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Media Platforms Design TeamBayou Dupont Sediment Delivery SystemExcavation of canals for navigation, oil and gas helped transform Bayou Dupont from wetlands to open water. This $26 million project, completed in May 2010, used pipelines to transport dredged river sediment, replenishing existing marsh and creating 577 acres of new land.Lake Hermitage Marsh CreationExperts estimate that without intervention one-third of this intertidal wetland will vanish by 2050. The $38 million project, which begins construction this year, will pump hydraulically dredged river sediment onto degraded marsh, creating 593 acres....

MORE BOLD IDEAS:* TRANSPORTATION: Tomorrow’s Smarter Vehicles* INFRASTRUCTURE: High-Tech Fixes for Modern Living* ENERGY EFFICIENCY: Bright Ideas for Smarter WattsInjection-Mold Custom OrgansMedia Platforms Design TeamFab@Home machine.Medical researchers are already growing human tissues, and even organs, in the lab. Then there’s Lawrence Bonassar. The assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University is producing custom body parts using Fab@Home, a 3D lithography platform developed at Cornell. (Its inventors won a 2007 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award....

NEW YORK – Green racing season has officially begun. After releasing details to PM more than a year ago andunveiling preliminary rules here at the New York Auto Show last March, the X Prize Foundation threw its official coming-out party yesterday for a 100-mpg challenge that could upend the automotive industry.The two-year competition will require startups and major manufacturers alike to build a car that can achieve 100 miles per gallon or its energy equivalent, create a viable manufacturing plan and be a top performer during the competition’s stage races, which will begin here in fall 2009....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/aGg0ATfoBgo&hl=en[/youtube]Just over a year ago several media outlets reported that John Kanzius, an amateur inventor from Erie, Pa., had discovered a seemingly impossible phenomenon: a way to burn salt water by exposing it to radio waves. Videos of the experiment became YouTube sensations, though they garnered as many critical comments as favorable ones. Now that the initial fervor has waned, we checked in with Kanzius, a collaborator and some critics to see how the technique has progressed, or if it’s just another example of Web-propelled junk science....

Silence. That’s all we heard recently when we drove Chevrolet’s Sequel prototype fuel-cell vehicle. Well, that’s not entirely true. We occasionally heard the clickety-clack of an engineer’s computer from the back seat. He could change any one of a number of vehicle parameters with a few strokes of the keyboard. Want firmer brakes? Clickety-clack and—presto!—you have Corvette stopping power. That’s the advantage of by-wire controls: they’re infinitely adjustable and customizable to every driver’s preference....

Media Platforms Design TeamWe’ve been documenting the slow, steady growth of SpaceX’s Grasshopper program—Elon Musk’s attempt to build a rocket that, after firing its cargo into space, would set itself down on the pad. Those test firings have been experiments. Now SpaceX plans to demonstrate reusable rocket tech in a real launch, but we’ll have to wait until the end of September to find out whether it works.SpaceX had planned a weekend launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California....

In 2000, Burger King offered collectable GameBoy toys that looked awesome but couldn’t actually play games. Now 16 years later, a Redditor is turning them into what we actually wanted this whole time: The real thing. At the time, the Kid’s Meal toys were accompanied with a little disclaimer that the trinkets were not electronic, but Redditor joe7dust has made that caveat obsolete by cramming Raspberry Pi Zeros and screens inside them, and selling them to Redditors....

A car accident can be pretty traumatic for anyone, and the crash involving Army Pvt. Shamika Burrage was no exception. Two years ago, Burrage was driving her car when the front tire blew out, causing the vehicle to slide several hundred feet and flip several times. Burrage suffered head injuries and spinal fractures, as well as losing her left ear.The other injuries eventually healed, but Burrage still had to live without her ear....

The Trump Administration has proposed Supplemental Cost Finding for one of the EPA’s most crucial environmental protections: Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which regulate coal-fired power plants. While the Trump EPA claims this proposal is following a Supreme Court mandate, environmental groups say it would hollow out one of the most effective federal regulations of the decade.MATS were first introduced in 2011, limiting the amount of mercury that power plants can release....

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter got its first taste of combat, dropping bombs on the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to CNN, the strike occurred within the last 24 hours and involved Marine Corps F-35Bs operating from an amphibious assault ship in the Indian Ocean. This is the first use of any variant of the F-35 in combat ever. CNN reports that the airstrike was flown against a “fixed Taliban target.” Marine F-35Bs carry laser-guided GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bombs and GBU-32 Joint Directed Attack Munitions, bombs that home in on the target’s GPS coordinates....

