched craft by Lockheed Martin that Marines and Special Forces use for tactical reconnaissance. The difference is endurance. Where the conventional version can fly for 2 hours at a time, the enhanced Stalker XE 240 stays aloft for 8 hours at a stretch because it draws its power from a fuel cell—a major improvement that could pave the way for longer-lasting drones providing continual surveillance....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe third-gen MINI Cooper has swollen outwardly– 4.5 inches longer, 1.7 inches wider, and .3 inches taller, to be exact– but the marque’s base engine has shrunk to a 1.5-liter 3-cylinder. Which begs the inevitable question: is this bad news for hot-blooded enthusiasts?We suspect the contrary dimension shifts could, at least on paper, present a conundrum for those attached to the Cooper’s rep as a zingy pocket rocket....

Bitcoin’s environmental impact has never been a secret. Mining for the digital currency requires tons of energy, as powerful computers direct raw computing power at the mathematical process that creates coins. And to produce that energy, power plants have to spew almost as much carbon as an actual mining industry. According to a paper published in Nature Sustainability on Monday, Bitcoin mining is even more detrimental to the environment than scouring the Earth for gold, silver, aluminum and copper....

Tiny ocean plankton pull carbon dioxide out of the air during photosynthesis and stash it in the deeper ocean when they die.NASA scientists want to study this “twilight zone” when the CO2 ends up to better understand how tiny organisms affect climate change.They’re taking two boats rigged with scientific equipment to the Pacific Ocean to study the twilight zone.Phytoplankton—tiny, plant-like organisms that live in the ocean—rarely make headlines. NASA and the National Science Foundation are hoping to change that with an expedition to the northeastern Pacific Ocean this August....

Scientists are hoping that a specially adapted 3D printer made to build therapeutic biomaterials will help aid medical research by printing test materials so complex as to closely approximate real human tissue. “Tissues are wonderfully complex structures, so to engineer artificial versions of them that function properly, we have to recreate their complexity. Our new approach offers a way to build complex biocompatible structures made from different materials,” says Ali Khademhosseini of UCLA, who led the study, in a press statement....

Media Platforms Design TeamIs Obama’s just-released NASA budget the “death march for the future of U.S. human space flight,” as Senator Richard Shelby proclaims on his website today? Or is it in fact a new beginning for the space agency?Obama’s proposed 2011 budget actually increases NASA’s budget by $6 billion. What has Shelby and others up in arms is Obama’s plan to axe the big-ticket return-to-the-moon program, launched without adequate funding by his predecessor....

The number one rule of running for elected office is to raise a lot of money. But somewhere in the top five has got to be: “Buy the domain names. All the domain names. Any domain name you can possibly think of.” Really, if you’re even loosely considering becoming famous, you should snatch up anything closely related to your name.Several members of the rapidly expanding pool of 2016 presidential candidates didn’t heed this rule, and are now learning it the hard way....

A major blackout is affecting the island of Puerto Rico, leaving nearly all of the island’s residents without power. This is the second blackout on the island in two weeks and the first to affect the entire island since Hurricane Maria hit in late September.The island’s electric utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, says the blackout is the result of a failure on a major power line between the generating facilities in the south of the island and the urban centers in the north....