New and Emerging Technology News part 209 ~ NEW GEN TECH LIFE : new generation technology news

Tuesday 18 March 2014

New and Emerging Technology News part 209

A reliable Apple analyst sees the company releasing a cheaper iPad mini later this year
Back when the iPad mini was just a rumor, many of us expected it to be in the same price range as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire (US$200). That didn’t happen. In fact, Apple’s budget tablet rings up for more than Amazon’s high-end tablet. But a reputable Apple analyst now thinks the company might do something about that later this year – by releasing a cheaper version of the iPad mini.  Read More
The MP-05 LaFerrari watch features a sapphire crystal face designed to resemble the outlin...
At the 2013 Geneva Motor Show in March, Ferrari unveiled its latest flagship supercar, elegantly titled LaFerrari. It's a beast of a machine sporting almost 1,000 horsepower, and we featured a full write-up (with plenty of photos) at the time of its unveiling. Now, just a couple of months later, a wristwatch designed to match the look and feel of the LaFerrari has been announced. Those with deep pockets and a penchant for luxury watches should read on, while the rest of us instead resign ourselves to looking at our phones when we need to know what the time is.  Read More
Minecraft's virtual worlds become reality thanks to Printcraft
Playing a bit like a computer version of Lego, Mojang's Minecraft – the darling of the indie game movement – has been an impressive success story. It soared to mainstream popularity as intrepid players proudly showcased their elaborate creations online. Its similarity to Lego didn't go unnoticed by the toy giant, and in 2012 kids of all ages could enjoy the game AFK with a licensed brick set. The problem is, you'd need an awful lot of bricks to recreate what you can make in the game (for example, check out this version of Game of Thrones' King's Landing), so that's where Printcraft – and the magic of 3D printing – enters the picture.  Read More
The SOLARWATT Carport System BMW’s sustainable mobility-focused sub-brand BMW i has announced it is to join forces with German photovoltaic firm SOLARWATT GmbH, in a bid to supply consumer-friendly solar-powered carport and rooftop charging systems to future i3 and i8 owners.  Read More
The first-place winner of the 2013 NASA Great Moonbuggy Race (high school division) was an...
It was Puerto Rico's day at the 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race. Teams from that country won first place in both the high school and college division races. More than 90 teams competed in the race, in which lightweight human-powered buggies race over a simulated lunar surface built at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The winning times for this grueling three-quarter mile course were 3:24 for the high school division and 3:32 for the college division.  Read More
Heart muscle cells aligning and stretching within the MeTro gel material (Image: Khademhos...
One of the things that makes heart disease so problematic is the fact that after a heart attack occurs, the scar tissue that replaces the damaged heart tissue isn’t capable of expanding and contracting – it doesn’t “beat,” in other words. This leaves the heart permanently weakened. Now, however, scientists from Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed artificial heart tissue that may ultimately provide a solution to that problem.  Read More
Sion hopes to launch its V1sion smartphone for under $299
Mobile start-up Sion has developed a quad-core Android smartphone named the V1sion that it hopes to bring to the market unlocked and without a contract for under US$299. The company claims its performance bests that of a Galaxy S3 thanks to its Samsung Exynos 4 Quad (aka Exynos 4412) processor. The company says that the compelling bank-for-buck ratio is possible using crowdfunding, and that the number of backers will determine the final price.  Read More
Scientists at Georgia Tech have crafted a new type of touch-reactive material that's sensi...
For years now, scientists across the globe have strived to find a method that gives robots an accurate sense of touch, and with good reason. A robot with an improved ability to feel would be better equipped to identify objects, judge its movements with greater care, and perform more tasks overall. In the latest step towards that goal, researchers at Georgia Tech have crafted a new type of touch-reactive material that's sensitive enough to read fingerprints and could provide robots with a sense of touch that resembles our own.  Read More
The new Ambit2 S and Ambit2 from Suunto
Launched last year, the Suunto Ambit brought a new level of functionality to the GPS watch market. Not only could its GPS keep tabs on your speed, distance and vertical, but it allowed for full navigation functions, routing you in and out of the great outdoors. Suunto has now revealed the second generation of Ambit watches with something for both explorers and athletes.  Read More
The MorePhone prototype smartphone curls up to indicate an incoming call or message
Researchers at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have developed a prototype smartphone that uses shape-changing capabilities to let the user know of an incoming call, text or email. Built around a thin, flexible electrophoretic display manufactured by Plastic Logic, the MorePhone can curl its entire body to indicate a call, or curl up to three individual corners to indicate a particular message.  Read More

Takahito Iguchi's Telepathy One is a wearable computer headset that will compete with Goog...
While it still remains to be seen exactly how many people will be willing to get about town with a wearable computer strapped to their heads, the market looks set to be a competitive one. Google got the ball rolling with the announcement of Google Glass, then reports surfaced that Chinese search company Baidu and Microsoft were getting in on the act with their own devices. Now Japanese designer and self-described augmented reality entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi is throwing his hat into the ring with Telepathy One.  Read More
Guangzhou-Toyota's unnamed SUV is intended for a price conscious, younger, eco-minded audi... One lesser known snippet out this year's Shanghai Auto Show concerns a joint venture between Toyota and China’s FAW (First Auto Works), which resulted in a new sub-brand and a new electric vehicle that was displayed along with an SUV EV resulting from another Toyota-China joint venture.  Read More
GWKULLA's electric motor generates 15 hp and 50 Nm (37 lb.ft) of torque to drive those tin... Hot on the heels of last week’s F1 inspired by Twizy, comes another (slightly) less outlandish EV in the form of the awkwardly named GWKULLA. Looking very much like the Twizy, this concept from Great Wall Motors showed its pert little face at the Shanghai Auto show last week.  Read More
Gizmag reviews the Samsung Galaxy S4
When you’re sitting on top of the world, what do you do? Do you pay tribute to what got you there? Or do you use that new freedom to try something different? In the case of Samsung with the Galaxy S4, it leaned more towards the former. Is it too much of the same? Or an improvement on a successful formula? Read on, as we review the Samsung Galaxy S4.  Read More
The Kinsa Smart Thermometer in use
When someone is feeling sick, you take their temperature to see if they’re running a fever. That’s the way it’s been for decades. However, all that a regular thermometer will tell you is their body temperature – it won’t tell you what they might have, or what you should do. The Kinsa Smart Thermometer, while not quite a medical tricorder, is designed to do those things.  Read More
The We5S adds a luxury mechanical timepiece to the iPhone 5
For some time now, the rise of the mobile phone has been seen by many as the death knell of the watch. Why, they ask, would anyone carry around a device that just tells the time when their phone can do that and much more? Smartwatches look set to bring the wristwatch back in style by bringing smartphone functions to a wristwatch form factor, but WATCHe of Switzerland has taken a different approach to combine the two with the We5S – a luxury mechanical watch set in a re-positionable frame designed to fit the iPhone 5.  Read More
A working prototype of the Combimouse keyboard/mouse system
While splitting a keyboard into two distinct zones may well make for more comfortable typing, especially for touch typists like myself, you still need to reach out to the side to grab your mouse and confirm onscreen actions. The Combimouse addresses this by having the right arm of the divided keyboard also serve as an optical mouse.  Read More
The VOTO fuel-cell charger gets power from cooking fires
Just because someone is getting close to nature doesn't necessarily mean they need to ditch their smartphone. However, keeping a device charged while in the great outdoors is not always the easiest thing to do. After all, those trees don't come equipped with power outlets. We've already seen the BioLite stove that generates its own power. A new product called VOTO performs a similar function, but with any cooking fire.  Read More
The ZoomBoard system allows smartwatch users to type on their devices' tiny screens
We keep hearing about how smartwatches may replace – or at least augment – the smartphone, but how would you type on that tiny display? In some cases, where the watch is linked to a smartphone in your bag or pocket, you could just use the phone’s screen. For stand-alone smartwatches or quick messages, however, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created the ZoomBoard system.  Read More
Screenshot of the original NeXT web browser in 1993 (Image: CERN)
To old fogeys like me, it seems like only yesterday that the coolest way to go online was to dial up the AP wire service bulletin board on a 300-baud modem, but it was actually two decades ago that the web as we know it burst onto our world. On Tuesday, it was 20 years ago that the World Wide Web went public, when CERN made the technology behind it available on a royalty-free basis. To mark the occasion, the organization announced that it is recreating the world's very first website for posterity.  Read More
 
The Touchmark Interface System replaces the volume/tone knobs and pickup selector switch o...
