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Today is World UFO Day, when UFO enthusiasts around the world celebrate that strange phenomenon and remind the public that many mysteries remain unsolved. A whole 71 years after the sighting that kicked off the worldwide UFO craze, we are still no closer to determining what exactly causes hundreds of thousands of people to believe they have been witnesses to flying saucers.UFO eyewitness Kenneth Arnold, center, examines an alleged photo of a UFO with two other pilots....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that it had to derail a passenger train, a plan it says members of Al Qaeda actively supported.broken up a terrorist plotThe news is a jolt but not a surprise. Al Qaeda certainly has been willing to attack modes of transportation. Its members planted a bomb on board commuter trains in Madrid in 2004. The group also recommended attacking trains at their most vulnerable points by sabotaging the tracks themselves....

Media Platforms Design TeamTIGHTEN FEDERAL OVERSIGHTRhetoricIn May 2010, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) was charged with egregious ethics violations, such as accepting gifts from the oil industry. The secretary of the interior pledged to root out “bad apples.“RealityTo reduce conflicts of interest, the MMS was split into three separate organizations to oversee planning, inspecting, and revenue collecting. The Department of the Interior (DOI) set up an internal investigation and review unit to police its agencies....

Collaborators from Japan and NASA have found several kinds of sugars on two meteorites.Scientists continue to theorize about the conditions that fostered the birth of life on Earth, and ribose is a key piece of evidence.The fact that sugars can survive in space shows us that they could have originated anywhere.The first known evidence of sugars on a meteor has been found by researchers from Japan and from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA reports....

Media Platforms Design TeamStressed from the summer heat? So is the electricity grid. Each region of the country is different, but it is safe to say that the grid on a whole is most stressed when it’s either very cold or very hot outside, since heating and cooling are so energy intensive. Electricity demand hits its highest point during the summer, primarily due to the widespread use of electric air conditioners....

Owner: Andre TranLocation: Huntington Beach, California Found in: Japan Purchase price: $25,000Years owned: OneA few years back, a few friends and I went to Japan and met up with some locals who were also into cars and drifting. They were showing us around a garage, and I saw this RX-7 up on a lift. It was like gold, with all the rare parts and body panels you don’t see anymore. They had retuned the rotary engine, the brakes, the suspension, and upgraded everything....

Far from the car industry’s heart in Detroit, Silicon Valley startup Tula Technology is gearing up for the first product launch of its 10-year history. In all that time, Tula has been working on one thing: Dynamic Skip Fire (DSF), a way to rapidly stop and restart engine cylinders individually based on the driving conditions of every individual moment. “We’re unique in Silicon Valley in that we are an internal combustion controls company,” says John Fuerst, Tula’s senior vice president of engineering....

Media Platforms Design TeamFor the third time in under a week, the launch of the CALIPSO and CloudSat satellites has been scrubbed, this time because of unacceptable upper-level wind conditions. The Boeing Delta II rocket carrying the spacecraft is scheduled for a fourth launch attempt tomorrow morning at 6:02 AM EDT (if you happen to get the NASA TV cable feed and you’ve been waking up to watch this, I think it’s time to set the TiVo; otherwise you can watch the launch live on NASA TV’sinternet streamhereRussiansMIT’s SPHERES)....

Long before the term “crossover” became synonymous with rugged, car-based utility wagons, Subaru had the Outback. To many, that original 1995 Outback was the first real crossover, blending the best attributes of an SUV with the nimble handling of a traditional car and the capability of Subaru’s rally-bred all-wheel-drive expertise. MOST VERSATILE CARSubaru OutbackBase Price: $22,995This latest model only widens that capability envelope. Riding on beefy tires, and with a suspension tall enough to produce a Hummer-humbling 8....

Hiding Its RootsThe newest Lincoln may share its DNA with other Ford family models, but it stands alone as an affordable luxury sedan.Lincoln could have simply slapped a chrome grille on the Ford Fusion, called it a Zephyr, and stopped. Happily, there’s more to the new Lincoln than the real wood interior trim. True, the interior is the car’s strongest selling point, with leather seats, dual-zone automatic climate control, a six-CD changer and heated front seats....

By tinkering with the process that plants use to breathe in carbon dioxide, a team of German scientists has just discovered a far more efficient way to get rid of it. Biochemists led by Tobias Erb at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, have developed a new, super-efficient method for living organisms to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Plants, algae, and other organisms turn CO2 into fuel....

