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On Jan. 11, 1992, the jury in the murder trial of Roy Brown heard from a dentist named Edward Mofson. To establish his credentials, Dr. Mofson testified that he was certified in forensic odontology, belonged to six related professional organizations and did forensic consulting throughout New York state. He then explained that several months earlier he was called to the morgue in Cayuga County, New York, to analyze the body of 49-year-old Sabina Kulakowski....

Hot on the heels of its Flexvolt platform, DeWalt has introduced a beefy 1800-watt portable power station (DCB1800) that allows for AC power in remote locations. If you’ve got this handy, you’re no longer anchored by a loud and smelly generator to power your toolsThe DCB1800 runs on four Dewalt 20V Max batteries and works best with 3.0Ah or higher amp-hour batteries. It’s able to run most corded tools, provides 1800 watts (15 amps) of continuous power, and 3600 watts of peak power....

Media Platforms Design TeamA new cachet of released documents reveals that there are, in fact, a few tools to guard users from NSA spying, and some work much better than others.HTTPS isn’t good. The report reveals that it has been compromised by the NSA since at least 2012. Messages sent from Tor networks were often harder for the NSA to crack. Zoho’s purported encryption levels, meanwhile, seemed to hold true.Especially troublesome for the agency were messages using encryption from PGP for email and OTR for chat, which often deleted messages as the agency tried to hack into them....

A crafty YouTuber has built and “launched” a rocket with 1,000,000 matches.Matches date back centuries, but modern ones are less dangerous and more controlled.Please don’t light 1,000,000 matches on fire at once.A Youtuber is drawing attention for a video showing a functional rocket made from a million matches.View full post on YoutubeTechnical Tech Tube has just over 4,000 subscribers, and its only Facebook “review” is from one disgruntled Redditor. In the video, the host uses a total of 1,000,000 matches....

As Russia rises in Eastern Europe, the best deterrence against Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions may not be more tanks and missiles, but new roads that can carry heavy civilian transport vehicles. That could solve NATO’s big problem, which is the inability to get vehicles and supplies where they’re needed fast.Roads Win WarsThe strategic challenge for NATO is easy to see but hard to remedy. The alliance is based on collective defense, where each member rallies to help another in the event that Russian paramilitaries or tanks appear in their territory....

Curving wood can be wasteful at the industrial level. A new technique uses wood’s own natural process of warping to curve to a chosen angle. Warping is usually considered one of wood’s weaknesses, but the new method glues warping wood together as it controls the final shape it takes.To prove the process worked, scientists built a 45-foot structure in Germany.Because wood comes from living trees, it changes shape along with its moisture content....

Media Platforms Design TeamSticklers, grammarians, and high school teachers all concur: Jargon is the sworn enemy of good communication. I disagree.Some of the most interesting words in the English language started out as jargon. Take scuttlebutt. Today it means gossip. But the roots of the word go back to the days of wooden sailing ships, when the scuttlebutt was a barrel, or butt, with a hole, or scuttle, in the top....

I don’t think this is how helicopter rescues are supposed to work.Fox 10, a local Fox affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona, captured a rescue on Piestewa Peak gone terribly wrong. The 74-year-old hiker was injured while hiking in the Phoenix Mountains, and according to Fox 10, “firefighters made patient contact and decided that the best course of action was to fly the patient off the mountain.“View full post on TwitterBut I don’t think this is quite what they had in mind....

Earth orbit is a mess. Millions of pieces of old spacecraft whiz around the planet at terrible speeds, posing a serious threat to new and ongoing missions. JAXA, Japan’s version of NASA, just attempted one of the first big tests to see whether it would be possible to clean up some of that space junk. It flopped.The vehicle in question was a cargo ship that just resupplied the International Space Station....

LAS VEGAS – Good taste is, well, subjective. And if this show does anything, it paints the broadest automotive landscape of good taste.Or, put another way, there’s a whole lot here that would get the “Ugly” box checked on my list. But, hey, I’m sure not everyone appreciates my concept of beauty, either. But what really gets me is when some folks take a perfectly good car—and I don’t mean an inoffensive nice car, but a GOOD car—like a brand, spanking new lustworthy Corvette and, well, “improve” upon it....

