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The Netherlands is a country famous for its windmills, but it’s never had one like this. GE is planning to build the world’s largest wind turbine outside the city of Rotterdam. The new turbine will stand 850 feet high from the base of the turbine to the top of the blade and it will produce 12 megawatts of power, enough to keep the lights on in more than 15,000 homes.This turbine is a prototype of a series the company hopes to start building all over the world, called the Haliade-X....

Media Platforms Design TeamThere are a thousand different messages I’ve had thrown at me here at the SXSW conference—group texting is the wave of the future, Bump is the next big thing in gestural information exchange, the biomimicry of honeybee behavior can help maximize efficient server allocation (huh?). But there is one message that seems to be pretty consistent: We’re hiring. Every tech firm I spoke with here told me that they were desperately searching for qualified employees....

Media Platforms Design TeamToolboxes these days look less and less like boxes. They’re bags, usually. You might go so far as to call them tool purses. No matter how tough the ballistic nylon, a sack just doesn’t have that same lunch-pail appeal as a rigid, stiff-sided rectangle.The homebuilt box shown here has a nickel handle as beefy as a billy club, a diamond-plate exterior, sturdy oak ends–and there’s not a stitch of fabric to be found....

Quincy DeinThe premise is pretty simple: Attach yourself to an enormous kite, strap your feet to a board, and let the wind do the rest. The execution, though—that’s where it gets a bit tricky. With enough practice and plenty of waterproof sunscreen, you can synthesize three extreme water sports—surfing, wakeboarding, and windsurfing—into your new favorite summer hobby.The BasicsFirst, get an instructor. You can’t teach yourself to kiteboard without also taking a trip to the ER....

Two mechanical engineers have studied Chinese chefs to mathematically model their wok-tossing techniques.Fast-moving wok cooking enables the Maillard reaction without allowing frying rice to burn.The findings could help scientists develop devices to support chefs, technology for frying bigger batches, and more.Physicists have paired China’s long culinary history with kinematics in order to “identify an optimal regime for making fried rice.” To do this, they studied five restaurant chefs, using slow-motion video footage to track how the chefs’ movements moved the rice around the wok....

A blizzard starts as first few lovely flakes, but as roads and public services shut down it can quickly seem like beginning of the end of the world. If you haven’t prepped, it can be an even bigger nightmare: Supermarket shelves emptied, hardware stores jammed, and you can’t find C batteries anywhere.Once a blizzard is a few hours out, there’s not a whole lot more most people can do. Which is always the case....

Ever since the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic on May 27, 1937, it’s been an iconic symbol on the American landscape.By 1870, people had realized the necessity of building a bridge spanning the Golden Gate Strait to connect the city of San Francisco with Marin County. However, it was another half-century before structural engineer Joseph Strauss submitted his bridge proposal. The plans evolved, and the final project was approved as a suspension bridge that ended up taking over four years to build....

J.J. Abrams, the director of the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the previous two Star Trek movies (and the creator of Alias … and Lost … and Cloverfield …), will produce a Thomas Edison biopic through his production company, Bad Robot. According to an exclusive by The Wrap, Bad Robot will produce the film with Paramount. We don’t know yet what periods of the inventor’s life it covers, or how it will portray its subject and his rivalries with George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla....

Moments before Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea killing all 189 people onboard last October, pilots of the plane searched through a handbook looking for guidance on how to rescue the aircraft from its downward trajectory, Reuters reports. Three sources familiar with the investigation of the Boeing 737 Max 8’s flight data recorders gave a visceral play-by-play of what ensued inside the cockpit, when a faulty sensor on the plane’s fuselage triggered an automated anti-stall system that sent the plane into a nosedive....

Today, Microsoft held the keynote for its BUILD conference, and buried amid the nerdy news for developers was one nugget that’s going to be great for everyone who owns anything that runs the upcoming Windows 10: Microsoft is making it super super easy for iOS apps to run on a PC. Basically, Microsoft announced new tools for developers that will allow them to use almost all of the same code that makes a iPad or iPhone app work, and move it right over to Windows 10 without making major changes or tweaks....