Media Platforms Design TeamAbout 3000 Americans die in house fires every year. Beginning in January 2011, a change to the International Residential Code (IRC) aims to reduce that number by making fire sprinklers mandatory in all new single-family residences. Sounds good, but home-building lobbies from Texas to Georgia have defied what they call an impractical, expensive mandate, convincing legislators to pass bills overriding the requirement.“We’re not against residential fire sprinklers—as a voluntary measure,” says Steven Orlowski, program manager for construction, codes and standards at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)....

There’s any number of ways to cook an egg. Fried, scrambled, and poached only scratch the surface of the possibilities. But cracking an egg into liquid hydrogen probably won’t be your first choice the next time you’re out to brunch.YouTube channel carsandwater, known for its red-hot nickel ball videos, decided to see what would happen to the egg once it had been immersed in the liquid nitrogen, which boils at -320 degrees Fahrenheit....

We’ve known for a few years now that solar power is surging in the U.S. and the rest of the world: costs have been falling for a while and countries like the United States, China, and India have been building so many solar panels that solar was the world’s fastest growing energy source in 2016. But thanks to a recently-published report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we now know the full extent of that trend....

Whether you work remotely or you’re just really precise about personal cybersecurity, Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs, are becoming a popular choice to secure your browsing history. That’s especially true following some much-hated regulation changes from the Federal Communications Commission back in 2017—ahem, a reversal on rules that required your internet service provider (ISP) to ask for explicit permission before accessing your personal data.All of that precious information, including where you are, who you talk to and what you say online, can be protected with a VPN....

Last Wednesday, Facebook announced that as many as 87 million people may have had private data surreptitiously harvested by voter-profiling firm Cambridge Analytica in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. It’s a total that’s millions higher than the initial, still horrifying reports. Are you one of the people effected? Starting today, Facebook is letting people know. The notification comes by way of a message you’ll find pinned atop your newsfeed (if you haven’t already deactivated or deleted your account) and will manifest in one of the two ways shown below....

A state owned Iranian media outlet has reported on a new Iranian anti-tank missile that bears a striking resemblance to the American-made Sidewinder missile. The Azarakhsh (“Lightning”) anti-tank missile appears identical to the famous Sidewinder air-to-air missile, and may in fact be developed from missiles imported before the Iranian revolution in 1979.Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps unveiled the Azarakhsh missile for IRGC Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari. Mehr News reports the Azarakhsh weighs 70 kg (155 lbs....

Monday, November 5:The red flag in the Lion Air Flight JT 610 investigation just got even redder. Investigators are saying today that the final four flights of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 experienced a problem with the plane’s airspeed indicator.As PM reported below on Friday, we knew that there was a glitch of some kind on the aircraft’s flight the day before its deadly accident. The fact that the airspeed indicator went wrong on four consecutive flights will put the investigation’s focus squarely on that piece of equipment as new information, such as the contents of the flight data recorders, continues to come to light....

If there’s one thing worse than getting sick, it’s getting sick millions of miles from home. Unfortunately for Earth’s vanguard of Martian explorers, that very well could be what’s in store.NASA researchers have just completed the first study of its kind on how the human immune system deals with a long-term stay in microgravity. The scientists analyzed a trio of blood tests from 23 astronauts who stayed on the International Space Station for missions of roughly 6 months....

Yesterday, Microsoft issued a grand mea culpa to the gaming community by extending the one-year warranty on all Xbox 360s to three years. For some time now, many people in the gaming community have been noting a high rate of “general hardware failures” (sometimes known as “the ring of death” because of the signature three flashing red lights around the power button). Microsoft hasn’t released any official statistics on the failure rate, but the open letter of apology from Peter Moore, head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business division indicates that it is high enough to be considered a major problem—and an expensive one (initial reports say that the warranty extension will cost Microsoft one billion dollars)....

MIT WEEK: OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES* MONDAY: MIT Fights for Clean Power With Holy Grail of Fusion in Reach* TUESDAY: Turning Disabled Into Gamers, MIT Spreads Robot Rehab* WEDNESDAY: With Electric Scooter, MIT Hopes To Rev Up Practical Transport* THURSDAY: Crash-Proof UAVs Fly Blind at MIT’s High-Tech Aerodrome* FRIDAY: MIT’s Efficient Nanowire Storage Could Replace Car Batteries* TIME MACHINE: Classic PM Cover Tracked MIT’s Early Solar PowerCAMBRIDGE, Mass. – This is what a fusion lab is supposed to be like....