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Apes may have survived because of their evolved tolerance for alcohol.An evolutionary bottleneck 10 million years ago separated monkeys, who could eat unripe fruit, and apes, who discovered they could survive on fermented, overripe fruit.While some animals are affected by alcohol, most avoid it as a matter of preference.Unlike your one buddy who always gets in brawls, consuming alcohol may have helped apes to survive an existential threat. A new book from Oxford University tackles the history of alcohol use from its earliest beginnings, when great apes were likely forced by circumstance into eating fermented fruit they found on the ground....

America’s next warplane could come from a rather unlikely place: Africa. The South African Mwari aircraft, the first warplane entirely designed and developed in Africa, has been rebranded as the Bronco II for the American market and is seeking to join the U.S. Air Force’s ongoing competition to pick a new light attack aircraft.Originally known as, or AHRLAC, or Advanced High Performance, Reconnaissance Light Air Craft, Mwari was developed by two South African companies, Aerosud and the Paramount Group, as an inexpensive but capable aircraft to equip Africa’s air forces....

Media Platforms Design TeamImage: Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryIt only took us two millennia to figure out how the Ancient Romans made such amazingly durable concrete. Scientists at the Berkeley National Lab and a team of researchers from around the world have discovered the unique recipe used to construct Roman cities and landmarks—a surprising number of which still stand after 2000 years of use.Compare that with modern concrete, which is engineered to maintain its design strength for anywhere from 50 to 100 years, and you can see the value of the Roman recipe....

Media Platforms Design TeamUPDATE: NuStar’s launch was a success. “NuSTAR spread its solar panels to charge the spacecraft battery andthen reported back to Earth of its good health,” Yunjin Kim, the mission’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a release. “We are checking out the spacecraft now and are excited to tune into the high-energy X-ray sky.“At the center of our galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, and that black hole spews forth high-energy X-rays....

A team at he Lawrence Berkeley Lab, led by Rebecca Abergel, have a new way to combat radiation sickness: in pill form. It’s the sort of tool the Jetsons never told you they had at their disposal. A process called chelation guides the pill. Essentially, ions bond to metal molecules, and the process has been used in the past for metal contaminants in the blood stream, like lead. The chelators in the Lawrence Labs pills are designed to specifically bond to radioactive elements and not react to other materials, helping flush plutonium, uranium, and other harmful elements out of the body....

The trend of cordless outdoor power equipment encompasses all types of tools—from leaf blowers to lawn mowers. Dewalt has jumped into the game by introducing two new cordless lawn mowers, one of which is powered by their 20V MAX and 20V/60V Flexvolt battery platform, which is the same battery that runs their cordless power tool lineup.Available early 2018 for $399 with battery.The new Dewalt DCMW220P2 cordless mower is powered by two of their 20V MAX batteries....

Backing a semi-truck with a fully loaded trailer into a tight spot on a crowded cargo yard is damn near impossible, even for the most experienced teamsters. Terminal tractors offer a bit more maneuverability for dragging cargo trailers around the lot, but Verhagen Leiden’s Electric Tug V-move Trailer Mover XXL lets a single worker roll one around as if he were pushing a stroller.View full post on YoutubeA February product video that recently surfaced on Reddit demonstrates just how easily a 20-ton cargo trailer can be pushed around with this beastly handheld electric trailer....

Media Platforms Design TeamPortable GPS navigation units used to be cool and expensive. Now they’re just ubiquitous: You can find GPS units combined with cameras, radar/laser detectors, and every smartphone from every platform. That’s the challenge that hangs over every release from companies like Garmin, who need to sell customers on the idea that it’s still worth their money to invest in a stand-alone navigation unit. After spending some time with the Garmin nüvi 3597, we can tell you that a one-trick-pony gadget may still be the best at getting where you need to go....

Auto insurers are starting to offer discounts for drivers who enable the autonomous options on their vehicles. The latest is Britain’s largest motor insurer, Direct Line. According to Reuters it is now offering a 5 percent discount for turning on those features in a Tesla.Direct Line is the second insurer worldwide to offer a discount for self-driving options, and the first mainstream one to do so. (The very first, Root, is a startup insurer available in nine states)....

