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Washington, D.C.— At the Washington, D.C., award ceremony announcing the official winners of the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize competition to produce pioneering fuel-efficient vehicles a parade of politicians hogged the microphone interminably, praising and thanking one another and invoking the name Obama far more frequently than the name X Prize.They were nevertheless outshone by the three winning cars and the long-suffering, hardworking teams of engineers and mechanics who built and drove the cars to their victories....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhy would you want to make a plant glow, you ask? To get attention. To beg the world to look at your strange and spectacular adventures in genetic modification, adventures that have nothing to do with ethically questionable food. To try to bring the tools and the wonders of synthetic biology into the mainstream.Also, are you kidding? A glowing plant?“Our vision is that people will be hacking together biological applications in the same way they are making mobile applications today,” says Antony Evans, the CEO of a San Francisco company called Glowing Plant....

The Israeli defense force shot down a drone flying from Syrian airspace, launched from a base staffed with Iranian military, which the IDF says crossed into Israeli airspace.Syrian counter-fire damaged one of Israel’s F-16s, forcing both occupants to eject.Israel responded with a “large-scale attack” against Syrian air defenses.The wedge-shaped drone looks like a flying saucer when seen in the black and white of a thermal scope. An Israeli helicopter pilot is tracking its smooth, steady path from the cockpit of an Apache....

Astronomers have confirmed nearly 4,000 exoplanets, thanks largely to the Kepler space telescope. So far, we know of about 50 that are probably rocky, about the size of Earth, and roughly the correct distances from their stars (depending on the host star’s size) to have liquid water. Thousands more will be discovered in the next decade, and astronomers now believe there are roughly 100 billion exoplanets in the Milky Way.Scientists can study newfound planets’ masses, sizes, and distances from their host stars as a way to guess whether the worlds might be good candidates to host life....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe first challenge for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects—the controversial proposals to deal with carbon dioxide (CO) emissions by burying the stuff—is just getting all that carbon underground: CCS projects must capture CO from emission streams at coal-burning power plants, oil refineries and other big sources, and then inject it deep below the earth’s surface. But the other challenge—and perhaps an even more difficult one—is keeping it down there permanently....

Media Platforms Design TeamModern lenses are super high—tech. A typical 18—55-mm zoom lens has 11 elements, multiple drive motors, optical image stabilization and an integrated circuit board.In the quaint old days of analog photography, the single-lens reflex, or SLR, was the tool of choice for professionals and dedicated hobbyists. Digital technology has made digital SLRs, or DSLRs, so affordable and simple to use that droves of amateurs have embraced them as a step up from basic point-and-shoot cameras....

The Trump Administration’s plan to build a border wall could threaten multiple aspects of a National Monument in Arizona, says a report from the National Park Service. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument could see its archaeological and ecological sites decimated by the construction of a 30-foot steel wall.The Monument also holds personal connections for several Native tribes in the area. A leader of one tribe compares the wall to building “a wall over your parents’ graveyards....

If you distill a computer down to its essential parts, there’s not much there. Get rid of the display, the casing, and all the software, and you’re left with a central processing unit, some memory, and a few familiar ports: a scary-looking board most of us wouldn’t know what to do with. In 2012 the world was introduced to the Raspberry Pi, a stripped-down computer that sells for around $40. Later this year a group of engineers in Oakland, California, will release an even cheaper version: Chip, a credit-card-sized circuit board....

Henry Gifford is what is known as a building scientist: He studies how buildings work and, just as important, why some don’t. He has written and published a remarkable book called Buildings Don’t Lie, nearly 600 full-color pages stuffed with information, infrared photography, diagrams, and—the best part—quizzes to test your knowledge. The book is as beautiful as it is exhaustive, covering air flow, water, light, sound, fire, pests, ventilation, air quality, and a lot more....

China has announced that—at some point in the future—it will ban the sale of cars with combustible engines powered by fossil fuels. No date has been set yet, but China would be by far the biggest market to make this kind of move.“Some countries have made a timeline for when to stop the production and sales of traditional fuel cars,” said Xin Guobin, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, who was quoted by Chinese state media at an auto industry event in the northern coastal city of Tianjin on Saturday....

