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I love road maps, even in this digital, satellite GPS age. I can sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and lose myself in a map. A good one makes me feel like a kid again with my entire life ahead of me.Yes, I have an iPhone that I deploy to navigate short hops. But most of the time, the teenager in me takes the wheel. I stash the phone and navigate by paper and a well-honed instinct that came from years of driving all over the lower 48, back when I drove a lumber truck down country roads by day and navigated by night as a general-assignment newspaper reporter....

Aviation has become dependent on technology with the net benefit of an increase in safety. But tragedy can strike when there’s a lack of communication between pilots and their sophisticated airplanes.This seems to be the case in the two Boeing 737 MAX airline crashes since December 2018, which killed 346 people. Investigators in both accidents say that cockpit confusion contributed to both. In response, today the National Transportation Safety Board took issue with the way that those who build and certify airplanes for flight failed to ensure that the airplane and pilot could work together in a safe way....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe average person who handles a chainsaw is unsafe with it. “It doesn’t take much to greatly improve your safety with a chainsaw,” says Cary Shepherd, National Training Specialist for outdoor power equipment maker Husqvarna. “First, you have to use personal protective equipment like chainsaw chaps and a helmet. Next, don’t overlook the obvious. Read the saw’s owner’s manual and follow its instructions for operation and maintenance.” He’s spent the last 18 years traveling the country conducting workshops with professional woodcutters, arborists and amateurs....

China’s 2018 Zhuhai Air Show is off and running, showing off some intriguing new weapon designs and some designs that look kind of familiar. Held every two years, Zhuhai is part air show and part arms expo for new weapons systems developed by Chinese defense contractors.If you can’t make it to China, the best place to watch the air show unfold is Twitter. There are several social media accounts sharing pictures of new military equipment from the show floor....

Media Platforms Design TeamOne of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.Tempers are flaring between China and Japan over ownership of islands in the South China sea. The territory, called Senkaku Islands in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, has been in dispute for centuries. Tensions have grown in the last few years after a Chinese boat crashed into a Japanese Coast Guard vessel here. This year Japan attempted to buy the islands from a family that had been leasing it, only to see China send patrol boats into the area....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe harsh interrogation of Martian rocks has officially begun. Curiosity’s laser-shooting Chemistry and Camera instrument (or ChemCam) took aim at its first mark—a fist-sized rock called Coronation—yesterday. The ChemCam shoots high intensity beams that excite the atoms in a target until they become glowing plasma. By using Curiosity’s onboard spectrograph to analyze the plasma, researchers will understand what elements make up the pulverized Martian dust.Coronation’s destruction was meant as a test run for the instrument, but according to a NASA press release, this firing of the ChemCam could be more important than the agency expected....

If we want to fix our climate problem, it’s not enough to simply stop burning fossil fuels. At this point, we have to actively take CO2 out of the air. There are a few technologies designed to remove CO2 from the air, but many of them are inefficient or expensive. But new research from Harvard might provide a low-cost, effective way to convert CO2 into something useful: The researchers discovered that adding compounds like cadmium or mercury to bacteria will trigger them to grow tiny semiconductors, converting CO2 into acetic acid....

When Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he was starting a tunnel boring company, most people assumed he was joking. But in the months since, he’s made it very clear that for some reason, he isn’t. In an interview with Bloomberg, Musk reveals more of his tunnel-making plans.The idea doesn’t exactly come from nowhere. After all, tunnels are a very important aspect of one of Musk’s other moonshots, Hyperloop. But only days after that seemingly innocuous tweet, Musk’s new company was born, though it currently isn’t doing much of anything....

In a recent meeting, Elon Musk shared that Tesla has designs for an aquatic vehicle.The Tesla submarine car was inspired by the Lotus Esprit in the James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me (which Musk owns).Musk also announced that Tesla hopes to unveil a pickup truck this summer and plans on rolling out Model Ys late next year.In a Tesla shareholder meeting yesterday, Elon Musk responded to a question about the possibility of the company creating an aquatic vehicle, one that could start on roads and go underwater....

Welcome to Apollo Week, celebrating 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission, explaining what it means today, and exploring how its legacy will shape the future of space exploration.On an overcast day at Ellington Airport outside of Houston, a glistening metallic NASA Super Guppy opened up to reveal relics of the past freshly restored for the future. As their beige surfaces, pastel-colored buttons, rounded displays, and rotary dials gleamed, more than a dozen Apollo alumni—the men who guided humanity to the moon and back—stood on the tarmac in eager anticipation....

Around 241 million visually impaired people around the world earn less than the equivalent of $1,045 a year. But 80 percent them could be cured if they had the money and access to the right doctors. Statistics like these can feel permanent, but those numbers were unacceptable to Larry Brilliant (yes, that’s his real name), co-founder of the Seva Foundation, which focuses on eliminating blindness worldwide. His organization’s work on correcting visual impairment in poor countries the focus of a new HBO documentary Open Your Eyes, which debuts on July 18....

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO. — It’s not easy to get into the GPS room. A security cocoon typical of U.S. military installations protects Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado, but the windowless home of the 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2SOPS) lies within the base’s “restricted access area.” A gatehouse, extra vehicle barriers, armed guards, monitored communication channels, and a total ban on smartphones stand between the outside world and the place where the U....

Heavy rainfall exposed a 50-foot-deep crack in the ground in Kenya.Some scientists say the crack was caused by tectonic plates shifting, signaling the beginning of a continental breakup.But others say it was just caused by the heavy rains.A massive crack in the ground suddenly appeared in southwest Kenya, and it could be the first sign that Africa will eventually split into two continents. Maybe.Local media outlet Daily Nation reports that the crack is as much as 50 feet deep in some areas, and up to 20 meters wide....

Combustion engines running on gasoline are among the largest contributors to global warming today. Taken together, cars and trucks count for one-fifth of America’s carbon emissions. But YouTuber Carson Duba has devised a solution. It may not work for everyone, but installing a lawnmower engine inside a Dodge Ram pickup sure is a cool trick.View full post on YoutubeDuba is using a Predator 212cc/6.5hp on a truck he got for free from a friend, for those playing at home....

On September 28, 2010, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a Light Sport Aircraft certificate for the Maverick Sport, the latest version of the flying dune buggy developed by Steve Saint and his crew at the Indigenous Peoples Technology and Education Center (ITEC). Last June, the vehicle received a license plate from the Florida Department of Transportation. That makes the Maverick Sport only the second vehicle ever to be declared both street legal and air legal....

One of the early success stories in the science of disease came in 1854, during a crippling cholera outbreak in London. Physician John Snow painstakingly recorded the locations of every cholera victim for more than a week, and by marking those locations on a map, he was able to zero in on the source: a contaminated water pump on the corner of Broad Street. Armed with that map, he convinced city officials to shut off the pump and ended an epidemic that claimed hundreds of lives....

New Australian research offers a tantalizing promise–fiber optics that could make Internet speeds 100 times faster. The research relies on fiber optics that imitate the basic structure of life: DNA. Fiber optics are long, thin and made out of pure glass. They’re put in bunches called optical cables where the fiber optics transmit light pulses through them. The new research, from the Australian RMIT University, says that by twisting that light into a spiral the transmission speed could be increased by orders of magnitude....

Media Platforms Design TeamA tidal wave of televisions is headed for the electronics hereafter. As the United States transitions to all-digital TV, the shutdown of analog broadcasting next February actually won’t affect most televisions in the country—87 percent of U.S. television-watching households already get their TV through cable or satellite. Nevertheless, the deadline is perhaps the most significant nail in the coffin for one of the most successful consumer electronics products of the 20th century: the cathode-ray tube (CRT) display....

On early Wednesday morning, in the town of Apatity in northern Russia, a man in his late 20s attempted to steal booze using an armored personnel carrier (APC) he picked up at a nearby training ground.View full post on Iframe Bystanders watched as the man crashed the vehicle into a convenience store, and then climbed out of the vehicle to enter the store and steal a bottle of wine. Reuters reported that the man stole the vehicle from a “privately-run motorsport training ground nearby,” before driving it through the woods and into the small town, which is just south of the Arctic Circle, and near the border with Finland....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhat is the Resilient Tunnel Project?The project started in 2007. The idea behind the tunnel plug was to be able to section off regions in a subway system so you can contain flooding and prevent a widespread event. Flooding is the most difficult, but there are also concerns about fires and toxic gas releases, all of which could be addressed by a plug.What other ideas have people considered?...