Los Angeles industrial designer and keen guitarist Mark Andersen says that close examination of playing patterns has revealed that the current knob/switch setup on most electric guitars results in "conflicting motion paths" when the player needs to tweak the tone or volume, or select a different pickup. His answer is to replace the pots and switches with a pair of touch panels on the pick guard, to convert your Strat-shaped axe into a Touchmark Guitar.  Read More
The PayTouch system allows users to make purchases using their fingerprints in place of a ... If you went into a store without any cash, cards or mobile devices, would you be able to buy anything? Well, if both you and the store were using the new PayTouch service, the answer would be yes – all that you’d need to do is place two of your fingers on the fingerprint scanners of the PayTouch terminal.  Read More
IDC released its latest global tablet market share numbers, and Samsung is looking good
For a while, it looked like Apple was going to utterly dominate the tablet market forever. Xooms, Xyboards, and Transformers came and went – accomplishing little more than building the world’s biggest collection of store shelf dust. But today Android slates have grown in quality and quantity, while shrinking in screen size and price. In the first quarter of 2013, they continued to eat into the iPad’s market share.  Read More
The Harry Winston Opus XIII features 59 minute hands, 11 hour hands and a concealed 'HW'
The average watch uses a simple formula of rotating inner hour and minute hands pointing at fixed numerical designations. The Harry Winston Opus XIII, the result of a collaboration with renowned watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard, turns that simple formula on its ear, using an outer ring of 59 moving minutes and 11 moving hours.  Read More
Scientists have copied the structure of insect eyes to create a 180-degree hemispherical c...
Contrary to what certain cartoons may have us believe, insects’ compound eyes don’t produce a grid of tiny identical images. Instead, each of their many optical facets supply one unique section of a single composite image – sort of like the individual pixels that make up one digital image. Now, a team of scientists has replicated that eye structure, to create an ultra-wide-angle camera.  Read More
McLaren P1 undergoing extreme testing in Sweden
You don't create one of the utmost masterpieces of the high-performance supercar market without countless hours of testing. Much of that testing is dirty, sweaty and anything but sexy, but a few select aspects are riveting enough to make for edge-of-your-seat video – aspects like the McLaren P1 drifting through snow-powdered ice in northern Sweden. McLaren released just such a video this week.  Read More
Cars and lasers, together again (Photo: pop culture geek)
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques have come up with a car-mounted laser scanner the size of a shoe box, that can survey the contours of road surfaces at speeds of up to 100 km/h (62 mph). The system detects potholes and other road damage in need of repair. According to the Institute, the Pavement Profile Scanner (or PPS) has surveyed 15,000 km of road since mid-2012, in which time it has proven cheaper, faster and more accurate than existing systems which require hefty attachments to the carrier vehicle.  Read More
botObjects' ProDesk3D looks set to be the first full-color desktop 3D printer
In the ProDesk3D, 3D printing outfit botObjects has come up with not only the first full color desktop 3D printer, but thanks to its anodized aluminum body, unquestionably one of the prettiest.  Read More
The Hotchkiss School's new biomass building (Photo: Centerbrook)
A US school has cut a six-figure sum from its winter energy bill by replacing its oil-burning boiler with woodchip biomass ones. The switch has reduced the school's carbon footprint by between 35 and 45 percent. The boilers are housed in a brand new green-roofed building which has become only the third LEED-certified power facility in the US.  Read More

NASA's GROVER, without solar panels. The laptop is a temporary fixture (Photo: Gabriel Tri...
NASA's autonomous, solar-powered explorer GROVER has been kitted out with ground-penetrating radar to take to Greenland's ice sheet on Friday. There the robot will spend a month analyzing the accumulation of snow and how this contributes to the ice sheet over time. The scientists involved hope to identify a new layer of ice that has formed since summer 2012, an unusually warm summer which saw melting across 97 percent of the area of the ice sheet. During that time, an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan calved from the Petermann Glacier, part of the ice sheet.  Read More
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has a near-collision with Cosmos 1805
Julie McEnery is NASA's Project Scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. When she checked her email on March 29, 2012, she was startled to find an automatically generated message stating that in six days, her half-billion-plus dollar satellite was going to cross paths with Cosmos 1805, a Soviet-era spy satellite. The predicted encounter had the two satellites occupying the same coordinates only 30 milliseconds apart. Not only that, but Cosmos was in an orbit moving nearly perpendicular to Fermi such that their collision would be equivalent to tons of high explosives. Essentially total destruction.  Read More
Microsoft has revealed more details about how its IllumiRoom project will expand video gam...
At CES in January, Microsoft Research teased its IllumiRoom concept, which involves projecting an image around a TV screen to enhance video games with additional visuals. Unfortunately, the company didn't offer much info beyond a short video that briefly showed it in action. But the team behind the project recently showed up at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris with some more in-depth details about how Illumiroom will not only expand the game screen, but completely alter the appearance of your living room.  Read More
Gizmag compares the specs (and other features) of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and Nexus 7
Samsung was the first Android phone maker to take a stab at tablets. Released in 2010, the Galaxy Tab was a 7-inch slate that cost more than the bigger and better iPad. But Samsung kept chipping away, making tablets in all shapes and sizes, and is now gaining on Apple’s shrinking lead. How does Samsung’s latest – the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 – compare to the Google/Asus Nexus 7?  Read More
A frame from 'A Boy and His Atom'
Anyone who’s tried their hand at stop animation will know it’s an incredibly time consuming and delicate job. But spare a thought for scientists at IBM Almaden in California who have produced the world’s smallest stop animation movie by using a scanning tunneling microscope to move individual atoms. Rather than competing with Aardman or Pixar for a slice of the international box office, the film is intended to make the public aware of new technology that could increase computer memories far beyond what is possible today.  Read More
A new system being developed at MIT would store excess energy in concrete spheres on the s...
The intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation is one of the biggest challenges facing these renewable energy sources. But this isn’t likely to remain a problem for much longer with everything from flywheels to liquid air systems being developed to provide a cheaper form of energy storage than batteries for times when the wind is blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A new concept out of MIT can now be added to the the list of potential solutions. Aimed specifically at offshore wind turbines, the concept would see energy stored in huge concrete spheres that would sit on the seafloor and also function as anchors for the turbines.  Read More
The Zoomer X California Style is designed by Honda's R&D in Thailand to 'combine the Calif...
The importance of local culture in shaping a marketplace was never more conspicuous to this Western mind than at the Bangkok Motor Show when Honda showed two concept bikes that are so far from the normality of Western markets that they will challenge your thinking as they did mine. The highlights of Honda Thailand's massive exhibition were a Chopper-styled scooter and a Grand Prix Racer-styled mini-bike meant for the road.  Read More
Cutaway view of the eWheelDrive hub motor
It's predicted that by the year 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people on Earth and 6.4 billion of them will be living in cities. There could also be four times as many cars on the roads as today, leading to an incredible degree of urban congestion and gridlock. That’s the impetus behind Ford and technology partner Schaeffler’s eWheelDrive electric research car, that moves the motor to the wheel hubs.  Read More
DARPA's ARM program hand is flexible enough to pick up a basketball...
Back when DARPA first announced its Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program in 2010, the average cost of a military-grade robot hand was around US$50,000. That's expensive even by the US military's standards – especially for something that is bound to be in close contact with explosives – which is why the hardware team of the ARM program tasked participants with developing a reliable low-cost hand. Now, thanks to work by iRobot (yes, the company that makes the Roomba robotic vacuum) and researchers at Harvard and Yale, the ARM program has a surprisingly effective new hand to play with that costs just $3,000 (in batches of 1,000 or more).  Read More
Smart PJs are children's pajamas patterned with dot codes that reveal bedtime stories when... A lot of kids don’t like having to put on their pajamas, as doing so means that it’s time to go to bed. If those jammies had bedtime stories digitally hidden within them, though – well, maybe then the kiddies couldn’t wait to get them on. That’s the idea behind Smart PJs.  Read More
NASA's GROVER, without solar panels. The laptop is a temporary fixture (Photo: Gabriel Tri...
NASA's autonomous, solar-powered explorer GROVER has been kitted out with ground-penetrating radar to take to Greenland's ice sheet on Friday. There the robot will spend a month analyzing the accumulation of snow and how this contributes to the ice sheet over time. The scientists involved hope to identify a new layer of ice that has formed since summer 2012, an unusually warm summer which saw melting across 97 percent of the area of the ice sheet. During that time, an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan calved from the Petermann Glacier, part of the ice sheet.  Read More
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has a near-collision with Cosmos 1805
Julie McEnery is NASA's Project Scientist for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. When she checked her email on March 29, 2012, she was startled to find an automatically generated message stating that in six days, her half-billion-plus dollar satellite was going to cross paths with Cosmos 1805, a Soviet-era spy satellite. The predicted encounter had the two satellites occupying the same coordinates only 30 milliseconds apart. Not only that, but Cosmos was in an orbit moving nearly perpendicular to Fermi such that their collision would be equivalent to tons of high explosives. Essentially total destruction.  Read More
Microsoft has revealed more details about how its IllumiRoom project will expand video gam...
At CES in January, Microsoft Research teased its IllumiRoom concept, which involves projecting an image around a TV screen to enhance video games with additional visuals. Unfortunately, the company didn't offer much info beyond a short video that briefly showed it in action. But the team behind the project recently showed up at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris with some more in-depth details about how Illumiroom will not only expand the game screen, but completely alter the appearance of your living room.  Read More
Gizmag compares the specs (and other features) of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and Nexus 7
Samsung was the first Android phone maker to take a stab at tablets. Released in 2010, the Galaxy Tab was a 7-inch slate that cost more than the bigger and better iPad. But Samsung kept chipping away, making tablets in all shapes and sizes, and is now gaining on Apple’s shrinking lead. How does Samsung’s latest – the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 – compare to the Google/Asus Nexus 7?  Read More
A frame from 'A Boy and His Atom'
Anyone who’s tried their hand at stop animation will know it’s an incredibly time consuming and delicate job. But spare a thought for scientists at IBM Almaden in California who have produced the world’s smallest stop animation movie by using a scanning tunneling microscope to move individual atoms. Rather than competing with Aardman or Pixar for a slice of the international box office, the film is intended to make the public aware of new technology that could increase computer memories far beyond what is possible today.  Read More
A new system being developed at MIT would store excess energy in concrete spheres on the s...
The intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation is one of the biggest challenges facing these renewable energy sources. But this isn’t likely to remain a problem for much longer with everything from flywheels to liquid air systems being developed to provide a cheaper form of energy storage than batteries for times when the wind is blowing or the sun isn’t shining. A new concept out of MIT can now be added to the the list of potential solutions. Aimed specifically at offshore wind turbines, the concept would see energy stored in huge concrete spheres that would sit on the seafloor and also function as anchors for the turbines.  Read More
The Zoomer X California Style is designed by Honda's R&D in Thailand to 'combine the Calif...
The importance of local culture in shaping a marketplace was never more conspicuous to this Western mind than at the Bangkok Motor Show when Honda showed two concept bikes that are so far from the normality of Western markets that they will challenge your thinking as they did mine. The highlights of Honda Thailand's massive exhibition were a Chopper-styled scooter and a Grand Prix Racer-styled mini-bike meant for the road.  Read More
Cutaway view of the eWheelDrive hub motor
It's predicted that by the year 2050 there will be 9.3 billion people on Earth and 6.4 billion of them will be living in cities. There could also be four times as many cars on the roads as today, leading to an incredible degree of urban congestion and gridlock. That’s the impetus behind Ford and technology partner Schaeffler’s eWheelDrive electric research car, that moves the motor to the wheel hubs.  Read More
DARPA's ARM program hand is flexible enough to pick up a basketball...