We knew it was a long shot when we saw the prediction. We knew it was an outside chance when we packed our bags. We knew it was uncertain when we boarded the Metro-North, rode it as far north as it would go, then hopped in a rented car and drove a little farther. View full post on TwitterAll throughout Friday, news reports simmered that the Northern Lights would creep south this past weekend....

Media Platforms Design TeamImage: flickr / louiscrusoe.Many years ago, not long after the implementation of a brand new Florida Building Code, I designed and built a room addition for a lakefront home. Obviously, one of the design criteria was that we take full advantage of the waterfront views, so we needed a wall of windows that wrapped around a corner of the building. The total length of wall space made mostly of glass was around 25 feet....

No machine defines a homeowner like his mower. (Apartment dwellers, after all, don’t cut grass.) And few tools do as much work. When you consider how much dust and plant matter they stir up, it’s a wonder mowers last as long as they do. But they are workhorses, especially if you give them some routine maintenance. The good news is that most mowers are simple machines, so they’re easy to service....

Here is some bright shining proof that big things are happening in the small satellite industry: A large titanium dome for fuel tanks that Lockheed Martin is using in a major U.S. satellite program.Engineers finished testing the 4-foot-diameter cap this month, ending a multi-year development program. Two domes will seal giant, high-pressure tanks that carry satellite fuel. The company will now offer the tank as a standard option for its LM 2100 satellite buses....

Media Platforms Design TeamThough the Elise, Exige, and Evora earned respect from legions of hardcore driving enthusiasts, Lotus hasn’t exactly endeared itself as an automotive brand of late. Following the fizzled promise of a ridiculously ambitious lineup and the ousting of CEO Dany Bahar, the brand has found some solace in racing– though some have accused even those efforts of being driven more by marketing than outright gearhead passion. Enter Lotus’s latest chapter, which sees the fabled brand announcing their imminent entry into the motorized two-wheeled realm....

Media Platforms Design TeamIt will take days and maybe weeks to know exactly what caused the explosion on Monday afternoon in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine, in Montcoal, West Virginia. With 25 miners dead, two hospitalized and four missing, it is the country’s deadliest mining accident in 25 years. Like other longwall mines, Upper Big Branch would have been a vast, efficient and dangerous place. More than half of the nation’s electricity comes from coal, and 31 percent of that is mined from underground....

It’s a question to gall anyone who loves fast cars: What’s the point in driving a high-powered machine when a Prius can easily surpass the highest speed limit in the land? The annoying thing is, the maudlin pragmatists who look at a Porsche 911 GT2 and say, “Well, that guy’s just going to get a lot of speeding tickets” are mostly right. In terms of performance, our cars have outgrown our roads....

Media Platforms Design TeamLast week a very special visitor came to the Popular Mechanics offices: Kari Byron, star of the Discovery Channel show During her tour, Byron enjoyed the crazy views—standing against the glass walls, she looked straight down to the street below—watched the PM staff build a PHEV-inspired jack-o’-lantern and checked out our enviable collection of power tools. “What do you do with all of these tools when you’re done with them?...

In the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan, archeologists have documented five massive geometric shapes, hundreds of meters across, constructed from mounds of earth, trenches, and rampart structures. Discovered on Google Earth by Dmitriy Dey in 2007, the function of these figures remains a mystery, and their very existence is unknown to most of the world outside the region, according to The New York Times. In a major boon to the study of these ancient figures, NASA released satellite images of some of the structures from about 430 miles up two weeks ago....

The new Top Gun trailer shows Maverick flying a new, possibly hypersonic aircraft. Tom Cruise and his pilots get into a shooting war, with someone shooting missiles at them.Why is there an F-14 Tomcat in the movie? This morning, Paramount Pictures released the second trailer for Top Gun 2: Maverick. We still don’t know the film’s plot but we do finally know that there is actual air combat in the film....

More than 500 million years ago, all the land in the world was made up of two supercontinents, Gondwana in the southern hemisphere and Laurasia in the north. The two supercontinents briefly combined to form Pangaea before breaking up into the continents we know today. Gondwana split up and became South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and the Indian portion of Asia, as well as a number of smaller islands in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans....