Posts

As the price of electricity continues to rise, homeowners are looking for ways to cut energy costs without sacrificing comfort or convenience. And many cost-conscience homeowners are considering solar panels, which convert the sun’s energy into clean electricity. Solar-powered systems have come a long way in the past decade or so. They’re much more powerful and sensitive, so they’ll work in virtually any region—not just the Sunbelt. The widespread availability and popularity of solar panels has also driven the price down, and when state and federal rebates are applied, the systems start entering the realm of affordability....

Media Platforms Design Team They run American surveillance missions for police forces here and military units in Iraq—not to mention the world over. They’re digital eyes in the sky, whether it’s hunting for terrorists overseas, tracking down drug smugglers or learning how to fly blind. No matter their deployment, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are seeing increased use, and that’s one of the main reasons the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D....

DETROIT — I’ve seen so-called “facelifts” for cars, but none in recent memory is so skimpy as Ford’s update on the Crown Victoria for 2008. Call it the Crown Victoria Special Edition—at least that’s what the escutcheon says on the front fender (pictured at right). The ID logo also offers a simple crown image, just in case you missed the message. We don’t know about the technical details—if there are any—but we think that the three-bar grille insert does wonders for the front-end appearance....

DETROIT — Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge has always owned the minivan paradigm, at least ever since they stole it from VW in 1984. And every generation of minivan they’ve brought to market has leapfrogged the competitors on styling, powertrains, features and driving qualities. I just came from the reveal of the 2008 Grand Caravan and Town & Country.They’ve done it again. Obviously, somebody in product planning has been paying attention to how families use these minivans....

LR2, a completely new vehicle for 2008, joins the Land Rover lineup as the entry-level luxury SUV, replacing the discontinued Freelander. Developed in cooperation with Volvo, another Ford division, LR2 offers many drivetrain components taken (with refinements) from a Volvo production design. About the same size on the exterior as Ford’s Escape SUV, the LR2 competes in price and class with BMW’s X3 and Audi’s Quattro wagon.Of a new design inside and out, the LR2 still remains easily recognizable, with its traditional body shape, high ground clearance and large sheetmetal seams, as a member of the Land Rover family....

Researchers in Paris and the U.K. have joined forces to create tech accessories made of artificial skin.The phone cases and mousepads aren’t for commercial sale, but have a role in the study of human-computer interaction. The researchers hope to improve communication by digging into the haptic feedback of the skin that we naturally understand.The artificial skin can “feel” a user’s grasp, meaning it can understand gestures like tickling or pinching and then generate an appropriate response like a laughing face, for example....

LAS VEGAS — Popular Mechanics’ Deputy Editor Jerry Beilinson and I are sitting in what has to be one of the largest auditoriums I’ve ever seen here at the Venetian Hotel and Casino. The hall is packed to capacity to see the Bill Gates keynote speech. The rest of the world may love him or hate him, but he is in many ways the patron saint of CES, having given eight previous pre-CES keynote addresses....

A lawsuit working its way through the California courts alleges that Facebook routinely spies on its users, collecting data from users’ phones outside the app including location data, the contents of text messages, and photos stored on the device.A startup called Six4Three is bringing the suit. The company developed an app for Facebook’s platform called Pikinis, which allowed users to search for photos of their friends in swimsuits. Six4Three alleges that Facebook lied to developers and investors about the extent of privacy controls available to users on the app....

.The Decade, Reviewed looks back at the 2010s and how it changed human society forever. From 2010 to 2019, our species experienced seismic shifts in science, technology, entertainment, transportation, and even the very planet we call home. This is how the past 10 years have changed us.It’s been a hell of a decade for your data.Since 2010, your personal information has been sold on the dark web, stolen by foreign nations (here’s looking at you, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea), used to swing a number of elections (ahem Russia, but also Facebook), and employed as a way to attack nuclear facilities, hospitals and entire electrical grids....

NASA’s plan for private space industry faced a tough crowd today during a hearing in Washington, D.C. Not only did SpaceX’s Elon Musk signal the chance that his company would not bid on the NASA contract to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station, but the day’s event raised a larger problem—skeptical members of Congress. During the hearing of the House Committee on Space, Science and Technology, U.S. representatives from both sides of the aisle expressed doubts that the space agency could manage the program, that there were worthwhile customers beyond NASA to serve as a foundation for a new industry, that the agency could bring the program in without delay and price spikes....