Back when DARPA first announced its Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program in 2010, the average cost of a military-grade robot hand was around US$50,000. That's expensive even by the US military's standards – especially for something that is bound to be in close contact with explosives – which is why the hardware team of the ARM program tasked participants with developing a reliable low-cost hand. Now, thanks to work by iRobot (yes, the company that makes the Roomba robotic vacuum) and researchers at Harvard and Yale, the ARM program has a surprisingly effective new hand to play with that costs just $3,000 (in batches of 1,000 or more).  Read More
Smart PJs are children's pajamas patterned with dot codes that reveal bedtime stories when... A lot of kids don’t like having to put on their pajamas, as doing so means that it’s time to go to bed. If those jammies had bedtime stories digitally hidden within them, though – well, maybe then the kiddies couldn’t wait to get them on. That’s the idea behind Smart PJs.  Read More

 
 
 
The Glowing Plants project aims to let you read by plantlight (Image: Shutterstock)
In the last week, over 3,000 people on Kickstarter ignored the fact it's next to impossible to keep a houseplant alive and backed the now fully-funded "Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity" campaign. The funds will be used to build upon existing technology and create a transgenic plant that has a soft blue-green glow to act as an electricity-free nightlight. Backer rewards, each glowing, include an arabidopsis plant, a rose plant, and arabidopsis seeds. We check in as the Glowing Plants team heads towards their first stretch goal and look at how this project is part of a bigger trend in DIY biology. But be warned: this is not your grandma's seed catalog.  Read More
L'Uritonnoir is a portable, composting urinal for large festivals that reduces a bale of h... Festivals can be great fun, but aren't always so friendly to the local environment. Gathering that many people in one place tends to produce a large amount of waste, but it's the human waste that can be the hardest to dispose of cleanly. That's why French design group Faltazi has produced L'Uritonnoir, a portable, composting urinal for large festivals that helps to turn a bale of hay into usable fertilizer.  Read More
A new brain implant can accurately predict an impending epileptic seizure (Image: Shutters...
Epilepsy seizures can range from something as subtle as a passing localized numbness to something as noticeable and potentially dangerous as wild involuntary thrashing. While some people experience symptoms before a seizure that indicate one is about to occur, others have no warning at all. A new device that is designed to be implanted between the skull and the brain surface has been found to accurately predict epilepsy seizures in humans and can indicate the risk of a seizure occurring in the coming hours.  Read More
Tonke Explorer 1 getting unloaded
The Dutch-built Tonke Camper is a more stylish version of mobile home than those found in the average trailer park. It features a wooden home set atop a Mercedes Sprinter platform and can be used like an RV or removed off its vehicular underpinnings and planted on firm ground.  Read More
Seniors who played the Road Tour video game reportedly experienced an improvement in their...
It’s a sad fact of life that as we age, our cognitive skills decline. In particular, the “executive function” of our mind diminishes – this function is a key aspect of our memory, attention, perception, and problem solving skills. There may be help, however. Scientists from the University of Iowa are now claiming that by playing a specific video game, test subjects aged 50 and over were able to stop and even reverse the trend.  Read More
Researchers from the University of Maryland have built a new micro air vehicle dubbed Robo...
Researchers from the University of Maryland have built a new micro air vehicle dubbed Robo Raven that's such a convincing flyer, it's been attacked by a local hawk during testing. Though numerous other robotic birds have successfully taken to the skies in recent years, including Festo's visually stunning SmartBird, this featherless mechanical marvel is capable of impressive complex aerobatic maneuvers thanks to completely programmable wings that can flap independently of each other.  Read More
The portable detector analyzes scattered laser light to identify asbestos (Photo: Paul Kay...
With the nasty tendency of its airborne fibers to cause lung cancer, the installation of asbestos building insulation has been banned in many countries for some time now. A lot of buildings still have the insulation, however, the fibers of which can get stirred up when work such as renovations or demolition are being performed. In order to help protect the people performing such work, scientists at the University of Hertfordshire have developed what they say is the world’s first portable, real-time detector of airborne asbestos.  Read More
The headlamps receive a new angry look
Toyota introduced the 2014 4Runner this week. While other once-rugged mid-size SUVs have been watered down into car-like crossovers – just look at the station wagon called the Nissan Pathfinder or the thing Jeep wants us to believe is a new Cherokee – the 4Runner stays true to its off-road roots, including body-on-frame construction. In fact, the 4Runner's new styling shows that Toyota is eager to let everyone know that the truck means business.  Read More
Artist's impression of the MAVEN spacecraft (Image: NASA)
Haikus to Mars may sound like the title of a 1950s sci-fi B movie, but that’s what NASA is asking for. The space agency is inviting the public to submit haikus to be recorded on a DVD that will be carried by the unmanned Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in November.  Read More
Laser weapons hobbyist Patrick Priebe has built a working replica of the Plasma Cutter fro... Well, our cyberpunk-weapons-making friend Patrick Priebe has been at it again. Having previously built things like a gauss rifle, a rotary-blade-shooting crossbow and an Iron Man laser gauntlet, he recently let us know about his latest creation – the video game-based Plasma Cutter.  Read More

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