Back in March, Elon Musk made a bet with Australia that he could build the world’s largest battery in 100 days or less. Last week, he won that bet by building a battery the size of a football field. Musk’s new battery will store excess electricity from a nearby wind farm and can power 30,000 homes for more than an hour.Earlier this year, the state of South Australia decommissioned two of its aging coal plants....

Media Platforms Design Team Peril, Perfection and Promise from New Car Market New shots of Porsche’s four-door Panamera have some automotive enthusiasts cringing over the car’s stretched-out shape and spoiler, but we’ll let you judge for yourself. In greener news, Tesla’s hot electric sports car is due to hit show rooms this fall, and there’s still room in the queue if you don’t mind laying down a $50,000 deposit. On the more affordable side of electric cars, Toyota says it’s testing a new plug-in hybrid in Japan that’s headed for U....

The sci-fi dream of flying taxis is getting serious. Startups around the world are investigating this transformative mode of transportation. And for a sign that flying taxis have gone mainstream, look no further than aerospace giant Boeing. It just announced the formation of the futuristic “NeXt” business unit and listed flying taxis as its initial project.But while it’s easy to imagine a single flying taxi carrying its passengers over the skyline, a whole fleet of them is another matter....

When we imagine the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive oceanic gyre of plastic that has taken over a part of the world’s largest ocean, the mental images that come to mind are a sea of plastic bags, soda bottles, and those plastic six-pack rings that everyone knows kill wildlife. Researchers just published a study in Scientific Reports debunking that myth. The patch, in fact, is made up mostly of abandoned fishing gear....

Media Platforms Design Team1)The World’s 18 Strangest Bridges2) Why Snakebites Are About to Get a Lot More Deadly3)Better Than the Sand Castle: Beach Art Gallery4) 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 20105) The World’s 18 Strangest Bathrooms6) Mac vs. PC: The Ultimate Lab Test for New Desktops & Laptops7) 9 Secret Safes Let You Hide Belongings in Plain Sight8)DIY Draft: Step-by-Step Kegerator Plans9) How to Plan and Post a Perfect Pergola10) How to Fix Car Scratches and Dents11) 8 Incredible LEGO Mods12) PM’s Woodworking Archive13) 11 Things You Didn’t Know About Pinball14) Top 50 Tools Everyone Should Own15) How to Save Your Wet Cellphone16) The World’s 18 Strangest Airports17) Debunking the 9/11 Myths18) Mythbuster Adam Savage: 3 Ways to to Fix U....

The latest breakthrough in bike helmet safety looks like a shocking green plastic honeycomb. But that simple material is 48 times better at preventing concussions during bike accidents, Bontrager says. The material, called WaveCel, is the result of a decade and a half of studying how the forces of impact moves through a bike helmet and a person’s head. The developers even built a fake head and neck equipped with accelerometers to study movement in six degrees of freedom....

A recent study from the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University shows that continuous low doses of a specific type of UV light known as “far ultraviolet C” (far-UVC) light can kill airborne flu viruses without harming human tissues. The hope is that if far-UVC light could be implemented in large public spaces like airports, train stations, or stadiums, where it could be a safeguard against seasonal influenza epidemics and even influenza pandemics....

Ikea is known worldwide, but especially in its home country of Sweden, as being a leader in distinct but affordable design. But when Richard Walter, who is Swedish himself, bought a lovely Ikea bowl he didn’t expect that it would double as a fire-starter. The mirrored bowl, called a “Blanda blank,” clearly has a the capability to create a fire. Walter learned the hard way when he brought some grapes home to enjoy on a nice sunny day, as he told the Swedish Aftonbladt....

China’s smog is notorious, and in Beijing it’s especially bad. A study last year by scientists at Peking University recommended not moving to China’s capital city if it could be helped, and this video of an ominous smog cloud rolling into Beijing shows why.Bank of AQI400+ smog rolling into Beijing just now - within 20 minutes https://t.co/jbk3byT37C #beijing #airpocalypse #smog pic.twitter.com/Sf5Zom6F9M— Chas Pope (@china_chas) January 2, 2017Stricter emissions standards and a somewhat-slowing economy have helped stabilize Chinese air....