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A decade ago, rider skill was the last word in motorcycle performance. Until then, the dream for many riders was that in some far-off future, with enough practice, you might just be able to master your motorcycle. In the dream, you’d slide sideways into corners and spin up the rear tire on the way out, pull big wheelies at will, then haul it up safely in the worst of conditions.The vast majority of riders never achieved this level of mastery—the job has instead been completed by PhDs around the globe who have been working feverishly to ease the rider’s workload....

On Friday, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) lost contact with its Vikram lander shortly before it was scheduled to touch down on the moon.ISRO officially announced on Twitter that it has located its Vikram lander and is trying to reestablish contact.Here, aerospace engineers explain why landing on the moon is so difficult.Millions watched Friday as India attempted to set its Vikram lander down near the moon’s south pole. After separating from its orbiter earlier in the week, Vikram sped toward the lunar surface at a top velocity of roughly 5,381 feet per second....

Face ID, Touch ID, iris scanners, physical security keys, 6-digit PINs, swipe passcodes—you name it. All of these digital security features serve the same purpose: locking down and protecting all the data across your smartphone’s apps, password managers, files, notes, and more. 🧑🏽‍💻 Tech can be tricky. We’ll be your support—join Pop Mech Pro.But what happens when those same security protocols prevent you from accessing your own device? Whether you forgot your password, or your Face ID has gone wonky, the situation can be downright panic-inducing....

Media Platforms Design TeamI might have found my next favorite tool. SketchUp Make, released last month, is 3D design software that you’ve probably heard of. If you’re like me, you might have even tried it.Various versions of SketchUp have been around for more than a decade, and at first glance the new release isn’t all that different from the version I tried to use many years ago. Back then, though, I couldn’t get it to do diddly squat....

NASA and Google have an announcement to make, but you’ll have to wait until Thursday to find out what it is. According to the press release, NASA researchers have made a discovery using the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope along with machine-learning software from Google.Prior to the official announcement, we can take some guesses as to what it might be. Kepler has spent the last several years collecting data on thousands of nearby stars in order to find planets orbiting around them....

Cassini has been hanging around Saturn and its moons for 11 solid years, making amazing discoveries and sending back mind-blowing images. Now its making another journey to Titan, one of the coolest moons in the solar system, to snap some images of the hydrocarbon lakes in the northern hemisphere.Titan, the second-largest moon in the solar system, is enshrouded in a thick, smoggy atmosphere and has a series of rivers and lakes made of liquid methane across its surface....

The world’s first fossilized plant gum has been discovered by a student at the University of Portsmouth.The gum has endured for millions of years—an impressive feat considering it has been exposed to water twice during formation and is itself water-soluble.For the first time ever, plant gum—a resin similar to amber—has been found within a fossilized Welwitschiophyllum plant. Emily Roberts, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Portsmouth, discovered the gum in leaves that are 110 million years old and came from Brazil’s Crato Formation, a natural geologic structure from the early Cretaceous period full of fossils....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast month, Toyota issued a recall for 3.8 million Toyota and Lexus models because the floor mats were said to restrict the throttle pedal’s movement and cause the car to unintentionally accelerate. Now the company faces a media firestorm over the problem. Last Monday, Toyota’s U.S. Group Vice President Bob Carter told reporters that the company issued a major Consumer Safety Advisory urging owners to remove the driver’s side floor mats....

The only clinic in one of the nation’s busiest commercial fishing ports is so remote that even conventional telemedicine for emergencies has been impossible for its limited staff—until this week.Starting Thursday, a new partnership with an Anchorage hospital will virtually beam critical care doctors 800 miles away to the emergency room on Unalaska Island, home to Dutch Harbor.But instead of transmissions with fiber-optics, which are nowhere near the isolated Alaska island, the team putting together the system is relying on satellite technology in what is believed to be a first in the country for telemedicine....

Russia has only one aircraft carrier, the Cold War-era Admiral Kuznetsov.The ship is currently on fire at dock, after a fire sparked during work on the propulsion system.If the fire damage is serious enough the carrier will likely never sail again. Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is on fire and might well never sail again. The trouble-stricken ship, which has seen fires, plane crashes, and narrowly escaped the loss of its drydock, is in flames....

Between the game-changing Gravity, the sublime Her, the rousing Star Trek Into Darkness, the gritty Superman reboot Man of Steel, and the trio of superb dystopian films—Elysium, Oblivion, and World War Z—it was a banner year for sci-fi. Better still when you add the indie gem Europa Report, the clever if uneven Upside Down, and the antigravity romantic twist on Romeo and Juliet. The only real disappointments were Ender’s Game, which didn’t quite realize its provocative promise and whose microgravity suffered in comparison to Gravity’s, and M....

Sometime before Feb. 2006, an unsuspecting hiker emerged from a cave in Europe with a tiny passenger hitching a ride, probably on his shoes. It stayed with him on a plane ride to the United States, where he visited another cave—possibly Howes Cave in upstate New York. Howes Cave is where spelunkers first spotted bats with white fungus on their faces, a sign of the white-nose syndrome that has now killed millions of bats in North America....

Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a method to turn radioactive graphite blocks, a waste product of nuclear reactors, into artificial diamonds that generate electricity. These diamonds produce a small current that could last for thousands of years. Such long-lived “diamond batteries” could be used in spacecraft, implants such as pacemakers, and in other areas where long battery life is crucial.Nuclear reactors generate heat from highly radioactive uranium rods....

Mountain goats can climb just about anywhere, and move pretty fast doing it. That’s why federal agents of the Division of Wildlife Resources in Utah have taken up a new tactic for capturing them: nabbing them with a net gun shot from a helicopter, blindfold it, and hoist it up on a helicopter to bring it to its new destination. As this video from National Geographic shows, it’s a bit of a challenge, as part of it involves a sort of “goat patrol....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn-Sale Date: Available nowPrice: $528 (T-Mobile)Sony has seen better days. This week the company announced that it expects to bleed a $1.1 billion loss, cut 5000 jobs, and is even selling off its VAIO brand of computers to a Japanese buyout firm. In other words, CEO Kazuo Hirai and Sony could use a win, and a successful mobile platform would be quite the prize. At CES 2014, Sony announced two smartphones, the Xperia Z1s and the Xperia Z1 compact....

A recent study revealed that people born with fully developed extra fingers are more dextrous than people born with the standard five digits per hand.Study subjects, a mother and son each with six fingers per hand, were able to tie shoe laces single-handedly and use regular video game controllers with ease.The study may serve researchers who are investigating the development and usability of robotic limbs.A new study shows that people who have six fully-formed fingers on one hand may not be at a disadvantage, but rather, have more dexterity than people with five fingers per hand....

The world just got its first look at the revamped Airlander 10, the longest aircraft in the world. The behemoth is 302 feet long and has a 1.3 million cubic-foot compartment for helium, roughly the volume of 15 Olympic swimming pools, making it incredibly cost-efficient to fly for long periods of time. Getty ImagesHybrid Air Vehicles’ Airlander 10 was originally going to be a U.S. military surveillance vehicle, but budget constraints forced the Pentagon to abandon the program in 2012, shortly after a prototype of the half-airship-half-airplane took its first flight in 2012....

The Navy has agreed to restrict noisy training activities in certain parts of the Atlantic Ocean in order to help save the North Atlantic right whale. The whale species, whose total population is pegged at less than 500, is critically endangered and experts warn it could reach extinction by 2040. The Navy will now curtail some of its activity in the region over fears that it could be contributing to the species’ demise....

Media Platforms Design TeamResearchers from Johns Hopkins University have developed a series of micro-robots measuring just 500 micrometers wide that can be deployed into a human and be used an alternative to the painful colonoscopy. The grippers, which look like tiny starfishes, are activated to collect tissue depending on the surrounding temperature, acidity or enzymes. The arms are designed to clasp around tissue to perform tiny biopsies.Medical microbots could be a long-awaited relief for those who have to endure routine colonoscopies, like patients with Crohn’s disease or colitis....

Ryan Inzana My mother said every adult should be able to make a quick pasta marinara. I would add one more essential skill: knowing how to wield a wrench.After a semester abroad in Ghana, another student and I got it into our heads to drive to Timbuktu. We teamed up with a guy who owned a well-worn Peugeot 504, a sedan with a skid plate beneath it for light off-­roading. I’m not sure we understood the scale of our trip....