Why did you test pythons?Pythons have amazingly rapid cardiac growth when they eat a meal. We set out to identify more of the molecular mechanisms behind that cardiac adaptation. The lead researcher, Cecilia Riquelme, did some basic experiments and found that the heart wasnt getting more cells, but the heart cells themselves were getting bigger in size. And the molecular mechanisms behind that growth seemed to fall in a more beneficial cardiac growth....

Waste graphite from nuclear plants could be used in cutting-edge diamond batteries.The graphite is used to harvest radioactive carbon, which, in diamond form, generates a low electrical current.The batteries could have an extremely long life, with applications in healthcare, spaceflight, and research in extreme conditions.Scientists in England are trying to recycle decommissioned nuclear plant materials into cutting-edge diamond batteries. The pressing of this kind of carbon into manufactured diamonds is called chemical vapor deposition....

The SpaceX hopper, a prototype of its next-generation Starship, has encountered a troublesome foe on Earth: the wind. Strong Texas winds have knocked over its nosecone.View full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterView full post on TwitterThe hopper, based out of the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, is not meant for the stars: It is a test machine meant to show that the Starship’s fundamentals can work in terms of launching and landing....

A German research vessel in the Arctic has become the first to benefit from a high-bandwidth internet connection, which tops speeds of 100 mbps.The vessel will remain trapped in sea ice for a year to study how climate change is affecting ice in the Arctic. Kepler Communications plans to launch a number of Low-Earth Orbit satellites in the next few years, sparking concerns that they and other communications companies will clog Earth’s orbit....

The U.S. Army is testing a system designed to protect military vehicles smaller than tanks from attacks. The “Iron Curtain” uses a combination of sensors and downward-firing projectiles to stop incoming rockets and missiles from striking vehicles by setting off their shaped charge warheads. The result could be vehicles as small Humvees protected from anti-tank guided weapons.The proliferation of anti-tank weapons with shaped charges has made the modern battlefield very deadly for any vehicle daring to cross it....

Nikhil Wagle, a medical oncologist, studies the genetics of tumors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute. Both are major centers for cancer research and treatment, and both are located in the greater Boston area. While the work is invaluable, not everyone has access to a major city or cancer research center. Wagle said his colleagues came to wonder, “How much more progress could we make if anyone could contribute their samples and their data for research?...

If you’ve seen an internet video with a delightful, retro-VHS look recently, you very well may have the folks at Red Giant to thank. In pursuit of a digital filter that can apply the gnarly effects of analog VHS to digital videos, the engineers first got to work on actual VHS recording hardware, putting it through its paces and beyond. While the filter is a success, not all of the hardware used to make it survived....

Does that 20 percent discount on Pringles give you heart palpitations? Do you fume when presented with a long bottleneck at the checkout counter? Walmart’s shopping carts might one day sense those bodily sensations and alert staff.The grocery chain filed a patent in August for a shopping cart that monitors various biometric signals, like a customer’s body temperature, heart rate and tightness of grip on the handle. According to the patent titled System And Method For Biometric Feedback Cart Handle, the data would be transmitted to a server and used to alert staff when shoppers might need help or medical assistance....

If you drop strong magnets onto a plate of copper, something remarkable happens: the magnets slow down before hitting the surface and appear to levitate slightly, like the copper is another magnet, pushing them away. There’s a fascinating explanation for this seemingly magical reaction, as explained in the video above from the YouTube channel NightHawkInLight. What’s happening here has nothing to do with opposing magnetic forces. Copper itself is not magnetic....

On-Sale Date: 2014 model yearPrice: In the $100,000 rangeCompetitors: 2014 BMW i3, Renault Twizy, Opel’s RAKe, Audi’s Urban Concept, and the Volkswagen NILS. Also a host of tilting three and four wheelers such as BMW’s Clever and Simple concepts, and Mercedes-Benz Life Jet and Carver concepts.Powertrains: 0.8-liter turbocharged diesel I-2, 47 hp, 89 lb-ft; AC electric motor, 27 hp, 103 lb-ft; combined system output 68 hp, 103 lb-ft; 5.5kwh lithium-ion battery pack; seven-speed, dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive....