Posts

Media Platforms Design TeamWere you watching Twitter as it lit up all and down the East Coast? Can Twitter be useful for data collection?Christopher Emrich of The Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina: We have looked at social media and Twitter and things for collecting dataa few issues that go along with that. The great thing about Twitter [is that] a majority of time you have a geospatial location attached to that tweet....

Media Platforms Design TeamArt Center College of Design is nestled deep in the hills of a tony Pasadena, California suburb. Most folks don’t even know the black modernist building is there, let alone the fact that it has catapulted the careers of countless automotive designers including J Mays, Henrik Fisker, Charles Pelly, Chris Bangle, Freeman Thomas, and Franz von Holzhausen, among others.Thanks to its famous alums, the school’s annual Art Center Car Classic is not only an opportunity to ogle lustworthy machinery sprinkled like birdseed across the campus’s grass lawn, but also the perfect way to rub shoulders with some of the industry’s design illuminati....

Media Platforms Design TeamCAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait, June 19 — How can it be so hot so early? My first thought on waking to “Reveille” at 0600 on a lumpy bunk bed in a tent here is followed by utter astonishment: It’s getting hotter by the second, and we’re almost at 100 degrees. Welcome to the Middle East.Shuffling across the baking gravel, sand and dust toward the shower trailers, this pounding heat and all these unique smells of a military desert base bring me back to my first tour of Iraq in 2005, covering medevacs for Popular Mechanics with the 50th Medical Company, 101st Airborne out of Taji....

On Wednesday, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope project unveiled the first ever photo of a black hole. While the photo itself is incredible, the feats of human ingenuity the project’s scientists used to capture it are just as impressive if not moreso.The EHT project was a collaboration between eight different telescope observatories on four different continents, whose data was collected by a state-of-the-art combination of sensors and atomic clocks, stored on thousands of hard drives, and shipped to supercomputer clusters at MIT and Bonn, Germany....

The Chinese space program made history on January 2 as its Chang’e 4 spacecraft successfully soft-landed on the far side of the moon. While photographed several times over the years, no other country has soft-landed on the far side. Landing at 9:26 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the Chang’e-4 lander touched down within the Von Kármán crater, which is 115 miles (186 kilometers) in diameter. Located with the South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) basin, the crater is part of what is considered the largest impact structure in the solar system....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe sun is about to undergo what sounds like a massive upheaval. In the next few months, scientists say, our star will experience . The sun’s north magnetic pole will become its south pole, and vice versa, in an event that will reverberate throughout the entire solar system.a complete reversal of its magnetic fieldAlthough this kind of solar about-face can’t help but have a certain apocalyptic, cats-and-dogs-living-together aspect to it, the phenomenon is perfectly normal—and benign....

We all that 3D modeling was always, inevitably, going to be about one thing: exploring skulls. The day is finally upon us, and you can thank Google for it. The company just announced 200 new additions to Google Art Project, its project that allows museums to scan and digitize great works of art. The coolest: A collection of animal skulls from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. You can click and drag the skulls to move them around and see them from new angles....

Media Platforms Design TeamIf it weren’t for the journal , published by the Amsterdam-based company Elsevier, controversial virologist Peter Duesberg may have never have been able to publish his paper last July. However, the journal doesn’t have a peer-review system (a rare case for any journal), and his claim that anti-AIDS drugs are unrelated to AIDS deaths in South Africa was accepted. That is, until the scientific community contacted the journal out of concern over the reported facts used to support the author’s argument, the potentially libelous content against another AIDS scientist and an unreported conflict of interest between a co-author of the paper and his former employer that advocates vitamin treatment over anti-AIDS drugs....

Media Platforms Design TeamOn Sale Date: NowPrice: $199; $649 (off-contract)HTC knows competition. Constantly pitted against Samsung’s Galaxy series of smartphones, HTC has put all its hopes into one contender—the HTC One. This year’s model, also known as M8, makes major improvements to the much-loved M7 model by adding new capabilities, better performance, and more third-party partnerships. But with the Galaxy S5’s impressive specs and exhaustive list of functionality (it can even be a baby monitor), does the new HTC One remain competitive?...

