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Media Platforms Design Team2000: President Bill Clinton declares a tie in the race to map the human genome, giving credit to both Venter and his publicly funded rival, Francis Collins. Far from being finished, Venter considers it “the starting line” for the future of medicine.2001: The Institute for Genomic Research, founded by Venter, helps sequence the genome of the anthrax strain mailed in the attacks that killed five people— evidence that eventually leads the FBI to the source....

Media Platforms Design TeamEvery year about the middle of summer, my mower gets harder to start, and it doesn’t run as strong as it did earlier in the season. I tune it up every spring, and it always runs on fresh fuel. How long can a mower go between tuneups?The tuneup interval for a typical small engine on a mower is about 50 hours or once a season, whichever comes first, but there are exceptions, according to manufacturers....

Southwest Airlines has been miscalculating the weight of baggage stowed in the cargo holds of its planes. The inaccuracies have occasionally been alarming, amounting to a “systemic and significant” issue that could potentially compromise the safety of its flights, according to a Federal Aviation Administration probe which has been investigating the matter since last February. Related StoryThe 7 Best AirlinesThe Wall Street Journal on Monday published details of the FAA probe into Southwest’s baggage-weight policy, which notes discrepancies between the baggage weights reported to pilots and the actual weight of an aircraft during takeoff....

Media Platforms Design TeamSaying the quartet of full-size SUVs from GM dominates the market is a bit of an understatement. The Tahoe, Suburban, Yukon, and Yukon XL together account for roughly 74 percent of all segment sales in the US and represent 7 percent of all vehicles sold by the General. When these rigs get a redesign, it’s a big deal for the company. As with many recent updates to older GM product lines, the focus for refreshing these big haulers includes much-upgraded interiors, reduced wind noise, and greater fuel economy....

As space travel evolves, so too must the space suit. The classic NASA whites are iconic—their size shows how much people must transform themselves as they entire the great void, and they’re the only fashion the Moon has ever seen. But times change, and as Boeing shows with its new suits, a change can actually look quite nice.View full post on YoutubeThere are many ideas about the space suit of the future should look like....

Media Platforms Design TeamHow did you guys get your start with IBM?KEN TIMMONS: I started back in 1979 right out of school working on what might be called the precursor to the PC, the IBM Series 1. It was kind of big and clunky and you didn’t carry it around with you and it sure didn’t fit on your kitchen table. About a year after I started, I got an opportunity to go join the team in Boca Raton working on the first IBM PC....

Most flight schools and small aviation companies will charge you no more than a couple hundred dollars for a taste—usually an hour ride, with an instructor. You get to grab the controls for part of the time, zip around, maybe fly over your house. It’s usually called a discovery flight.When you fly in a small aircraft at a low altitude, the sensation is not so much that the world below gets smaller....

In late July, North Korea handed over 55 sets of human remains thought to be missing U.S. servicemen from the Korean War. Now, forensic scientists are analyzing the remains, collecting DNA and isotope samples in an attempt to match the remains with Americans missing in action.The Korean War, pitting U.S.-led United Nations forces against those of China and North Korea, lasted from 1950 to 1953 and killed 36,914 American troops. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the war left more than 7,800 Americans missing in action and presumed dead....

Media Platforms Design TeamSomewhere over in Sweden there’s a Dumpster full of Saab letterhead, employee ID badges, and day planners. There are guys going through what once were Saab’s offices, hanging auction tags on the furniture, computers, printers, and water coolers. Saab went bankrupt in December 2011; in June, a company called National Electric Vehicle Sweden AN (NEVS) announced it would buy the marque, reportedly to make electric vehicles bearing the venerable name....

NATO, in response to pressure from the United States, is expected to announce space as a “warfighting domain.”It’s unclear how NATO will treat this. It could militarize space.Regardless of whether it militarizes it now, eventually space will become a potential battlefield.The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is expected to announce it considers space a “warfighting domain.” at summit in December. The landmark announcement would cement the notion that, like the air, land, and sea domains, space is a potential battlefield whose control is vital in a future conflict....

Russian state television inadvertently broadcast footage of a Russian bomber carrying cluster bombs in Syria, despite the Russian government’s insistence that its military is not using cluster bombs in the Middle Eastern country. The video was later altered to remove footage of the controversial weapons—and then changed back to to show the bombs again. RT, a state-run television station, broadcast footage of a Su-34 “Fullback” attack jet carrying a pair of RKB-500 cluster bombs before cutting the shot out and editing it back in....