A Norwegian Air Force fighter was used to carry lifesaving medical equipment to a remote city north of the Arctic Circle. The flight dramatically cut down the time necessary to move the equipment, potentially saving the patient’s life.According toThe Independent, a “critically ill” patient in the Norwegian town of Bodø needed use of an ECMO machine. ECMO machines replicate the heart and lungs, circulating blood through the human body while adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide....

Alphabet CEO Larry Page has long spent his free time investing in questionable transportation startups. A few years ago, news broke that Page was investing in not one, but two flying car startups, and now Bloomberg is reporting that the executive had a third startup under his care: a company called Heliox that envisioned a sort of hyperloop for bikers that would propel them along with gas pressure.According to Bloomberg, Heliox was a small operation working out of an unused airplane hangar....

A Europa mission is the top priority for Rep. John Culberson, a Texas Republican who heads up the science subcommittee in the House. And recent budget developments are driving that idea home—creating the possibility of an all-new mission program within NASA called the Ocean Worlds Exploration Program meant to explore the places in our solar system that could be home to subsurface oceans and other forms of water. There are a lot of potentially watery worlds in our solar system....

The current stereoscopic craze is focused mainly in the animated arena. That’s because 3D, which requires two camera views–one representing the left eye view, one representing the right–to synthesize the illusion of depth, can be accomplished more easily in digitally animated worlds simply by generating another camera view in the computer. Put on polarized glasses, which route the appropriate view to each eye, and you have a 3D movie. Shooting live-action 3D with film-camera rigs is much harder–and even more difficult when you add in animated characters, which need to be placed correctly in space in order to look like they were present during filming....

UPDATE, August 5, 3:12 PM ET: The Malaysian prime minister posted his full statement to Facebook.View full post on FacebookUPDATE, August 5, 1:51 PM ET:View full post on TwitterIn a statement, he said:“Today, 513 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Réunion is indeed from MH370....

Media Platforms Design Team"NASA’s almost unbroken string of success over the past quarter-century lulled many into a false complacency. The tragic explosion of the Shuttle Challenger earlier this year is a grim reminder that the leap to space is a complex and difficult one. But the steady progress of man toward the stars promises to continue for many years to come.“Isaac Asimov wrote those words, and Popular Mechanics published them in our July 1986 issue, a special edition in which PM called upon erudite writers to reflect on American technology an ingenuity....

NASA’s newest X-plane, the X-59, is on track to match or exceed the speed of sound with a test in early 2023, the space agency says. The plane is designed to do what the X-1 supersonic test pilots did, but quietly.Instead of a thunderous sonic boom that would disturb people on the ground, it should create a softer, less-intrusive “thump.” If successful, its technology could prove fast and safe enough for future commercial passenger transport....

Hot cells are strongly enclosed facilities where scientists can safely experiment on nuclear fuels.Ongoing research at hot cell facilities has helped scientists make smaller, safer nuclear reactors.The HFEF facility tests materials in multiple ways, including by destroying them for analysis.The Department of Energy (DoE) has shared a video exploring the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF) at Idaho National Laboratory, where scientists and technicians can safely study nuclear fuel sources from behind 4-foot-thick glass....

Media Platforms Design TeamLAS VEGAS—As smartphones have evolved, the common catch phrase that’s surrounded them has been “it’s like a computer in your pocket.” Well, in a lime green-lit ballroom at the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino, NVIDIA, one of the world’s leading chipmakers, revealed the future of processing power with the Tegra K1, a chip with the possibility of making phones (and other gadgets and machines) more like supercomputers. Just a quick comparison to its predecessor, the Tegra 4 (which was revealed last year at CES), and you can easily see the marked improvement....

ABOARD EXPLORER OF THE SEAS, Nov. 1 — I seem to have a knack for finding myself behind the wheel of giant, slow-moving vessels—this time, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Explorer of the Seas, which weighs in at 142,000 gross registered tons and stretches the length of five Fuji blimps, is the third largest cruise ship in the world. I admit, the captain didn’t actually disengage the auto-pilot. But considering the craft can keel 45 degrees before capsizing (unlike the Ethan Allen), I feel that was being overly cautious....