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Media Platforms Design TeamLast fall, PM’s annual Breakthrough Awards featured , two engineers who devised a clever way for a building to collapse in on itself—but not fall over—during the rumblings of a major earthquake. To test it out, Deierlein and Hajjar took their system to Miki City, Japan, where the world’s largest earthquake simulator resides. But today, what Japan felt was no simulation—a huge 8.9 earthquake hammered the island country and launched tsunamis that destroyed buildings on the Japanese coast and killed people in the hundreds at least....

When the Concorde, a 1970s design, made its last flight in 2003, few may have guessed how hard it would be to achieve commercial supersonic flight once again. Aerospace companies have underestimated the challenges of developing a supersonic airliner ever since, though we might finally be getting close to overcoming the technological hurdles that have stymied supersonic air travel. But there is still a major problem with breaking the sound barrier: You can’t fly supersonic planes on standard over-land routes because nobody wants sonic booms shaking their neighborhood....

What turned out to be this summer’s hottest beer ingredient? Well, hops by the truckload as usual. But after that, came a bit of a surprise—cucumber.But if you’ve ever had a thirst-quenching glass of cucumber-infused water, you’ll likely understand why. As Tyler DuBois, co-founder of The Real Dill pickle company, explains, “cucumber has a mild melon-like flavor and it’s very refreshing.“Building up over the last two years, hundreds of cucumber-laden beers have been brewed into existence....

A video on YouTube shows the dramatic way U.S. Navy warships launch submarine-hunting torpedoes. The Mark 32 Triple Torpedo Tube (TTT) launcher allows cruisers and destroyers to participate directly in anti-submarine warfare, hunting down submarines with acoustic homing torpedoes. The Mark 32 uses a pneumatic ejection system to launch torpedoes away from the sub-hunting ship and into the sea. Here it is:View full post on YoutubeOne of the primary missions for U....

Media Platforms Design TeamAfter many interior-design upgrades, I’ve got our place looking good, but I’m stumped by the bifold doors. They’re everywhere: some louvered, others solid, all ugly. Any solutions?Your simplest and least expensive option is to paint the doors. Start by cleaning the surface of any dust, dirt, or grease. (The last is most likely to be found on kitchen doors.) When the surface is clean and dry, bury any dark colors using a “high-hiding” primer, and then apply a coat of your desired hue....

IKEA has renovated a Utah facility that has modeled life on Mars since 2001.Mars analogs give scientists an opportunity to test the feasibility of long missions, including psychological and emotional feasibility.IKEA designers applied their knowledge of Earth’s small space design to outfitting tiny Mars bedrooms where astronauts can be alone.Just as Marie Kondo has turned to merchandising, IKEA has gone the most minimalist of all: outfitting the tiny bedrooms of future Mars astronauts....

Today, just one day before facing off with the FBI in court, Apple’s held its annual spring event. The news? That new, smaller iPhone is real, and there’s also a smaller iPad Pro. Here are more details on that, plus the rest of the big news. A smaller iPhoneYes, a new smaller iPhone is finally here: the iPhone SE. In size, the iPhone SE is four inches, which makes it the size of the iPhone 5, but it’s got plenty of updates on the inside that make it much closer to more modern-day iPhone....

Some of us have weekend projects like cleaning out the garage, but people like Ziggy Zee (zebralemur on Reddit) spend their weekends building mammoth DIY railguns the likes of which you’ve never seen. As explained in a post on Imgur, this giant 27,000 joule mag-cannon comes in two parts, the 50-pound barrel and firing mechanism and a 200-pound bank of 56 400-volt, 6000-microfarad capacitors. According to its makers, that makes it the most powerful railgun ever to be made by an organization that isn’t a country....

View full post on TwitterIf you’re given the opportunity to fly a multimillion-dollar machine that can zoom at hundreds of miles per hour through the sky, what’s the first thing you do with it? If you’re anything like one Navy pilot who flew over central Washington this morning, you draw a giant dong in the sky with your exhaust.The particular artist behind this aerial masterpiece is a Navy pilot from the Whidbey Island naval base, located some distance away from the town of Okanogan where that photo was taken....

Quarks are elemental particles, with no sub-structure. Understanding them is crucial to learning how physics works on the smallest levels. By studying collisions of incredibly small particles made up of quarks known as J/psi particles, scientists were better able to understand matter on a fundamental nature.Measuring the J/psi particles, Florida State scientists found results that contradicted earlier studies at CERN.Quarks are one of the fundamental parts of all matter. They’re particles that combine together to form what are known as hadrons, some of which are protons and neutrons—the basic components of atomic nuclei....

