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Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Andy Sacks/Getty Images)There are a lot of good reasons to run your everyday diesel vehicle on homegrown oils–energy independence and less particulate pollution among them–but like all DIY projects, biodiesel production can have a dark side if it’s not undertaken with the proper precautions. I’ve been making my own biodiesel for eight years now and have never experienced a fire, but as more people try their hands at fuel production, the news has become peppered with cautionary tales....

“Cyborg botany” sound like something from an 80s cyberpunk novel, but it’s what Harpreet Sareen and Pattie Maes are working to make reality. As members of MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group, the two have been utilizing plants’ natural abilities of sensory detection and attempting to co-join them with modern tech.“Plants are self-repairing, self-regenerating organisms available at scale,” the researchers say in a press statement. “Through Cyborg Botany, we envision a convergent design world in which we reappropriate our natural capabilities for a new bio-interaction design....

Microsoft’s Project Silica has stored the 1978 movie Superman on a long-term, climate-proof quartz glass disk.Quartz glass is a durable, plentiful material that addresses cloud-storage worries.Even consumer data storage is a tossup because of the unpredictable future.Microsoft’s Project Silica has delivered proof of concept for its quartz glass storage theories, after teaming up with Warner Bros. to inscribe the classic 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman film onto a palm-size glass disk.The long arc of data storage has involved tubes filled with mercury, magnetic tape, laser-etched spinning disks—and that’s just computer storage....

A clogged dishwasher that won’t drain is a relatively common and totally disgusting kitchen issue, but strangely enough the problem might not be the dishwasher itself. Rather, it could be your newly installed garbage disposal.If you’ve got an excessive amount of water sitting in the bottom of your dishwasher, the first thing to do is check for blockages in the drain plugs located in the bottom of the dishwasher pan. Chunks of meat or vegetables, pieces of paper napkins and other items can clog the drains and prevent the dishwasher from draining properly....

Back in the day, 4-wheel drive and all-wheel drive were niche features. Unless you had a truck or an oddball vehicle like an Eagle wagon or Audi 4000, your vehicle was two-wheel drive. Now, with crossovers and SUVs supplanting sedans as the default choice for everyday transportation, it’s common for any given vehicle to sport a quartet of driven wheels. But that doesn’t mean all systems are created equal. ✅ Must-Read GuideExpert Tips To Optimize Your All-Wheel-Drive CarUnless you have a fully automatic all-wheel-drive system, there will be at least two drive configurations you can choose to maximize your vehicle’s capability in a given situation....

Russian strike jets practiced a mock attack on a Norwegian radar base in 2018, flying uncomfortably close to the the NATO country’s airspace before turning back. The incident, which took place in February 2018, was only just now brought to light by the director of Norway’s Intelligence Service. According to the Barents Observer, the head of the Intelligence Service revealed details of the mock attack this week in a speech delivered in Norway earlier this week....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe simple, noble jellyfish has inspired plenty of engineering imitations. Usually these feats of mechanical flattery take the form of swimming bots that move through the water by undulating. Now, though, it seems that jellyfish can also teach us a better way to fly.Seeking to overcome the instabilities inherent in winged flight, New York University mathematician Leif Ristroph designed this bare-bones, lightweight flier based on the movements of the aquatic invertebrate....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen an injury causes severe internal bleeding, patients need to get to the operating table quickly to survive. But in a war zone, where explosions and shrapnel can cause some of the most traumatic of these injuries, medical attention is often more than an hour away. Medical researchers have been tinkering with numerous solutions to try to keep more injured soldiers alive; now scientists at , a private company based in Watertown, Mass....

AeroEnvironment’s newest drone will mirror its prior creation, the Helios Prototype. NASAA race is on to build a fleet of solar-powered drones that beam internet down to the Earth beneath them, and the tech titans are dominating this chase—or so we thought. But now that Google and Facebook both have dashed their plans for roaming unmanned internet planes, a lesser known company is partnering with NASA to bring the project closer to reality, according to an IEEE Spectrum report....

Thought taking an elevator up the tallest building in the Western hemisphere wasn’t exciting enough? How about also witnessing the evolution of one of the world’s most iconic cities over a span of 515 years from the comfort of your own desk?This incredible depiction of the rise (and fall) of Lower Manhattan’s iconic cityscape will leave you breathless, especially at around the 32-second mark, when the familiar fascade of the original South Tower appears and swiftly disappears approximately four seconds later (proportional to the amount of time it actually stood)....

