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Media Platforms Design TeamOn any given day, approximately 3000 Americans have their names on a waiting list to receive a new heart. Many of those names will not come up in time: Only 2000 hearts become available for transplantation each year.A new study, published this week in Nature points the way to a treatment that may one day make heart transplants obsolete. A team of researchers, led by pathologist Charles Murry of the University of Washington, injected human embryonic stem cells into the hearts of five pigtail macaques, a kind of monkey, and saw their hearts regrow lost muscle....

Media Platforms Design TeamYesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of California vs. the Entertainment Merchants Association and Entertainment Software Association. The case pertains to the constitutionality of a 2005 California law that makes the sale of violent videogames to minors punishable by a $1000 fine. For the record, the videogame industry has a rating mechanism, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB, that gives age suggestions on the box of every game, it simply doesn’t have the weight of law behind it....

View full post on TwitterThe great thing about geometrical-optical illusions is that you can stare and stare at them, know your brain is being fooled, and still see the illusion. So it is with the Müller-Lyer pulsating star. Believe it or not, the blue and black line segments are the same length, and they never change length. Your eye just won’t believe it at first glance. The Müller-Lyer illusion takes advantage of visual context to fool your eye and brain....

The smell of winter to me is a leaky two-stroke John Deere snowblower. My father bought it before I was born when a storm shut down most of our city, Rochester, New York. He took good care of it, still uses it today. That’s the smell, and the sound is a scraping shovel. He’d call me outside to help him, starting when I was about six. He’d push the machine, shuffling in oversized Carhartt overalls, and I’d follow behind with a shovel, cleaning up the lines, brushing what was left off to the side of the driveway....

Deep down, every streaming media device is basically the same: It’s a black box or a stick that plugs into your TV and lets you play Netflix and Hulu. Yes, different ecosystems have (or lack) one or two different apps, and some companies are trying to push the gaming aspect of their new devices. But 90 percent of what you’re going to do on the new Apple TV you could also do on a Google Nexus Player or a Roku....

Tesla shocked everyone at the end of its semi truck unveiling by releasing a brand new Roadster. Elon Musk stated, “It will be the fastest production car ever made—period.“The specs are jaw-dropping.0-60 mph in 1.9 seconds0-100 mph in 4.2 seconds1/4 mile in 8.9 secondsTop speed of 250+ mph620 mile/1000 kilometer range3 motors200-kwh battery4 seaterConvertiblePlenty of storageAvailable in 2020$200,000These numbers make the Roadster a relative bargain compared to a multi-million dollar supercar....

Because Mars remains out of reach, researchers often turn to the deserts on our own planet to get a glimpse of how the Red Planet works. Over the years, the extremely arid Atacama Desert in Chile has become the planet’s most reliable Mars stand-in. Now, scientists have found something there quite unexpected: life.“There is a good chance it could be hanging in there on Mars in a similar fashion.“The driest nonpolar desert in the world, the Atacama lies between two mountain ranges (the Andres and the Chilean Coastal Range) that prevent nearly any moisture from entering....

Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota is home to the 28th Bomb Wing: two squadrons of B-1B Lancer heavy strategic bombers, devastating planes capable of extending America’s air superiority anywhere in the world. And now the Air Force has installed a new platoon of cannons along the base’s runways to protect the bombers. From birds. Using sound.Ellsworth’s location in western South Dakota is an important migratory stopover for a variety of bird species....

Researchers want to introduce a moss that can clean arsenic from water to Swedish wetlands, which have been contaminated with arsenic from nearby iron mines. Unchecked, the arsenic could travel through the food web, making its way from prey to predator to agricultural products. Could this natural poison repellent help clean up the wetlands? Researchers tested the moss, called Warnstorfia fluitan, in a lab, exposing it to water that contained ten times the amount of arsenic deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency....

A common garden plant has been keeping a secret, and some researchers think it could, eventually, replace petroleum for engines. Scientists just announced the discovery of two entirely new fatty acids found in the Chinese violet cress. What’s more, these compounds are like nothing researchers have ever seen before.The research was published today in the journal Nature Plants by scientists from the University of Nebraska, Huazhong Agricultural University, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and the University of North Texas ....

Yesterday, Samsung announced that Gear VR—its phone-powered virtual reality headset developed in partnership with Oculus—will hit store shelves this fall for $100. And while Gear VR isn’t the most sophisticated VR headset, or the cheapest, or the most hyped, or the first, or the best, it is the biggest step forward in virtual reality so far. Here’s why. You don’t want or need an Oculus Rift. Virtual reality’s high end is intense....

2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Price: $78,995To really understand the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06, you need a racetrack. With 650 horsepower and an available aero package that generates actual downforce, this is a car that best showcases its talents at extralegal speeds. Which it attains in a major hurry. “It does zero to sixty in three seconds,” says Z06 chief engineer Tadge Juechter. “And that’s not using launch control or anything.” To prove that assertion—and other bombastic Z06 stats, such as its 1....

Of course you’re going to factory reset your phone before you give it away or sell it. You don’t want all your data sitting on there, right? Unfortunately a new study shows even a full factory reset will leave data behind on an Android phone, and very very important data at that. We’ve known for a while that just factory resetting an Android phone won’t get rid of all its data....

(Published in the July 2003 issue)Read about the other end of the spectrum; Macbook Pro’s Quiet Speakers.What? Sorry, you’ll have to talk a little louder. Oh, you want to hear the story about the world’s loudest speaker? Well, listen closely.If you’ve ever had your ears numbed at a rock concert, you know that music can aggravate as well as soothe the savage breast. Today’s loudest concert speakers crank out a deafening 130 decibels (dB), higher than the 125-dB pain threshold for noise....

Media Platforms Design TeamEvery living thing on Earth uses DNA or RNA to carry its genetic instructions for life. These two nucleic acids have different names because they’re built from different sugars: DNA uses deoxyribose sugars for a backbone of its double helix, while RNA uses ribose. But what if other sugars could be used too?Now scientists have shown that at least six other types of sugars can form nucleic acid backbones—and they can be used to store and retrieve genetic information....

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is working on using carbon nanotubes to create a barrier that would be impenetrable to chemical and biological agents, but still water-permeable. The result could make suits designed to protect against chemical and biological threats more comfortable—and effective—for long-term wear. Soldiers are already issued protective suits to deal with chemical or biological attacks, suits that are thickly walled to keep out bacteria, viruses, and chemical agents. Unfortunately, with that protection comes a lack of “breathability”—the ability of a garment to expel sweat moisture built up during strenuous activity....

The new era of Star Wars, kicking off with 2015’s The Force Awakens and culminating with The Rise of Skywalker this December, is many things—but surprisingly original isn’t one of them. The Force Awakens introduces yet another planet-killing superweapon (this time only bigger!), Rogue One retreads the origins of an event we’ve already seen, Solo basically says that everything memorable about the character happened in about two weeks, and even the expectation-defying The Last Jedi cribs a few things from The Empire Strikes Back....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamThe 450-Watt Skateboard There’s a reason Exkate’s Raptor 4.0 Extreme ($500) is called a power board. Whether you’re a complete novice or a hardcore skater, the first time you pull the trigger on the wireless remote, the 40-in.-long board will probably take off without you. But the Raptor’s responsive 24-volt, 450-watt motor–which can hit 15 mph and scale steep inclines with barely a whine–is what makes it addictive....

Got a needy lawn? Plans for some backyard improvement? It’s time to stop winging it. Now that summer’s around the corner, PopularMechanics.com turned to the lawn and garden experts at Techtronic Industries to answer some of our most pressing gardening, landscaping, and yard maintenance questions.Q. I have uneven patches on my lawn. How do I fix this?A. The problem might be your soil’s moisture content. You can address this by leveling the areas around the patches to even out the soil and, in turn, the moisture composition....

Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and a host of other science and tech luminaries today added their names to a document from the Future of Life Institute called, “Autonomous Weapons: an Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers.” The text of the letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, calls for stopping a weaponized AI arms race in its tracks before countries and companies are forced to compete with each other to build deadlier and deadlier autonomous weapons....