6:145 || RISE OR FALL?:Media Platforms Design TeamThe temperature inside your oven is always a guessing game and every recipe you bake is at risk.THE QUICK FIXFirst, check that the problem lies with the oven and not your cooking judgment: use an oven thermometer to register if there’s a variation between the actual temperature inside your oven and the alleged temperature on the control. If there is a difference, it is probably due to a thermostat problem....

New Year’s Eve typically brings with it excitement for the year to come, and a little too much champagne. New Year’s Eve 1999, however, carried with it a twinge of end-of-days hysteria. The reason was the Y2K crisis, an idea that computers would malfunction as soon as the clock turned over to the year 2000.The Freethink series “Wrong” takes a look back at all the hubbub, and how the world devolved into hysteria over a bug that never really happened....

Media Platforms Design TeamAir defenses are often the only thing standing between enemy aircraft and their targets, but up til now, it’s pretty relatively easy to destroy them. That’s because even mobile air defenses typically must stop in order to shoot, making the job easier for aircraft dedicated to knocking them now.Not anymore. Russia’s Tor-M2U system is a 35-ton tracked armored vehicle with a crew of three. Equipped with a radar and up to eight missiles, Tor can can destroy enemy aircraft, drones, and unmanned aerial vehicles at ranges of up to 12 miles....

Concrete, the most commonly used building material on the planet, is not an especially green one. Researchers at Washington State University want to change that with an entirely new form of concrete, re-engineered from the molecules up.And what’s more, they’ve done it using another pollutant: coal fly ash, a waste product that stems from coal-based electricity generation.Concrete and coal fly ash aren’t typically grouped together, but the both represent severe environmental problems....

Just before the Japanese attack force reached Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, they stopped off at the nearby Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay sinking dozens of Catalina PBY-5 seaplanes, long-range bombers that threatened to follow attacking force back to the carriers where it originated. In the 74 years since, those wrecks have sat at the bottom of the ocean. Now, for the first time, we have a good clear look at one....

The U.S. Air Force is sending two of the four aircraft involved in its OA-X light attack aircraft competition to the battlefield. The move, likely unprecedented, will allow the service to evaluate both airplanes in combat missions before a final purchase decision is made.Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that the Air Force is sending the Embraer/Sierra Nevada A-29 Super Tucano and the Textron AT-6 Wolverine to a yet-to-be-determined war zone....

Air Force pararescuemen are combat medics who jump into action looking to save lives, whether they’re thrust into a humanitarian disaster or a battlefield. They might scuba dive, rock climb, or even snowmobile into hostile territory. Frequently they parachute, and for the last few months they’ve been jumping with a new wearable device and wireless sensor kit called BATDOK, the Battlefield Airmen Trauma Distributed Observation Kit. Picture an Air Force special operations pararescue jumper (PJ) flying into a combat zone....

When we last visited the Jones family, for Part One of the Digital Family series, Jamieson and Peggy, along with kids 9-year-old Ben and 6-year-old Nina, had just leapfrogged generations of computer technology in a matter of weeks. Thanks to a digital upgrade from PM, the family had mastered a new network of four PCs and supporting gear spread throughout their home in northwestern Connecticut. The mission: to see how useful, exciting, frustrating, superfluous, vital and/or just plain fun the latest laptops, PDAs, wireless routers and more could be....

As far as natural phenomena go, blue diamonds are among the world’s most treasured. Known as Type IIb diamonds, their fame has only been boosted by the most well-known example, the Hope Diamond. A new study examining their rare properties suggests that their signature blue come from an equally rare source: the Earth’s lower mantle.Type IIb diamonds form when carbon atoms form intensely strong bond. Their greyish-blue features come from trace particles of boron, comparatively less rare than diamonds, caught up within these bonds....

When the Block Island Wind Farm off Rhode Island’s coast powers up in January, it will be the first offshore wind installation in the U.S. While these are new sights on this side of the Atlantic, Europe’s been building such mechanical farms for years—and they have some amazing, specialized hardware to help get the job done.Take the Fred Olsen shipping company’s Brave Tern, a 15,000-ton ship borrowed for this job. In a way, Brave Tern is real-world Transformer, changing from a ship to a construction platform by extending its legs to rise out of the water....