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If you need to take a few strokes off your golf game, you could probably learn a thing or two from one Launch Directional Robot Intelligent Circuitry, known to his friends by LDRIC. The first lesson? Be a robot if at all possible. Once you can handle that, the holes-in-one just start rolling in. Observe LDRIC at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, a stop on the PGA tour. You’ll see that LDRIC—owned by Gary McCord and Golf Laboratories—has superb followthrough....

A veteran U.S. Air Force pilot and current volunteer at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. has given us a small glimpse of what it was like to fly the SR-71 Blackbird. ✈ You love badass planes. So do we. Let’s nerd out over them together.Adelbert “Buzz” Carpenter accumulated 4,400 flight hours in various airplanes during his military career, from the T-38 Talon trainer to the C-141 Starlifter....

Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design Team LOS ANGELES — Nintendo this morning announced a new addition to the Wii family: Wii Music. Instead of your musical creativity being confined by the limitation of the number of plastic instruments that can fit in your living room, Wii Music uses the Wii Remote, Nunchuck and Balance Board to let the user play more than 60 different instruments. But don’t get confused: Wii Music isn’t trying to compete with Rock Band and Guitar Hero....

The efforts to demilitarize the world’s most heavily armed border have now turned towards outdoor recreation. With an okay from the U.S., South Korea will begin developing hiking trails alongside its demilitarized zone (DMZ) border with North Korea.The Republic of Korea, as South Korea is officially known, announced earlier this month its intention to build what it calls “peace trails” alongside the tense border. However, according to the armistice agreement ending the 1950-53 Korean War, the U....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe Ford Focus has sold no fewer than 9.2 million units globally since its 1998 launch, and the compact class it competes in is expected to grow to 25 percent of the US market within five years. The pressure is on for the Focus. The next-gen Focus makes its debut at the 2010 North American International Auto Show, and what we’ve seen so far is promising. Not only does the new 2....

Donald Trump says he’s serious about a Space Force: A sixth branch of the U.S. military to handle America’s off-planet affairs. Nobody knows quite what that force would look like. But we do have the examples of science fiction, which has given us many examples of military organizations in space.Star Trek: StarfleetYou need good partners in a complicated world View full post on YoutubeStar Trek hit the airwaves in 1966 with the radical idea that the planet would come together as a single global government and venture forth toward the stars....

The report was commissioned by former Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley.The report warns that the effects of climate change will keep the U.S. Army busy containing the aftereffects worldwide, as populations are forced to move and place pressure on one another.Resource shortages and disruptions worldwide, including within the U.S. itself, could weaken the Army.Tropical disease epidemics. Millions displaced by flooding clashing with people on higher ground. Energy shortages in the U....

Over the lion’s share of the automobile’s history, most cars had an internal-combustion engine in front of the driver powering the wheels in back of him. But the fuel crises of the 1970s changed that. Manufacturers scrambled to save weight to save fuel, and they adopted assorted variations of the front-engine/front-drive layout. With all of the drivetrain components under the hood, cars became smaller and lighter and still had adequate interior room....

Growing a lush, green lawn is well within the capabilities of any homeowner, as long as you follow a few simple rules. Unfortunately many lawns fail, not because of neglect, but because of some bad practices and misconceptions. So, to help you have the greenest, healthiest lawn in the neighborhood, this compiled list helps you avoid the biggest pitfalls standing between you and a great lawn.Mistake #1: Cutting the Lawn Too Short As a general rule, grass should be cut no shorter than about 3 inches long....

Fast radio bursts (FRB) are perhaps the most mysterious phenomena we observe in the cosmos. Earlier this year, astronomers announced they had pinpointed an FRB for the first time in a dwarf galaxy that sits three billion light-years away. These intense blasts of radio waves last only 1 to 5 milliseconds, and they have perplexed astronomers since the first one was discovered in 2007. The leading theories suggest that FRBs come from incredibly volatile cosmic events, such as material being ejected from supermassive black holes, the explosions of superluminous supernovae, or rotating magnetars that lash surrounding material with their immense magnetic fields....

Any kid who has built a bike jump has probably dreamed of something like a pump track, a loop of banked turns, rollers, and benches that can feel like a perpetual motion machine. Imagine a motocross circuit at one-tenth scale but meant for mountain bikes or a kid’s BMX. When Mark Weir finished the pump track at his home in Marin County, Calif., local kids swarmed—and their dads asked Weir to build tracks in their yards too....

NASA will conduct the first ever all-female spacewalk on Friday, October 18, 2019.Follow Jessica Meir and Christina Koch as they step outside the International Space Station at 7:50 a.m. EDT.The astronauts plan to fix a failed battery charge/discharge unit on the exterior of the space station. Update: It’s done! At 1:55 p.m. EDT, astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch wrapped up the first ever all-female spacewalk. Watch the seven hour and seventeen minute journey right here: View full post on YoutubeAstronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch plan to conduct the first ever all-female spacewalk on Friday, October 18 at 7:50 a....

PM’s West Coast office just took delivery of our newest Long Term Test Car: a Honda Fit Sport. The Fit impressed us so much on our B car comparison test that we decided to run it through its paces as a member of our long-term test fleet—like right now. We ordered our Fit with a manual transmission, partially for the mileage benefit, but mostly because Honda builds such slick-shifting manuals. And a good manual makes anything more fun....

The most common workplace injuries happen when trying to lift or move heavy things. Warehouse workers are some of the most at-risk, which is why Lowe’s is developing a basic exoskeleton that its employees can use to make lifting things a little easier.The exoskeleton doesn’t have any motors or complex sensors; instead, it has sturdy carbon-fiber rods. When the wearer squats to pick something up, the rods bend, absorbing energy. When the wearer stands back up, the rods spring back....

Adam Savage is back. After a three-year reprieve, Savage returns to test myths, unfurl duct tape, and get up to the tomfoolery that made fans love the original Mythbusters so much. But this time his cohost won’t be mustachioed. In fact they’ll barely be peach-fuzzed. For Mythbusters Jr. Savage will lead a team of six makers, builders, and inventors, all under the age of 16. “The moment I heard ‘Mythbusters spin off’ I was ready to say no,” says Savage, “After 13 and a half years, I was happy to hang up my spurs....

NASA has finally delivered on what it promised Congress last year, a “National Space Exploration Campaign Report” meant to offer a road map for American space exploration through the 2030s. While noticeably light on details, the report does offer a clear picture of NASA’s path as a new decade approaches. Chief among those priorities is the Lunar Gateway, a potential space station around the moon, which we’ve been covering in detail....

Media Platforms Design TeamJanuary 27, 2010 (Popular Mechanics Online) – The Spirit Rover, which explored the surface of Mars for over half a decade, discovering pivotal evidence of the past existence of water, was consigned to her final resting place on the north face of the Troy plateau on January 26, 2009. She was nearly 3.4 Martian years old (six Earth years).In April 2009, Spirit, which had a life-expectancy of only 90 days, rolled towards her fateful finale, already dragging a crippled right wheel towards the Gusev crater....

• Neptune had 13 known moons, including six small ones discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989.• Scientists were studying old Hubble Telescope pictures of the planet’s moon and rings when they discovered a tiny new moon called Hippocamp, the 15th known moon.• Hippocamp is named for a sea monster in Greek mythology. That makes sense, since Neptune is the god of the sea and all of its moons have been named for water-related deities....

Quantum dots can arrange themselves into artificial atoms and molecules, leading to a new form of chemistry.Scientists making these atoms in a new, room-temperature process imagine a new periodic table for them.The dots are nanoscopic semiconductors that emit light, which are popular in electronics research.Scientists have started a new periodic table for quantum dots, which they refer to as “artificial atoms.” Quantum dots are nano-sized particles that are made of semiconducting materials....

LAS VEGAS — Maybe it was the executive’s rotomolded Tom Delay haircut, or perhaps the black-and-white photo someone flashed of a Babe Ruth-era radio, but somehow the RCA press conference didn’t say “cutting edge.” Well, even in digital boom times, not every tech company can be on top of the world. Sometime after announcing an iPod-docking clock radio (sigh), the company did show some attractive HDMI and power cables called “flat panel solutions....