An interesting concept for America’s nuclear deterrent recently emerged on the Internet. A former employee for a US defense contractor describes an idea to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles from midair…using a civilian jetliner. The idea was ultimately shelved, but is reminiscent of a current DoD program for conventional weapons.According to the post on The Unwanted Blog the author, was an employee for Orbital ATK, a San Jose-based defense contractor specializing in rockets and missiles....

In 1882, James A. Williams of Fredonia, Texas, wanted to make a new kind of trap “by which animals which burrow in the ground can be destroyed.” He took inspiration from 19th Century “burglar-alarms” that involved jury-rigging a pistol and lever contraption “so as to kill any person or thing opening the door or window to which it is attached.” Here you can see the patent for the overkill trap. Williams points out that his trap design, which involved a “revolver or pistol” secured to a “suitable frame,” has the advantage of sounding an alarm when it goes off so that it can be reset....

Media Platforms Design TeamPlenty of rare vehicles routinely cross the blocks at Barrett-Jackson’s Scottsdale auctions, but few have stirred as much buzz as the original Batmobile, which sold yesterday for $4.2 million (or $4,620,000 after the buyer’s premium.)The bubble-topped, 19 foot-long, 5,500-lb two-seater started life as a 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car which had been purchased by customizer/builder George Barris from the Ford Motor Company for one dollar. In 1966, Barris modified the ride into a TV-ready icon in 15 days with a budget of $15,000, and the bubble-topped machine quickly became a part of pop culture iconography....

Scallops are strange. These little mollusk looks like a horror movie clams, with a row of tendrils and eyes inside its mouth. And then there are those eyes. According to research published today in Science, those eyes—which bear a slight resemblance to a berry—look an awful lot like an advanced telescope. Just maybe, they could teach us a thing or two about the science of vision.Most newer observatory telescopes rely on an array of multiple tiled mirrors to build a complex picture of the heavens....

Daniel is the gnarliest trail in North Carolina’s Uwharrie National Forest. It’s rated “extremely difficult” by the USDA Forest Service, which manages the Badin Lake OHV Complex. The trail earns its intimidating status because of a section that requires you to basically drive up a wall of boulders and then negotiate a switchback with a fearsome drop on the outside corner. You scramble up to a rock-strewn clearing with spectacular views and back down the other side of the mountain via a moderately less brutal section of trail....

A group of researchers has found ancient frogs fossilized in amber, making these 100 million-year-old fossils the oldest evidence of frogs in tropical rainforests. The researchers hope that this discovery will reveal more about how amphibians evolved and moved to their modern habitats.Frogs first moved to tropical forests between 100 million and 200 million years ago, and today that’s where almost a third of all frogs are found. But it’s difficult for scientists to piece together exactly what these forest environments look like, because the frogs are so small and tropical forests aren’t great environments for fossil-making....

Russia’s Ministry of Defence posted a New Years video of the Northern Fleet conducting a live fire exercise. The video shows the ships of the fleet firing all manner of weapons while at sea, from huge anti-ship missiles to rapid fire deck guns.Kuznetsov launching missiles. YouTubeThe video starts off with a fly-by of Russia’s only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, followed by a quick cut to the launch of a SA-N-9 Kinzhal medium range surface to air missile....

Media Platforms Design TeamGran Torino (2008)Media Platforms Design TeamClint Eastwood is an American icon, a silver-screen legend both in front of and behind the camera, and we like to think that he knows all of PM’s 100 must-know-skills and more. Somehow the 79-year-old Eastwood found time to make Gran Torino after post-production on his 1920’s period-piece, Changeling, and prior to preproduction on his upcoming Nelson Mandela biopic, Invictus. Just as Eastwood played upon his Western past in Unforgiven, so too does Gran Torino conjure up images of hard-boiled cop Harry Callahan, so much so that critics early on labeled the film as a Dirty Harry sequel....

Researchers from Zhejiang University in China have created a new kind of vacuum suction unit to help wall-climbing robots traverse over any kind of surface. Traditional vacuum suction devices fail on rough or textured surfaces due to vacuum leakage. The new suction method looks to solve this problem.The research was published earlier this month in the scientific journal Physics of Fluids. Wall-climbing robots that scale the sides of high-rise buildings and clean the glass aren’t new....