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Media Platforms Design TeamWe regularly experience severe storms where we live, and I want to stock up on emergency supplies. We don’t have a basement. Can you give us some tips on storing these items in the garage?It makes perfect sense to look at your garage as a command center if a natural or man-made disaster strikes. Clean up the clutter and you’ll find a no-nonsense space with a concrete floor and great access for equipment....

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—DARPA, that is—is currently working on a robotic copilot called the Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS). The project is designed to decrease the number of airmen needed to fly military missions as a method of reducing cost. Aurora Flight Sciences recently tested the robotic arm by flying with it in a Cessna, which you can see in the video below. View full post on YoutubeAccording to Aviation Week, ALIAS uses multiple cameras to run an automated perception system that monitors the positions of switches and reads the aircraft’s gauges, feeding that information to a computer model of the aircraft....

Catch a marlin from a kayak Ryan Inzana 2. Explore a house that’s under construction.Driving around Flathead Lake in Montana, a friend and I stopped at what we thought was a small lakeside park. It was actually frontage on a massive piece of property. The house on the property was under construction, a big extravagant thing. They’d carved a sweeping driveway into the hillside down from the road and lined it with huge rocks that must have taken several truckloads to deliver....

The Northern Lights are more than just something pretty to look at on your next Canadian camping trip. They indicate changes in our planet’s magnetic field and potential threats from solar flares. Scientists think Northern Lights can tell us even more, but to find out, they’ll need to do something that until now has been impossible: create their own. The Earth’s atmosphere is filled with layers. The bottom layer—where those of us who don’t live in cloud cities spend most of our time—is called the troposphere....

Matchbox Cars, Magic: The Gathering, and the coloring book are the newest inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame.The Hall of Fame studies and promotes play, with toys ranging from inexpensive and low-tech to cutting edge.Some Hall of Fame toys are still popular, but others date back to previous eras.The Toy Hall of Fame has announced this year’s inductees: Matchbox Cars, Magic: The Gathering cards, and the humble coloring book. Congratulations, toys....

View full post on YoutubeThe future of fresh water may be hiding in our sewers. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Janicki Bioenergy have devised a new method for extracting fresh, potable water from human waste water. And to demonstrate its safety, the richest man in the world just took swigs of the purified water.The OmniProcessor can work through 14 tons of waste per day, using various filtration and boiling methods to extract the clean water....

Colonies of breeding king penguins move like molecules in liquids, attracting and repelling each other in a familiar pattern, according to a new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other agencies. This movement pattern helps the penguin community to stay close while protecting themselves against predators. In a video, as a seal approaches a penguin colony, only the penguins closest scurry away while the remainder stay in place, unperturbed....

Ever tried to get a bird’s eye view of that build, meal, or whatever it is you’re shooting, but struggled to get the angle quite right? Or maybe you get the shot, but can’t quite keep it stable enough? Even with an extended monopod attachment, holding a camera at that angle can put too much stress on your arms—we all know the feeling.Media Platforms Design TeamWell, Linn from the DIY YouTube channel Darbin Orvar has this brilliant how-to video about building your own overhead camera rig out of plain old 3 x 5 piece of 3/4 inch plywood....

If you’re already thinking about a 2018 getaway, then you’re already facing the ultimate traveler’s head-scratcher: understand the black magic of airline prices and figuring out the best time to buy a ticket.Using a New York to Los Angeles flight as a baseline, helpful YouTube channel Wendover Productions takes a look at various elements that go into a fare to help you understand the airborne madness a little better.View full post on YoutubeGetting a good deal is about following flying patterns, some of which are pretty easy to understand....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf you need to drive a screw into concrete, you’ve got two choices. Either you use a large rotary hammer or a drill driver with a hammer-drill function. Both tools pound the bit while it spins, pulverizing concrete, but the two differ in the mechanisms that do the actual pounding. In a rotary hammer, a cylinder of air is compressed by a piston, which in turn beats the bit....

