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NASA has received its first all-electric experimental aircraft, the X-57 Mod II, codenamed Maxwell. NASA is testing the aircraft because it wants to get ahead of a possible curve in city environments: urban air mobility, or UAM. These small aircraft, which hold nine people or fewer, could be coming to a city near you.With the X-57, NASA wants to set the standards for industry that hasn’t yet taken its foothold. NASA’s first all-electric experimental aircraft, the X-57’s Mod II, has been delivered to the agency by its primary contractor....

Oxford University researchers have developed an artificial intelligence that can accurately read lips using deep learning technology from DeepMind. The team calls its AI LipNet and it uses a technique called deep learning. Basically, the team trained the AI with many different videos of people talking and the AI learned how to lip-read by itself.Deep learning is extremely powerful. Earlier this year, DeepMind’s deep learning AI AlphaGo beat the human champion at the game of Go, and deep learning has been applied to all sorts of other problems....

The USS Billings, a brand-new littoral combat ship, now has a brand-new ding in her hull. The Billings struck a commercial vessel this week while leaving the port of Montreal, Canada, on her way to her permanent home port. No injuries were reported on either ship, but the Billings sustained minor damage to the ship’s superstructure.According to Maritime Executive, the warship struck the geared bulker Rosaire Desgagnes while leaving her slip alongside the moored commercial ship....

Welcome to PM/AM, Popular Mechanics’ morning briefing on the top science and tech stories for today. Media Platforms Design TeamA Purple-striped Jelly at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. (Photo credit: Sanjay Acharya)Yesterday, we learned how IBM built a microchip that mimics a human brain. The tables are turned in the case of jellyfish: In a new study, researchers say that a group of barrel jellyfish think like a supercomputer.According to LiveScience....

The state of Hawaii could be a brochure for a future powered by renewable energy: Photovoltaic panels are as ubiquitous as swimming pools. But despite being an energy model for the rest of the U.S., Hawaii has had trouble actually using the power the panels provide. During peak hours the sun contributes so much electricity that it threatens to destabilize the entire grid.“No utility wants to run experiments on a grid while it’s delivering power to customers....

A research team at Colorado State University has successfully sparked laser-driven nuclear fusion on a micro scale. Using small, powerful lasers built in the CSU lab, the researchers heated nanowires made of deuterated polyethylene—a material that is similar to common polyethylene plastic, except the hydrogen atoms are replaced by a heavier isotope of hydrogen, deuterium. By irradiating these synthetic wires, too small to see, the team achieved immense temperatures and highly efficient nuclear fusion....

.The Decade, Reviewed looks back at the 2010s and how it changed human society forever. From 2010 to 2019, our species experienced seismic shifts in science, technology, entertainment, transportation, and even the very planet we call home. This is how the past ten years have changed us.The 2010’s saw a step change in cyber warfare, defined as attacks against a nation by a computer. Rather than just being used for spying, this was the decade the digital world was weaponized to break through to the physical....

Professional sports tend to bring out the larger-than-life in just everything, and that goes for jewelry for sure. Win a title and you get a ring filled with jewels and personalized to your own achievements.Baron Championship Rings got the contract to make rings for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavilers after LeBron James and company took home the title. They’ve worked up a little video showing what it takes.View full post on YoutubeMaking the ring for the Cavs was not a task to be taken lightly....

In December 2014 and January 2015, a large volcanic eruption beneath the ocean created a new island in the South Pacific. Part of the island nation of Tonga, east of Australia, the new landmass was the first such volcanic island to form in over 50 years and the first to form during the modern era of worldwide satellite coverage. While the new island, unofficially called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai, attracted the attention of scientists around the world, there was one institution that took particular interest: NASA....

The Best Years of Our Lives is not a war movie. It’s a veterans movie. The protagonists are three men who find themselves on the same plane returning home from their service in World War II to Boone City, somewhere in the United States. In the opening minutes, they are excited at the prospect of going home—and yet these moments they are with one another, one foot still in the camaraderie of the military are among the happiest we see them for the entire film....

Researchers have solved a set of simple examples of the chaotic three-body problem.Space travel and most real-life systems are chaotic, making this research valuable.Neural networks have the potential to solve, or at least model, chaotic problems better than traditional supercomputers.Computer scientists have shown that a special neural network is likely able to solve simpler exemplars of the chaotic three-body problem, reports Tech Xplore. If the results seem hard to parse, that’s because the three-body problem and its implications are also pretty hard to parse....

As the power of artificial intelligence grows, the likelihood of a future war filled with killer robots grows as well. Proponents suggest that lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWs) might cause less “collateral damage,” while critics warn that giving machines the power of life and death would be a terrible mistake.Last month’s UN meeting on ‘killer robots’ in Geneva ended with victory for the machines, as a small number of countries blocked progress towards an international ban....

Introduced in the 1970s, the A-10 Thunderbolt, better known as the Warthog, has become a beloved military plane, and the RC enthusiasts at RCHeliJet in Interlaken, Switzerland, have provided it with a fitting tribute. View full post on YoutubeBorn out of a previous generation’s failures in Vietnam, the A-10 was built to be a powerful close air support (CAS) plane, backing up forces on the ground. With various upgrades the military expects Warthogs to remain in service until 2040 (hopefully), so this RC model will stay relevant for decades to come....

Media Platforms Design TeamFIRST REPORT - August 2010Media Platforms Design Team(Photograph by Noah Sheldon)With the Volkswagen Jetta TDI recently leaving our long-term fleet after spoiling us with fantastically frugal mileage figures of up to 40 mpg, we were eager to test out another diesel’s fuel economy. BMW revised the X5 for 2011, which seemed the perfect excuse to sample its torquey diesel engine. The 3.0-liter sequential twin-turbo inline six-cylinder engine uses a particulate filter and AdBlue—a urea solution injected into the exhaust gas that converts nitrous oxide into inert nitrogen and water vapor—to achieve emission levels that pass muster in all 50 states....

Best Buy is still going strong with Cyber Week deals, offering discounts on just about everything electronic. If you’re looking to build an entertainment room from scratch, then start with a 50" Samsung 4K Ultra HD TV, going for $480, down from $700. With 2160p resolution and 4.7 stars out of over 800 reviews, it’s a pretty safe bet in terms of high quality picture and sound.If you’ve got a larger TV and are looking to expand your sound, the ZVOX SoundBase 670 is going for $330, down from $370....

Wind turbines are technological marvels, but they’re still vulnerable to the ravages of nature. In particular, they get icy sometimes and de-icing them is a bit tricky. Unlike de-icing planes—a procedure hopefully performed on the ground—de-icing a wind turbine’s blades typically happens several hundred feet in the air. This necessitates some delicate aerial maneuvering.One simple solution is being pioneered by Latvian company Aerones, which is using a heavy-lift drone to haul the de-icing equipment into the air and operate it while all the humans stay safely on the ground....

Dogs know more about their owners more than they let on. They can tell whether you’re happy or sad, know when you’re leaving, coming home, and where you’ve been, and they have their own spidey senses that help them determine whether you’re sick or not. Given that your furry friend knows all these things about you, don’t you think you ought to really get to know them too?DNA My Dog Breed Identification TestDNA My Dog Breed Identification Test$59 at popularmechanics....

Ending a twelve-year saga, the first known dinosaur brain fossil has presented to the public.The discovery was published in a special edition Earth System Evolution and Early Life, subtitled a Celebration of the Work of Martin Brasier. Brasier, an Oxford paleontologist who died suddenly in a 2014 car accident, had been working closely on confirming that the fossil found in 2006 of an 113-million year old iguanodontian dinosaur was in fact soft brain tissue....

Media Platforms Design TeamOnly One episode remains. As the conclusion of AMC’s Breaking Bad looms this Sunday, what’s left of Walter White’s life is smoldering in ruins.Breaking Bad has always been a tale about decay and change. And so the fact that the series has revolved around chemistry—from Walter White’s botched chemical startup venture Grey Matter to his perfect methamphetamine recipe—couldn’t be more appropriate. “Technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change,” White says to his high school chemistry students in the show’s first episode....

Media Platforms Design TeamThanks to expanded housing developments and, in some areas, recovering wildlife populations, animals and people are seeing more of each other these days. Coyotes, deer, and raccoons now live in honest-to-goodness cities. Bears have been found hibernating in New Jersey basements. Mountain lions are prowling Western jogging paths—sometimes with horrific results. David Moskowitz, an instructor at the Wilderness Awareness School in Washington state, helps amateurs learn to ID local wildlife....