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Media Platforms Design TeamScientists keep getting better at rewriting the book of life. Adding, deleting, and splicing genes has become routine, and some researchers are now even designing DNA for creatures. While many are hard at work rearranging letters on the page, a new experiment is redefining the concept of synthetic biology by writing new letters.As they reported today in the journal Nature, a team of biologists led by Floyd Romesberg at the Scripps Research Institute have expanded the genetic alphabet of DNA—the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts that write the book of life—to include two new letters....

It’s been no real secret that Uber has had plans to get into the self-driving car game so it can ultimately eliminate its need for pesky meatbag drivers, and now its first prototype is hitting the road. Developed by the ride-sharing giant’s Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh, the hybrid Ford Fusion has already made its first trips on public roads, entering into a technological race with other giants like Google and Tesla....

Scientists have learned more about the subatomic particles known as neutrinos, sometimes called ghost particles. They’re known for traveling at near lightspeeds and being nearly massless, but a recent study has shown the masslessness of the most massless neutrino. It’s least 6 million times lighter than the mass of an electron. Researchers have been hard at work to discover just what neutrinos are, why they are so elusive, and what roles they play in our universe—using things like neutrino telescopes under the sea to detect them or spotting them in far-away galaxies with black holes at the center....

As smart as it may seem, current artificial intelligence can only learn what we program it to learn. So far, those skills are often applied to learning how to play video games. But what if we introduced robots to the fundamentals of human awareness like pain and safety? Kurzgesagt takes a brief look at the philosophical questions behind such a choice, and it’s heavy on the what-ifs.View full post on YoutubeThe question of robotic self-awareness goes as far back the word “robot” itself: the 1920 Czech play R....

Throughout the years, Italy has seen several devastating earthquakes. Central Italy is particularly to the line where the Eurasian and African tectonic plates grind against each other, resulting in vicious quakes. Yet one historic building has withstood the shaking for centuries: the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Scientists have now figured out the key to its longevity. The Leaning Tower was built on a foundation of soft soil and constructed several floors at a time....

Media Platforms Design TeamThe computer keyboard and mouse do an admirable job of letting users drag and drop words, numbers and pictures. But gaming presents a far tougher test for any user interface–it requires us to swing bats, turn wheels, duck through doorways. “You’re trying to translate a real-world action to the corresponding buttons on a controller,” says Alex Kipman, director of incubation for Microsoft’s Xbox. “A lot gets lost in translation....

At NASA Langley’s Landing and Impact Research Facility, ten crash test dummies were buckled into a section of airplane fuselage and dropped from the sky. The goal is to develop crashworthiness guidelines, so airplane manufacturers can make the next airliner the safest one yet.This is NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration’s second round of tests, the first such test being completed in March with a cross-cut section of regional jet’s fuselage dropping from 14 feet....

America’s National Park Service is one of the country’s most popular features both internally and internationally, with over 318 million people visiting in 2018. One of the most popular locations is California’s Yosemite, known for its waterfalls, giant sequoias, and hiking trails. But a new study shows that safety measures implemented to help visitors at one of Yosemite’s most heralded sites haven’t been helping.Yosemite, like several other national parks, has been suffering from overcrowding for years....

After a one-year delay, the peak of military rations is set to feed U.S. troops around the world. Yes, the Pizza MRE is coming. Early versions of the pizza turned an unappealing color during long-term storage testing, but a simple tweak of the recipe means it’s ready to eat.The U.S. Army introduced the Meal, Ready to Eat in 1981. Sealed in thick brown plastic, each MRE consists of an entree, side dishes, drink mixes, dessert and candy, and a fork and spoon....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/B4PEXLODw9c?hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0[/youtube]A good year for SpaceX is coming to a close with another impressive achievement. Today Elon Musk’s private space firm announced new progress with Grasshopper, its attempt to build a reusable rocket. Earlier this week the Grasshopper rocket blasted off, hovered in the air at an altitude of about 12 stories, and returned to the launch pad after a 29-second flight.Why do we care? If empty rocket boosters can fly back home and land, it will make rocket launches much cheaper....

Landing on the moon was arguably the greatest achievement in human history, but filming the feat was a technological wonder, too. In the July 1969 issue of Popular Mechanics, released shortly before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface, our editors previewed the historic spacewalk soon to come—including just how the heck everyone back on Earth would be able to watch it from their living rooms. As part of our Apollo Week, here’s the reprinted article explaining the Moon-to-TV setup—as remarkable now as it was 50 years ago....

Google Glass, with all the skydiving ridiculousness of its early days, was a joke before it could even get off the ground. Unsubtle, dumb-looking, and prohibitively expensive from the jump, they were all but doomed to fail. But the idea of a heads-up display for your face does have some appeal, and Intel’s new “Vaunt” project might be its expression yet. Intel shared the details on its new project in an exclusive interview with The Verge, and demonstrated the glasses’ form and function....

Lockheed Martin recently announced that it is partnering with Reno-based aircraft company Aerion Corporation to assist with development of the AS2 supersonic business jet. The defense contractor and the aerospace startup will spend the next year developing a framework for a full partnership, which would see Lockheed pitching in on all phases of the aircraft’s development, from design and engineering tests to prototype construction and FAA certification all the way to serial production of the aircraft....

The John Deere Z740R ZTrak zero-turn mower has a lot going for it: a mowing deck up to 60 inches, a 10 mph top speed and a 23.5-horsepower V-twin engine. That bad boy’s got a four-year, thousand-hour warranty that would be bumper-to-bumper, if it had bumpers. What it doesn’t have is air in the tires. Nor does it need any, because the Z740R rolls on the sickest of low-pros: Michelin Tweels, which combine a “shear beam” (think: the skinniest of sidewalls) with flexible poly-resin spokes connected to a hub....

Media Platforms Design TeamPhoto Credit: NatureThe double helix? It’s been done. The new trend is DNA in circles, pentagons, dodecahedrons, or any number of other shapes. Mark Bathe at MIT has been working with computer simulations of DNA pairings that will predict the structure of the DNA based on different inputs.Media Platforms Design TeamMedia Platforms Design TeamHis techniques are just simulations for now, and they are unlikely to be used for creating new kinds of life with weirdly shaped DNA (at least not yet)....

The performance span between passenger vehicles and Formula One race cars is vast enough to make any connections between the two seem utterly contrived. That said, I shouldn’t have been surprised that spending time with Pirelli at the US Grand Prix in Austin delivered a weekend of extremes seemingly curated by someone with a bipolar sense of automotive humor. The rollercoaster started innocuously enough with a PowerPoint presentation in a hotel conference room led by Pirelli USA’s Chairman and CEO Paolo Ferrari....

Somewhere there is a world where homes are well-made, predictable, and built to code. You can imagine such a place. Framing lumber is 16 on center. Kitchen cabinets don’t open and interfere with adjacent kitchen cabinets. Back doors don’t stick. Showers don’t leak. We don’t live in this world. For two of my sons, Mick and Willie, discovering this took nothing more than trying to install a pull-up bar. Like many stories of minor disasters, this one begins with Christmas shopping....

Four Russian aircraft flew near the Alaskan coast last night, including two of Russia’s most advanced fighter planes. The flight, which was intercepted by U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor fighters, came a week after Russian military aircraft flew near America’s Arctic territory four days in a row.Wednesday evening’s incident involved two Tu-95MS “Bear” strategic bombers and a pair of Su-35 “Flanker-E” or “Super Flanker” heavy fighters. Although the presence of the Bear bombers was not unusual, it was the first time that Super Flankers had been seen off the coast of Alaska....

A group of researchers led by Oliver Tschauner, a professor of geoscience from the University of Nevada, have discovered a form of super-dense ice known as ice-VII on Earth for the first time. Though ice-VII was known to form in space, and may make up much of ice worlds like Europa, it had only been created in lab conditions on Earth. Tschauner and colleagues findings were published today in Science. What we know as ice is just one of many chemical structures that frozen water can take....

Media Platforms Design TeamDefense industry conferences usually rent space to companies that sell their wares to the government. These exhibitions range from the dreadfully dull (tactical loudspeakers, new kinds of shipping containers) to the cutting-edge (exoskeletal power suits, robotic “mules” that follow soldiers like loyal dogs). Typically, reporters are welcomed to visit the booths, or even goaded into stopping by marketing personnel acting as carnival barkers. But every once in a while a company sets up a booth that just doesn’t want the public’s attention....