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Kitty Hawk, a California-based start-up backed Google co-founder Larry Page, has released a video showing of its flagship “Cora” aircraft, the latest in an ever-growing army of “flying cars” or “air taxis.” Like most of its nascent competition, the Cora is an electric, VTOL craft, which makes it emissions free and able to take to the skies with no need for a runway. It does this not through any sort of in-air transformation, like in other rotor-based VTOL designs, but instead it has entirely separate propellers for vertical and horizontal movement....

In the gray great sadness of the sea’s sprawling end, the ocean creatures will depart the earth one by one for a greater paradise. Specifically: a trawling net, a plastic-choked estuary, or a sweltering primordial stew of algae, bacteria, and whatever will eventually evolve to replace us as earth’s dominant species.First we’ll lose endangered species, such as the smalltooth sawfish and giant yellow croaker, which have already proven themselves vulnerable to overfishing and changing environmental conditions....

Media Platforms Design TeamLenovo showed off more than just a new gadget tonight. The Chinese-based tech company presented a new image—an aggressive persona to match its dominating sales numbers. With Ashton Kutcher on hand, (who played the tech legend Steve Jobs and isn’t foreign to the commercial gadget space), Lenovo announced its new Yoga Tablet.The device continues the mission that the company established when introducing the Yoga line of PCs in 2012: adapting electronics to fit consumers’ needs, and not the other way around....

Media Platforms Design TeamLas Vegas— Monster Cable is accustomed to scorn. The maker of high-end audio and video cables, and, in recent years, high-end ear- and headphones, is lambasted so often by journalists for its inflated prices, even we’re tired of doing it. But at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, as Monster expands its offerings, becoming a bizarre grab-bag that includes music (some produced by CEO and “Head Monster,” Noel Lee) and car cleaning fluid (supposedly inspired by discussions about how best to clean Lee’s Bentley), the company is entering the 3D television market with, naturally, a strangely expensive product of dubious value....

Beginning at sunrise on March 6 (which was actually this afternoon here in the States) during the annual Australia Speed Week in Lake Gairdner, the Top-1 “Ack Attack” team of American motorcycle racing veterans will be only the third team in 27 years to try and establish a new FIM (Federation Internationale de Motorcyclisme) World Land Speed Record and enter the Guinness World Records. Sponsored by Burlingame, Calif.-based Top Oil Products Co....

NASA is no stranger to transforming aircraft. Consider the ten-engine drone called Greased Lightning, which can shift from VTOL into cruise mode in midflight. A new project from NASA and MIT explores shape-shifting aircraft further, but from a distinctly different direction. This new wing technology, made up of hundreds of identical pieces, is the foundation for aircraft with flexible wings that transform dynamically in flight to create the optimal shape for their moment-to-moment flight conditions....

Pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed last month referred to Boeing’s safety guidelines while trying to rescue the aircraft from a fatal nosedive, according to a Wall Street Journal report early Wednesday. It’s the latest development to heap scrutiny and spotlight on the plane manufacturer, which has seen all of its 737 Max 8 and 9 aircraft grounded around the world after two major crashes in a five month span....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy in the world would you walk away from a lucrative job with a drug company? After my research, I had a choice to continuewhether to get the Ph.D.and I was done with it. [Done with] being in the lab, not being able to talk to people. I’m a little more social than that. My wife didn’t leave me, and 12 years later I’m doing what I love....

Russia took the unusual step today of holding a press conference in an attempt to explain its side of a dispute that threatens to sink a decades-long arms control treaty. Moscow claims that the new 9M729 cruise missile, which the United States believes violates the 1987 INF Treaty, is merely an updated version of an older missile that is not only in compliance with treaty range limits but actually has a shorter range than the previous missile....

During the Second World War, the United States sent thousands of tanks and armored vehicles to the Soviet Union as military aid. The flow of arms and equipment was vital in keeping the Soviet Union in the fight, and ultimately 4,102 M4 Sherman medium tanks were sent to the Eastern Front—where they were known as Emchas. One tank that didn’t make it was traveling on the Liberty Ship SS Thomas Donaldson....

Researchers have determined the areas of the human brain responsible for our aversion to robots: the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.The researchers hope these new insights will help create a future where humans and robots coexist peacefully.Scientists have pinpointed the prefrontal cortex and amygdalae as the brain regions responsible for some people’s aversion to robots. These areas, which go on red alert when we see humanoid robots, confirm the Uncanny Valley theory, which posits that “humans prefer anthropomorphic agents, but reject them if they become too human-like....

Media Platforms Design TeamDuring last night’s 2-hour PlayStation 4 sort-of reveal, Sony showed us the future of gaming. And then, just as quickly, it backed away.I’m not referring to the new console’s hardware specifications—the eight-core CPU, the 1.84 TFLOPS GPU, the 8 GB of RAM—which are an incremental improvement over the PlayStation 3’s but still nowhere near the stats of top-tier PC gaming rigs. Nor do I mean the controller’s tiny touchpad, or the included Kinect-like motion-sensing camera, with which developers might do great things....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere’s a saying among climbers that “It’s not the mountain, it’s who you climb it with.” I’ve been on six expeditions to Mount Everest, and the reason I kept going back was not just the challenge of climbing the world’s tallest and most famous mountain, but also the chance to work toward a really hard goal side-by-side with Sherpas—the most hard-working, loyal, and good-natured people I’ve ever met....

The Pentagon is pushing to create synthetic life forms, life changed at the genetic level to serve military purposes. The military envisions common marine microorganisms engineered to release telltale signs when enemy ships pass, living camouflage, and self-healing paint. The design, manufacture, and release of synthetic life forms into the wild creates some far-reaching ethical dilemmas—should mankind modify the global environment for the purposes of war?The Army, Navy, and Air Force are jointly supporting an initiative called the Applied Research for the Advancement of Science and Technology Priorities Program on Synthetic Biology for Military Environments....

The Trump Administration’s 2020 Budget is out, and the Pentagon is asking for 17 more aircraft than it received in 2019. A quick tally of the aircraft shows the number of fighter jets and unmanned aerial vehicles the services are asking for is down slightly, while the number of helicopters is up. Also, the Air Force is purchasing eight new F-15s in a deal that smells fishy, given the Acting Secretary of Defense’s work career....

A U.S. shipyard has cut first steel for the first in a new class of nuclear-powered ballistic missiles submarines. Huntington Ingalls Industries has begun construction of USS Columbia, lead ship of the class set to enter service in 2031. Columbia (illustrated in the above image) and her sister ships will form the seaborne leg of the so-called U.S. nuclear triad, sailing the oceans of the world undetected for months at a time to form a powerful deterrent against surprise nuclear attack....

When you puke it’s (probably) not intentional but for this little guy, puking is a full time job. Designed by roboticists from Chuo University the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, this bot not only barfs up white, foamy rocket fuel but is also responsible for mixing up the final product that it voms out.This bot, as IEEE explains, is designed to mimic the motion of an intestine for the purpose of carefully mixing the various ingredients—an oxidizer, high-energy fuel, and a binder—that go into making solid rocket fuel....

The Parker Space Probe is getting ready for it’s moment under the hot lights. As NASA preps the probe to get closer to the sun than any human-made object in history, it’s Thermal Protection System (TPS) has been installed.The Parker will be entering the sun’s corona, an envelope of plasma that surrounds the star. Solar coronas extend millions of miles into space, and the Parker will get within 4 million miles of the sun....

View full post on YoutubeAstronaut Don Pettit has had a storied NASA career. He’s logged 370 days in space, flown in two shuttle missions, hunted for meteorites in Antarctica, and invented new devices aboard the International Space Station. But one of the things he’s primarily known for is his beautiful space photography. In this short video, Pettit explains the challenges of photographing in space, especially with the ISS zipping around the world 15 times per day....

The first gun to shoot doesn’t sound like a gun at all. The noise is high and buzzing, like a chain saw or a leaf blower. It stops, then starts up again. From my perch on the engine cover of a special operations gunboat, I can see the source of this weird racket–someone on one of the other boats gliding down Kentucky’s Salt River is firing a minigun into the woods....