If you’re getting tired of vacuuming your floors, you always have the option of letting a robot do it. iRobot just released the latest version of their Roomba robot vacuum, and it comes with a handful of convenient new features that should make your life even easier.Called the the i7+, the biggest change is that the robot can now empty itself without you needing human assistance, making the Roomba much more self-reliant....
Scientists at MIT are trying to figure out where the oxygen in the universe comes from, and how oxygen and carbon are made. Now the physicists have come up with an experimental design to track a star’s “radiative capture reaction rate.“An accurate reaction rate could help us understand how stars die, and if they’ll take on a form of a black hole or a neutron star.The sun doesn’t just give off the heat needed for life on Earth to exist....
A new study from Durham and Lancaster universities in England shows the U.S. military is one of the larger climate polluters on the planet. If all U.S. military operations were looked at as a nation, the study says, its fuel emissions alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.“The U.S. military has long understood it is not immune from the potential consequences of climate change—recognizing it as a threat multiplier that can exacerbate other threats—nor has it ignored its own contribution to the problem,” says coauthor Patrick Bigger of Lancaster University Environment Center in a press statement....
Robot Sick BayBy Noah ShactmanSome come in with treads blown off. Others are just confused by the heat and the dust. When the bomb disposal robots used by American troops in Iraq give out, most are hauled into the Joint Robotics Repair Facility at Camp Victory, the U.S. military’s main base near Baghdad International Airport. The robots, used to investigate or handle improvised explosives with their claw-tipped arms, often bear the brunt of close-range or even point-blank detonations....
If you’ve got a mouse problem, you’ve probably considered all kinds of traps to solve it. Everyone wants to design a better mousetrap, but we all might be a few centuries late. Youtuber Shawn Woods describes a mousetrap design from a 427-year-old book that’s as simple as they come: it only has two pieces, and you can find both in your kitchen:View full post on YoutubeThe mousetrap design was detailed in a 1590 book by Leonard Mascall, where he introduces a number of inventions and contraptions to help people around the home....
Game of Thrones, season five, episode eight features the series’ most ludicrously huge battle yet. “Epic” is a term that’s often overused, but here it really fits. The battle of Hardhome is definitely the series’ sword-clashing highpoint so far, if not one of the biggest fantasy battles outside of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So naturally it involved a ton of visual effects, and this video from El Ranchito shows you the jaw-dropping before-and-after....
A French defense contractor is showing off a submarine design unlike any other. Inspired by the sperm whale, the SMX-31, also known as the Electric, is heavily armed and supports a wide range of unmanned vehicles and can even function as a mothership to naval special forces. The submarine is also heavily automated, with a crew of just 15.Unveiled at the Euronaval exhibition in Paris, SMX-31 breaks almost every convention of submarine design....
America’s longest-flying spy plane could pick up a new mission that would keep it flying for several more decades. First flown in the mid 1950s, the iconic U-2 “Dragon Lady” is being considered as a missile defense platform to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles as they ascend to low earth orbit. According to Aviation Week, the U-2 is a candidate for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s “stratospheric UAV-borne laser demonstrator program....
US Navy SEALs are trained to infiltrate enemy territory by sea, air, and land.The Mark 8 SEAL Delivery Vehicle allows the Navy’s elite underwater commandos to travel undetected through enemy waters.Up to eight SEALs and their mission equipment can ride on the little submersible.U.S. Navy SEALs are trained to attack enemy coastlines and ships, wreaking havoc on targets both on land and afloat. SEALs typically disembark from nuclear attack submarines miles from their target, taking what’s called a Seal Delivery Vehicle to their destination....
To protect your beautiful woodworking project from signs of overzealous hammering, you can use this easy DIY tip and prevent those hammer kisses.Softwoods such as cedar and pine are great to work with, but will easily show marks from a hammer that makes even the softest of contact with the wood. Take a paint stirrer or any 1/8" to 1/4"-inch piece of wood and cut a notch in it to fit around a nail....
A book is a mobile device—one assembled for easy, interactive use and durable pleasure. Unfortunately, while most books are likely to remain usable longer than your iPhone, they don’t always maintain their original condition. Enter the patient, devoted book restorer. His glasses are on a string!To get a sense for the enduring art of book restoration, look no further than this video from the Japanese television show The Fascinating Repairman. In the clip, Nobuo Okano, a Tokyo book restorer, returns a deteriorating Japanese-English dictionary to a pristine state....
Alien conspiracy theorists have certainly ruined the word “probe.” But there’s really only one kind of extraterrestrial probing happening in our solar system, and it’s us Earthlings who are doing it. On Monday an intrepid spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx officially rendezvoused with a 500-meter-wide asteroid. The spacecraft will spend months at the asteroid, then descend to gather samples and return them to Earth. Humanity witnessed another casual miracle of engineering just the week before—the landing of InSight on Mars....
The X-47B was a fierce-looking piece of the future. The Navy’s web-shaped drone demonstrator was the first unmanned aircraft to take off and land on an aircraft carrier autonomously. It seemed to herald a future in which drones potentially could take the place of fighter pilots, fulfilling far-flung advanced missions on their own.Related StoryWill Fighter Drones Replace Fighter Pilots?That was then. Last week, Defense News reported that the X-47B’s successor will likely be just an aerial re-fueler, rather than an intelligence-reconnaissance drone as envisioned by the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program....
NASA’s relationship with its scientists has hit a new low, according to an editorial in today’s issue of the journal Nature. Though last autumn NASA administrator Mike Griffin assured he would not shift money from scientific research to the shuttle program, the agency budget announced at a news conference last week would do just that, redistributing $2 billion over a five-year period. If the budget passes, grants that fund the basic science underlying space missions would be cut 15 to 25 percent, and by even more in areas such as astrobiology, a field appealing to young scientists, the journal reports....
Media Platforms Design TeamWhile traveling to help a friend in the Peace Corps a couple years ago, television and movie engineer Jock Brandis had an idea that would take him way beyond his day job: a cheap, open-source, hand-crank peanut sheller to save hours and oil for the cash crop’s production in developing nations. Popular Mechanics gave Brandis a Breakthrough Award in 2006 for the Universal Nut Sheller, and his Full Belly Project has been expanding ever since....
We used to love smartphones. We used to wait in line for them and dress them up in pretty cases and show them off to our friends. Many of us still do, but things seem . . . different. People are using words like invasive, co-dependent, junkies, addiction—serious language meant to suggest our total submission. In the last six months, a backlash against smartphones has arisen from all corners of the country—from luminaries and musicians and even former tech executives....
China’s first homemade aircraft carrier could be experiencing teething problems, as the ship prepares for yet another round of sea trials. The carrier, known variously at Type 001A or Type 002, is the country’s second and the largest warship ever built in China.According to the South China Morning Post, the still-unnamed aircraft carrier is scheduled for another round of sea trials. Those are short voyages undertaken by brand new ships—or ships that have had extensive upgrades—to test the ship’s readiness for active duty....
Ever since a United Nations report touted insects as an eco-friendly protein source in 2013, crickets have appeared in dozens of energy bars, chips, cookies, crackers, and flours. In January, a company called Six Foods (which makes Chirps cricket chips) even made it onto the show Shark Tank. To keep up with demand, the largest insect farm in North America, Entomo Farms in Ontario, Canada, has had to increase its farm space from 5,000 square feet to 60,000 square feet in just the last three years....
A new paper has revealed that tectonic activity on this planet—a unique feature in the solar system—could have been spurred by a stream of asteroid impacts. Previously, computer models have shown that only very large extra-terrestrial impacts could have spurred tectonic activity on an early Earth. The new research shows that even smaller impacts could have spurred the processes that shape our dynamic planet. 4.6 billion years ago, a swirling cloud of rock and rubble coalesced into the planet we now call home....
It’s no secret that coal plants in the U.S. are struggling. Even in the heart of coal country, coal plants are being replaced with cheaper natural gas and renewable plants. In many parts of the country, it’s now cheaper to tear down a coal plant and build a new natural gas or renewable plant in its place than to continue burning coal.All of this presents a bit of a quandary for the Trump Administration, which has made saving coal jobs one of the cornerstones of its policy....