Having internet in the sky is a minor miracle. On the other hand, it is often unusable garbage. But things are looking up, and JetBlue’s universal, speedy, gate-to-gate Wi-Fi is an example of how things are getting better. It’s now available on every JetBlue flight, for free. Your go-to touchstone for what in-flight Wi-Fi is like might be the notoriously awful Gogo, which actually faced a lawsuit from American Airlines due to poor performance that the airline claimed did not live up to the standards of their agreement....

Alternative energy, climate change, and other environmental issues were thrust back into the forefront of the American political dialogue in February with the arrival of the “Green New Deal.“The term, which first entered the vernacular in 2007 when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested the idea, has become a watchword for Democratic star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her allies, who are echoing the language of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in proposing a sweeping new program to transition America’s energy economy and, they hope, create a slew of jobs in the process....

Q: We have a long ranch house and it takes forever to get warm water to the farthest bathroom. Is there anything we can do?-DENNIS R., LINCOLN, NEBRASKAA: You need a hot-water recirculation system. Instead of water moving in only one direction, from the water heater to the bathroom, it also moves cooled water from the bathroom to the water heater, making room for new hot water to take its place....

The current record for the longest living human was set 21 years ago by Jeanne Calment, a Frenchwoman who died at the age of 122. While no one has surpassed Jeanne’s age to date, a team of scientists studied long-living Italians and concluded that humans have not reached our longest possible lifespan yet.According to the New York Times, researchers created a database of 3,836 elderly Italians who had reached the age of 105 between 2009 and 2015, then analyzed the rate at which the various age groups were dying....

Media Platforms Design TeamBill Gates has dominated the software industry, become one of the wealthiest men in the world and remade his image as a master philanthropist. But can he stop a hurricane? Media Platforms Design TeamHow It Works: The vessel fills with water as waves slap over the sides. The pressure of the water’s weight forces water down a tube, where the downward current turns a turbine. That turbine sucks cool water from the depths into the tub....

Media Platforms Design TeamI just spent the day totally immersed in Toyota’s hybrid utopia. This included several hours in the proverbial crowded dark room—albeit smoke free, cool and with Powerpoint rather than overhead projection—and driving on the sunbathed coastal roads of California’s Orange County. And, after all of this hybrid drive and driving, a few thoughts, in no particular order.Despite the fact that so many naysayers and hybrid detractors continue to decry the fuel-economy claims of hybrid makers versus real world and the price premium for buying a hybrid, Toyota’s latest sales figures show a six day inventory of Priuses....

The Air Force revealed its new name for the next generation combat search and rescue helicopter this week.The “Jolly Green II” is a tribute to the original green painted helicopters that rescued down aircrews during the Vietnam War.The HH-60W will replace older helicopters, incorporating newer electronics and doubling the aircraft range. The U.S. Air Force has named its new search and rescue chopper Jolly Green II, in honor of green painted search and rescue helicopters that plucked down pilots and aircrew from danger during Vietnam....

You find a lot of great stuff when browsing through arXiv, the repository of scientific research run by Cornell University, including very elaborate solutions to problems you didn’t necessarily know existed. But now that we think about it, we would like to know the ideal way to fold a notebook page in order to “bookmark” it, actually.Enter Chenguang Zhang, a postdoc in MIT’s math department and Earth Resources Laboratory, who crunched the numbers to find the perfect folding method....

A skeleton of an unknown dinosaur has just been sold at an auction, going to an unknown bidder who paid more than $2 million for the mystery fossil. The status of the skeleton is now uncertain, with many paleontologists hoping it winds up in a museum for further study.The skeleton was discovered in Wyoming in 2013, and at first, scientists thought it was the remains of an allosaurus or similar dinosaur....

Humans are terrible swimmers, converting roughly 3 percent of their kicks, strokes and general underwater exertions into forward motion. We can boost our efficiency to 10 percent by adding fins, but dolphins, by comparison, can turn 80 percent of their energy into thrust. Not to be outdone, the Pentagon’s research wing, DARPA, is developing a contraption that lets Navy SEALs and other combat divers swim faster, and with less effort. Instead of kicking, PowerSwim calls for a kind of undulation as its hinged foils pivot up and down....