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Media Platforms Design TeamIt’s a saying so obvious that it’s simply accepted in the special operations world: No one’s face appears in media. And yet here is , which shows active duty Navy SEALs on the big screen, without face paint, balaclavas, or anything. Act of ValorOh yeah, they broke the rules for this one.The fact that actual Navy SEALs portray the SEALs on screen in Act of Valor has become the major focus of the movie’s marketing plan....

If a cat has nine lives, then our family dog, Millie, has bragging rights few felines can match. She has already lived a few times nine, so much so that not long ago my children and I had to take on a project to keep her alive.Millie is a small yellow Lab, six years old. In keeping with her breed she is gentle, smart, and sociable—a fine addition to a family with five children....

Skateboarding, longboarding in particular, can be a great way to get around. Even the biggest board is smaller than a bike, and it’s just a blast to surf down the street. Of course, if you don’t want to get all sweaty propelling yourself, it’s going to cost you a pretty penny. Powered decks like the Boosted Board cost upwards of a grand. Or you could just build a drill-powered one. The idea of using a drill to power a skateboard isn’t new....

Old homes were typically heated by floor radiators. But those radiators don’t last forever, and once they become obsolete and are removed, you are left with large holes in your wood floors. The easy solution is to just move the dresser over the hole, but that only hides the problem. It’s better to plug these holes to prevent further problems down the line.To fill these holes you’ll need a plug cutter, cordless drill, and a hole saw or spade bit....

WASHINGTON – The new U.S. president will have a crucial role in determining the future of the Department of Homeland Security–an agency that has sparked more criticism than applause over its five-year life span. A sweeping, Congressionally mandated examination called the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review will occur early in the new administration, giving the new president a strong hand in reshaping the agency. This is the first such review of DHS since it was founded in 2003....

The Peeple app hasn’t launched yet, but there’s plenty to feel gross about already. The forthcoming app being hailed as “Yelp for people” intends to let you rate and evaluate anyone and everyone you know as if they were a movie or a slice of pizza, and to let anyone else do the same to you. Here’s how it will work, but bear with me this gets complicated. If someone wants to review you on Peeple, they hop onto the app and look for your name in the database....

Late last week, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station woke up to some distressing news: There was a leak somewhere on the station, and air was escaping into space. After an extensive search, the leak was finally found and plugged with tape and gauze, and the air pressure inside the station has been stabilized.But now that the crisis has passed, there’s a new concern for the astronauts and the space agencies that manage the station....

Russia is working on a new armed underwater drone designed to kill enemy submarines. The unmanned Cephalopod drone packs small, lightweight torpedoes capable of fatally wounding enemy submarines on the high pressure, underwater battlefield.According to undersea warfare expert HI Sutton, Russia has been working on the Cephalopod “killer underwater drone” since 2015, when its existence was revealed alongside the Poseidon nuclear apocalypse torpedo. Cephalopod was understandably overshadowed by the 100 megaton weapon, but in its own way is a threat to Western military might....

Being hacked by a robot requires much less hardware than I expected. There’s no need for virtual-reality goggles or 3D holograms. There are no skullcaps studded with electrodes, no bulky cables or hair-thin nanowires snaking into my brain. Here’s what it takes: one pair of alert, blinking eyeballs.I’m in the Media Lab, part of MIT’s sprawling campus in Cambridge, Mass. Like most designated research areas, the one belonging to the Personal Robots Group looks more like a teenage boy’s bedroom than some pristine laboratory—it bursts with knotted cables, old pizza boxes and what are either dissected toys or autopsied robots....

When Star Trek: Discovery was announced in late 2015, it felt like drinking a big gulp of water after traversing a desert. Fans had been without Trek on TV since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. When the show finally aired, that water seemed more like poison. Flashy, violent, chaotic, nonsensical, weird, robotic, and unfamiliar were common adjectives describing the plot-twist-driven story arc of season one, a run with moments of inspiration that always eventually fell victim to the worst impulses of modern television....

A team of astronomers led by the University of California Santa Cruz has found strong evidence of water clouds on a brown dwarf called WISE 0855—the first time that clouds of water have been detected outside the solar system. WISE 0855 is only 7.2 light years from Earth, but it is difficult to observe because it is so cold and dim. The team’s findings were recently published in Astrophysical Journal Letters....