Pasadena, Calif.—At the Jet Propulsion Lab, tucked into the San Gabriel of southern California, people are no longer running on Earth-time. Now that Curiosity has landed safely on Mars, everyone here is now on Mars time, where each day is 40 minutes longer.A day on Mars is called a Sol. For this mission, Sol 0 started the moment the lander touched down on Mars to begin its two-year-long examination of the red planet....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen then Marine Lieutenant Colone Roosevelt Lafontant first started pushing the idea of a space plane for the U.S. Marine Corps in 2002, skeptics didn’t even bother to suppress their laughter. But now, with a Concept of Operations (CONOPS)—a formal military document that lays out how a particular weapon system would be used—and a completed, but not yet released Pentagon road map for the technology, people are beginning to take note of the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion, or SUSTAIN, the notional concept of a Marine space plane....

Tesla has been busy building all-electric cars like the Model 3, but they’re also making progress on a little side project—solar roof tiles. The company has spent years developing roof tiles with built-in solar panels, and according to Bloomberg, the first tiles are finally rolling off the assembly line.Previously, Tesla was installing solar roofs on the homes of its employees, as a type of beta test. At the same time, Tesla was finishing construction on its New York Gigafactory, which is responsible for making the tiles....

When cities started replacing the old, incandescent bulbs of traffic lights with new LED arrays, it came with all kinds of wonderful upsides. LED arrays last much, much longer than bulbs, which need to be replaced as often as every two years. They also require much, much less energy, which can save thousands of dollars in electricity costs. They’re also much more efficient, generating almost nothing in the way of waste heat the way incandescent bulbs do....

Yeah, yeah, the Super Bowl is coming up and 114 million people are going to watch it even though the Jacksonville Jaguars aren’t playing. But the real beginning-of-the-year sporting event, outside of the Winter Classic, is the Puppy Bowl. And now, thanks to the magic of virtual reality, you can put yourself on the field with a bunch of puppies vying for the championship before the main event.The Puppy Bowl, you say?...

The DoD, which showed interest in neutral particle beams earlier this year, now thinks they’re too hard to field anytime soon.Particle beams work by using atomic and subatomic particles to “melt” their target.The Pentagon wanted to use neutral particle beams to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles during takeoff phase. The Department of Defense is pushing hard into directed energy technologies, particularly lasers, but there’s one weapon that won’t be deployed in the field anytime soon: neutral particle beams (NPBs)....

The Trump Administration is racing to field a new nuclear weapon designed to counter Russia and enhance nuclear deterrence. The W-76-2 warhead will be delivered to the U.S. Navy for deployment on ballistic missile submarines in late 2019. Proponents claim the new warhead will enable the U.S. to respond to Russian nuclear weapons proportionately, but critics claim the W-76-2 is just another nuclear weapon and similarly dangerous. The W-76-2 is an adaptation of the older W-76-1, currently fitted to Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles aboard the Navy’s Ohio-class submarines....

Glaciers offer terrain for skilled skiers that just can’t be found anywhere else. A number of skiable glaciers crisscross the Alps, from France to Austria, and the Mer de Glace in the near Chamonix, France, has got to be one of the most impressive. Just check out this video of pro skier Sam Favret hucking off slopes and tearing through icy tunnels. View full post on VimeoThe short video is called Backyards Project, and was mainly shot near Favret’s home in Chamonix, although it also follows the pro as far as the mountains of Alaska....

A video posted to Twitter earlier this week shows NASA astronauts playing a pick-up game of baseball in space.Jessica Meir pitched a record-breaking 17,500 mph fastball in space.The game promoted the baseball World Series, which wrapped up last night with a win by the Washington Nationals. The World Series wrapped up last night with a dramatic win by the Washington Nationals. The entire week, high above the game—254 miles to be exact—three astros of another type have been showing their support....

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is whether there is life on other planets. There are a lot of planets out there so it might seem like the answer is likely yes, but so far we haven’t found any.But how would we go about finding life on another world in the first place? PBS Space Time looks at an experiment performed in 1990 that might give us some clues:View full post on YoutubeIn 1990, the Galileo spacecraft was on the way to Jupiter, and astronomer Carl Sagan had the idea to use it as a test to see if it could detect signs of life on Earth....