MIT has teamed up with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions to create an aquatic robot.Dubbed ‘Roboat,’ the machine is autonomous and has many applications, such as on-demand infrastructure.Researchers are currently working on improving Roboat’s design for stability and function.MIT has developed an autonomous aquatic robot named “Roboat.” Together with the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), researchers from the university conceptualized the boat as a way to explore new modes of transportation and help improve traffic flow, especially in Amsterdam, where a quarter of the city’s surface is water....

In research published today in Nature, computer scientists have designed a neural network that was able not only to navigate through a maze, but learned to find shortcuts in the same way that a mammal would. The neural networks were trained on unfamiliar mazes and instructed to get from point A to point B, much like a mouse trying to find food at the end of a labyrinth. In similar experiments with mice, the mice began to take a few shortcuts after learning the mazes sufficiently well....

Starting on April 20, Nintendo will be selling a DIY projects kit with its wildly popular Switch, called Nintendo Labo. View full post on YoutubeLabo is a series of cardboard accessories that are compatible with the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers and come in sets that users can build. At launch, Nintendo will be offering a Variety kit with 5 potential projects and a standalone robot suit.Within the Variety kit, going for $70, Nintendo is offering 2 RC cars, a fishing rod, a house, a motorbike, and shown most prominently in its ad for Labo, a 13-key cardboard piano....

Browse expert reviews and compare info on the Versa 1.8 SL in ourMedia Platforms Design TeamMuch like an impertinent but lovable puppy, the little Versa continues to both please and frustrate. There’s an undeniable charm to the car’s appearance. But—aye, there’s the inevitable “but”—there’s that passenger airbag cover that just doesn’t fit. In our last entry we mentioned that we’d have the dealer take a look at that airbag cover, while checking into the “Service Engine Soon” warning light....

Ten minutes late. Gulp half your coffee, sprint out to the car. Twist the key and she cranks. And cranks. And cranks. No fire, and your ulcer potential increases along with your blood pressure. It always seems to happen when you’re beh ind schedule, as if the gods of internal combustion are eternally against you. You should’ve paid attention to that occasional bucking on the highway.Media Platforms Design TeamIf there’s anything over 60,000 miles on the odometer, but more commonly 100,000 plus, there’s a good chance that the cause of this distressing no-start condition is an electric fuel pump that’s no longer capable of forcing fuel forward with sufficient pressure....

Of the numerous risks posed by 3D-printed guns, a prominent fear is that they will give potential criminals easy access to untraceable firearms, leaving law enforcement with little recourse when trying to track the illicit firearms. Guns assembled from digital files come without traditional safeguards like serial numbers (just like perfectly legal home-built firearms), but a researcher from the University of Buffalo claims to have developed a new method for tracing the weapons....

Russian military research videos usually deliver something to behold, whether it’s tanks on parade or just Vladimir Putin totally not worried that this sub is going to sink. Take a moment to watch this clip, which features a humanoid robot mowing down targets with a pistol in each hand like some movie badass.View full post on YoutubeDmitry Rogozin, the country’s deputy prime minister, tweeted this video battlefield research to show off FEDOR, the baddest robot gunslinger in the East....

Particle accelerators play a fundamental role in everything from nuclear physics to modern medicine. A team in California is working on a way to shrink the massive devices.Particle accelerators rely on electromagnets to create electric fields. The team has built a model using the far smaller plasma waves.Their recent test was a success, but the next step is to try and generate even more power.Particle accelerators are crucial to understanding modern science....

Memory transfer between living creatures may sound like science fiction, but according to scientists at UCLA and a paper published ENeuro, it just became a tested reality: researchers successfully transferred molecules from brain cells of trained snails into untrained snails, giving the untrained snails the trained snails’ instincts, and seemingly their memories.Researchers experimented on Aplysia californica sea snails, small organisms with large neurons that are relatively easy to work with. When researchers gave snails small electric shocks, they retracted their frilly siphons....

UPDATE, Friday, April 18, 3:40 p.m. Success! The SpaceX launch delayed on Monday went off without a hitch today, and the Dragon spacecraft is now on its way to a rendezvous with the International Space Station. We’re awaiting word on the success of SpaceX’s attempt to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. Stay tuned.UPDATE, Monday: Just after 4 p.m., SpaceX tweeted that a helium leak has delayed today’s scheduled Falcon 9 launch....