Every year on November 11, we celebrate Veterans Day to honor those who have served and protected our nation. The holiday began as Armistice Day, which marked the end of World War I as the allied forces and Germany agreed to a ceasefire.We started commemorating Armistice Day in 1919. Then, in 1926, Congress declared that Armistice Day would become an “annual observance.” The day became a national holiday in 1938 and in 1954 Congress amended their resolution by swapping out the word ‘Armistice’ for ‘Veterans,’ and we’ve been celebrating it ever since....

Media Platforms Design TeamMaybe you were fiddling with the air-conditioning nozzle, but you ignored the flight attendant’s annoucement to turn off your phone or iPad. Later, when the plane lands and you disembark at your destination, you look at your gadgets only to realize they were powered on (and not in airplane mode) during the entire flight. The fact that you landed safely might make you join with myriad other air travelers who scoff at the rules about phones during flights and wonder whether it’s really necessary to turn them off (we’re looking at you, Alec Baldwin)....

Media Platforms Design TeamReplacing a shovel handle is one of those disappearing rural skills that demonstrates basic mechanical competence – just as wrapping duct tape around a broken handle denotes the opposite. The most overlooked part of the job is getting the grain direction right.To replace a handle, first cut or grind off the rivets and slide the old handle out of the blade socket. When you mount the new handle, orient its grain so that the oval rings are to the side of the handle, not on the top or bottom (relative to the blade)....

Update 10/7 10:00 a.m. EDT: Hurricane Matthew weakened to a category 3 storm overnight, with the strongest winds around 120 mph and higher gusts as it travels north parallel to Florida’s east coast. The storm has left more than 476,000 without power, according to the Associated Press. At least 280 were killed as the storm moved through the Caribbean, most deaths occurring in Haiti, and at least one person has been killed in Florida, according to ABC News....

Axis Drones makes the smallest UAVs on the market—their Aerius quadcopter measures only 3 cm (about 1.2 inches) in length. But it is the Vidius that is perhaps their most impressive flier. Measuring in at 1.7 inches in length, the Vidius comes equipped with a live-streaming camera allowing users to take and stream first-person video during flight.You have the option of piloting the Vidius with a 2.4GHz controller or an app on your smartphone....

Architectural fungus could be the secret to realistic Mars habitation plans.The “turtle principle” means we’ll have to carry everything we need to Mars, including furniture and all building materials.Fungus grows fast, has versatile chemical properties, and can be used in a closed ecosystem in a Mars habitat.NASA is sharing information about its myco-architecture program, in which experimental fungus-based building technologies could be the feasible future of Mars habitats. “Science fiction often imagines our future on Mars and other planets as run by machines, with metallic cities and flying cars rising above dunes of red sand,” NASA says....

Researchers in China and the U.S. have created injectable night vision that works in mice.If the technology transfers to humans, it could mean doing away with large, cumbersome night vision goggles for troops.The only problem? The process requires injections into the eyeball.In the near future, U.S. troops could trade in their night vision goggles for a direct eye injection that allows them to see in the dark. The process, being developed by scientists in both the U....

Scientists have mapped the ocean floor where nuclear tests took place in 1946 and 1954.The tests, conducted at Bikini atoll, left huge craters and are still plainly visible today.Atmospheric testing, including underwater tests of nuclear weapons, was banned in 1963.For the first time, scientists have mapped the environmental toll of underwater nuclear tests conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. Using advanced sonar, scientists scanned the underwater nuclear test sites at Bikini atoll....

As table tennis is a so much of a staple for startup companies that it’s practically a cliche, so no wonder tech innovations on the game are becoming more and more common. The latest is Ping Pong FM, which promises to turn the classic dorm and basement game into a musical competition.View full post on VimeoThe idea is somewhat similar to Guitar Hero. The speed of play controls the tempo of the music, making players go at various speeds....

It was 1990, and it was the end of an era. The U.S. Navy decommissioned the attack submarine USS Blueback, the last non-nuclear attack submarine in U.S. service.Nuclear subs have distinct advantages over their conventionally-powered cousins, but they also take a long time and a lot of money to build. As China’s Navy ramps up, is it time for America’s shipyards to build diesel electric submarines again? A new article in The National Interest takes up this issue....