Some stars that aren’t big enough to create black holes when they die become neutron stars instead.Neutron stars are so dense that one the size of Earth can be more massive than a sun. Using the smart new observational technique, scientists discovered the biggest one ever confirmed, with 2.3 times the mass of the sun.There are several ways a star can die.At the end of a star’s life cycle, it expands into a gas giant and sheds most of its material in a violent explosion, then the remainder collapses into a tiny leftover....

The U.S. Navy has come up with a likely pricetag for its future frigate: $950 million dollars. That’s the cost of the FFG(X), a small surface combatant ship the Navy plans to purchase. The Navy is evaluating ship designs and will announce a winner in 2020.The Navy announced the pricetag at the Surface Navy 2018 Symposium in Washington, D.C. According to U.S. Naval Institute News, the Navy wants at least 20 of the new ships, each of which will cost an average $950 million, and will award development contracts to four to six shipbuilders by the end of March 2018 to refine their designs before making a final decision....

If Thomas Edison were to walk down the light-bulb aisle of a modern home-improvement store, he’d be shocked to see what’s become of his brainchild. Long gone are the days of simply choosing a light bulb based on its wattage. Today, light bulbs are available in a dizzying array of types, sizes, and shapes. Pity the poor shopper who enters the light-bulb aisle ignorant of the evolutionary changes to Ole’ Tom’s electric arc lamp, as it was originally called....

Media Platforms Design TeamWhen Yokohama’s dB Super E-spec tires rolled around in 2008, the eco-conscious hoops gave off a faint whiff of green propaganda: in order to replace petroleum with natural rubber, they incorporated an orange oil solution, thus claiming environmental friendliness and renewability. But in spite of the earth-saving claims, the compound proved its mettle in the performance world when the IMSA GT3 Challenge saw orange-infused Yokohamas on every race car in the series....

At 9:32 a.m. on July 16, 1969, countdown reached zero as the 363-foot-tall Saturn V rocket—exploding with 7.5 million pounds of thrust—lifted Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins skyward. Along with them traveled the dreams of an entire planet—a dream to leave our ancestral home and put boots on another world.View full post on YoutubeFifty years later, Apollo 11 has rightly gone down in history as one of humanity’s greatest engineering achievements....

Magnetic Brain StimulationMedia Platforms Design TeamFor the 20 percent of depressed patients who don’t respond to drugs such as Prozac, the traditional last-ditch treatment option has been electroshock therapy. Recently, researchers worldwide began investigating a promising new alternative: transcranial magnetic stimulation. In TMS, magnetic pulses created by a metal coil attached to the scalp generate small electrical currents in the brain; these stimulate nerve cells in areas involved in depression–without harming surrounding gray matter....

Chantilly, France—“I designed it to be fun to drive,” Osamu Sadakata, chief engineer for the Lexus CT200h, says of his latest creation, which Lexus marketers will soon be touting as the world’s first compact premium luxury hybrid vehicle. Seven years ago, Sadakata was responsible for hybridizing the world’s first premium sport-utility vehicle, the RX400h, before taking on chief engineering duties for the LS600h sedan, which, at $100,000, certainly earned the premium part of its designation....

On Sale Date: Fall 2011Price: $46,660Competitors: Cadillac CTS-V, Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, Ford Taurus SHOPowertrains: 6.4-liter V8, 470 hp, 470 lb-ft; 5-speed auto; RWDEPA Fuel Economy (city/highway): 14/22 estimatedWhat’s New: Coming off of a total redesign for 2011, the Charger’s exterior, interior and technology are still picked-in-the-field fresh. For 2012, Chrysler management reintroduced the testosterone-fueled SRT8 edition, complete with a larger and more powerful 6.4-liter HEMI V8. The last Charger SRT8, a 2010 model, cranked out 425-hp and 420 lb-ft of torque....

A new emissions study based on testing methods that are supposedly “difficult-to-impossible to cheat” has revealed that even the latest models of European diesel cars are bad polluters. The first such analysis since the 2015 Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, the results show more than 4,000 vehicle models exceeding nitrogen oxides (NOx) levels set by the European Union.The new rating system is known as The Real Urban Emissions Initiative (TRUE). With a data set of 375,000 individual cars from across Europe, TRUE uses a beam of light to study a car’s exhaust plume....