Researchers from Keio University in Japan have created a robotic tail for humans that’s designed to assist in balance maintenance.Dubbed “Arque,” the tail was modeled, in part, after the tail of a seahorse and has tons of possible applications.Future applications for this kind of technology could include preventing fall injuries and enhancing AR video game experiences.If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to have a tail—haven’t we all?—Japanese researchers have some good news for you: Arque, a wearable robotic tail that aids in equilibrium management and provides haptic feedback to the wearer, is a thing that now exists....

FARMINGTON HILLS, MI—Nissan has been in the commercial truck business for more than 70 years and currently sells light commercial vehicles almost everywhere in the world—except the U.S. and Canada. But in 2010, that’s going to change. Nissan unveiled not one but two concept trucks at its design and tech center here: the retro American panel-truck-style NV 2500 and the small NV 200 panel delivery van with a slide-out cargo pod....

Media Platforms Design TeamCAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Every student in America should visit Amy Smith’s D-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, though, to be honest, the perfect time to come was probably during the past month, while the first International Development Design Summit (IDDS) was being held. (It ends today.) The lab is cluttered with power tools and bicycle parts, orange plastic buckets, vices, lengths of 2x4 and PVC pipe, a beaten down old blue sofa and a concrete coffee table....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe rescuers are coming. For the past hour I’ve been pinned inside a tomblike cave of collapsed concrete, the result of a massive explosion in an underground parking garage. Finally, a voice echoes in the darkness: “Can anyone hear me?” I let out a muffled “help” as I strain to see through a gap in the dusty rubble. Outside is more darkness, blowing smoke, and, 20 yards away, the promising beams of headlamps....

Entries for the 2018 RobotArt competitions are in. The top 10 teams have been announced, and you can see the robot-painters’ impressive works in an online gallery. This year’s first-place artist, CloudPainter used machine learning to generate portraits and landscapes (including a re-imagination of Cezanne). The second place team chose impressionistic paintings with “a high level of skill with brushstrokes,” and the third place team programmed a robot “brushstroke by stroke,” using haptic recording and playback to generate gorgeous reproductions of Van Gogh landscapes....

Scientists at the Salk Institute implanted lentil-sized human brain organoids into the heads of mice, then closed it with a transparent window. The mice looked and behaved like ordinary mice, while supplying blood and nutrients to keep human brains developing for months. Researchers created the human cerebral organoids to study schizophrenia, but the technique could be used for much more in the future, like serving as cortical repair kits for people with brain injuries or developmental problems....

It’s a good time to be alive for audiophiles and effects pedal nerds. One operation in particular, Chase Bliss Audio out of Anoka, Minnesota, is redefining what a guitar pedal can be.Every serious player has confronted the choice between analog and digital guitar pedals. Most tone snobs are wary of digital pedals, opting for the more natural sound of analog, but digital pedals provide convenience and control that analog just can’t offer....

Coral bleaching is a serious problem. As ocean temperatures rise, corals start dying, and invaluable ocean ecosystems are lost along with the marine invertebrates. Bleaching is one of the first signs that a coral reef is headed for disaster. The strong 2015/2016 El Niño, which began affecting reefs as early as 2014, led to some of the worst coral bleaching ever seen. Now, a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association predicts that this severe bleaching will continue well into 2017....

Stonefish not only protect themselves with spikes, camouflage, and venom, but some species even pack switchblades on their faces. Ichthyology William Leo Smith from the University of Kansas discovered this strange mechanism after he dissected a pet wispy waspfish that died. The fish had a switchblade like weapon on his face, called a lachrymal saber, so named because of its placement below the eye (lachrymal means concerned with tears). The weapon hides alongside its face until danger approaches, when the saber whips out the blade into action....

The miracle of human flight is starting to look a lot like Iron Man. Swiss military pilot Yves “Jetman” Rossy is a jetpack stunt pioneer, having flown in formation with an Emirates A380 airliner over Dubai and plied the air above Rio de Janeiro. In a new teaser-trailer for the documentary LOFT: The Jetman Story, Rossy and his accomplices Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet perform the death-defying feat of launching the first jetpack flight from a ground-based platform....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe last time we covered the 2048 game (which is still ruining my life, ), lots of readers wrote in to let me know that the puzzle game is hardly new. Indeed, 2048 looks a lot like the popular mobile game called , complete with one frustrating grid and a series of numbered blocks that players must push together to form escalating multiples.thank you very muchThreesThe uncanny resemblance was not lost on Gabriele Cirulli, creator of 2048....