Índex per November 2014 a Popular Science

At the outset, we thought working side by side with a robot would be little more than a weird experiment. And it was—for about three days. Then things became strangely natural. Now when I see our robot roaming the halls or dipping into meetings, I’m no longer shocked or confused. I just smile and wave. We even named it—Gus, for reasons no one can remember. One of my fondest recent memories was watching Gus lead an office tour for 25 squealing children on Bring Your Kid to Work Day. The lesson: Children love robots. When I describe Gus to friends, they all have some version of the same reaction: Their eyes get wide and they look vaguely creeped out. Which kind of makes sense. From the moment robots were conceived,…

1 BLOOM BLANKET Who decided blankets need to be fl at? Design studio Oak Form took inspiration from origami (and tessellations). The result is a cashmere blanket that looks like it belongs in a geometry book. $300 2 HUMIN This app aims to replace your phone’s built-in contacts list by remembering contacts as you would: based on how you met, where they live, and who your mutual friends are. Free 3 THINGS TO MAKE AND DO IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION What would it take to get you to try a math problem? A little humor could help. In his latest book, stand-up comedian and former math teacher Matt Parker shows the fun (and funnier) side of the much-maligned subject. $28 4 MO-FI No matter how hi-fi your music player, if…

You’ve mastered the art of Instagram, and you’re ready to swap your smartphone camera for something more serious. Five years ago, that meant choosing between the quality of a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera or the low cost of a point-and-shoot. But that’s no longer the case. Mirrorless cameras, which have been around since the digital camera boom of the early 2000s, are catching up to DSLRs in terms of quality. Their smaller bodies formerly meant grainier photos. That’s because they required the use of smaller image sensors, which receive less light than the full-frame sensors used in DSLRs. In recent years, camera-makers have found ways to place larger sensors in mirrorless cameras, pairing them with high-powered image processors. To boot, many mirrorless cameras now include interchangeable lenses for…

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) probes the sky for radio waves from the Milky Way (shown here) and beyond. But even ALMA can’t see the supermassive black hole shrouded in ionized gas at our galaxy’s center, Sagittarius A*. “Any images we make are fuzzy, as though you’re looking at a small light through frosted glass,” says Shep Doeleman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. So astronomers are linking 11 telescopes around the world into one Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), named for the spacetime boundary where the black hole’s gravity prevents the escape of light and matter. When an upgraded ALMA joins in 2015, it should make EHT 10 times more sensitive and may help bring Sagittarius A*’s shadowy edge into focus. ALEXANDRA OSSOLA…

THE TARGET . . . While looking at stem cells with the mutation, Zhang found an imbalance that caused the neurofilaments to tangle, which is a cause of ALS. A paper he published in April demonstrates that the damage is reversible once the mutation is corrected. THE THERAPY . . . In June, Beckman published a study suggesting that the SOD1 mutation may be associated with a cellular copper deficiency. When Beckman gave mice with the mutation an oral copper compound, it improved their ability to move and extended their lives by 12 percent, offering a promising avenue for therapeutics research.…

Candidate: KELLIE GERARDI WHAT YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE: “My goal is to support the democratization of space, the expansion of Earth’s economic sphere, and mankind’s ever-reaching journey in space.” I.EARLY ON A SATURDAY MORNING, about 60 planetary malcontents gathered in a narrow auditorium on the campus of George Washington University. They’d come to hear about a plan to build a self-sustaining colony in space, and they hoped to be among its first settlers, leaving the rest of us to live and die on Earth. “How many of you would like to take a oneway mission to Mars?” asked the balding engineer on stage. His face was a peachy monochrome, with sharp, craggy features set like a mini moonscape, and he had slightly pointed ears. On his lapel, a sticker read:…

Eric Fischer makes maps to understand how people interact with each other and their environments—and there are few better windows into relationships than social media. In this map, he charted public conversations between people on Twitter for five months in 2011, showing how the service connects distant places. A single reply—a type of tweet that starts with another user’s handle —appears as an arc. The more frequently people in different cities communicate with each other, the brighter those arcs appear. The map also encodes the direction of the communiqué. Each missive moves clockwise: A tweet from Los Angeles to New York arcs across Canada, while one moving the other way arcs over Mexico. Thus, the balance of these conversations stands out: Nearly every arc has a companion below it, creating…

Have a burning question? Email it to askanything @popsci.com or tweet it to @PopSci #AskAnything. Short answer 142,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kelvin, give or take a few zeros. A It’s easy to understand the theoretical minimum temperature: absolute zero. The absolute maximum, on the other hand, is squirrely. “We just don’t know whether we can take energy all the way up to infinity,” says Stephon Alexander, a physicist at Dartmouth University. “But it’s theoretically plausible.” The most straightforward candidate for an upper limit is the Planck Temperature, or 142 nonillion (1.42 x 1032) Kelvin (K)—the highest temperature allowable under the Standard Model of particle physics. But temperature comes about only when particles interact and achieve thermal equilibrium, Alexander explains. “To have a notion of temperature, you need to have a notion of…

KATIE PEEK Information editor Katie Peek says good data visualizations convey complex information simply and beautifully. But, she says, “the best visualizations have a point to them.” When creating her own, Peek presents new data in a way that also tells a story. For “Dawn of the Data Age” (page 53), she assembled a team of fellow experts to find the best visualizations in three particularly data-rich areas: the self, city, and world. DANIEL ENGBER When contributing editor Daniel Engber heard about the Million Martian Meeting, he knew he’d attend. Entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp had assembled a group of aspiring space explorers vying for a oneway trip to Mars. While reporting “Bas Lansdorp Has a Posse” (page 46), Engber found he did not share their enthusiasm to live and die 45…

100,000,000 Estimated number of stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy Stephen Hawking is one of the greatest scientists ever—comparable to Darwin, Einstein, and Newton. Yet few people know the story of his life. In a new biopic, The Theory of Everything, Oscar-winning director James Marsh examines the challenges Hawking endured as he transformed the field of cosmology while fighting a degenerative motor neuron disease. Ahead of the November 7 premiere, we looked back at Hawking’s greatest achievements and talked to Marsh about working with a true Popular Science hero. ERIK SOFGE HAWKING’S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS 1 Defi ning and Redefi ning Black Holes In 1974, Hawking presented a radical theory: Black holes actually emit energy, bleeding what would later be called “Hawking radiation.” This seemingly minor point reconciled key…

Flappy Bird, the notoriously difficult mobile game, burst forth in 2013. Now, creator Dong Nguyen has released an even harder game called Swinging Copters. But long before Flappy Bird, unwinnable games were massively popular. Remember Donkey Kong? Here are three theories as to why, despite the odds, players keep coming back. LINDSEY KRATOCHWILL Why Play Hard Games? THE STAKES “The fundamental challenge of game design is to make the outcome of the game matter to the players. By threatening frustration, you raise the stakes from zero, and the players will tend to try to play well, to play creatively and skillfully.” —Bennett Foddy, assistant arts professor at the New York University Game Center THE HOOK “Flappy Bird is unusual in that the difficulty curve is flat. This means that whenever…

Stats Dimensions: 96 feet long 48 feet wide 26 feet high Weight: 76 tons Payload: 190 tons Range: 200 nautical miles Top speed: 23 miles per hour in the water When U.S. Marines landed at Inchon during the Korean War, they had to abandon their amphibious vehicles and cross tidal mud flats on foot. Today, the Navy uses the more versatile Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) to move troops and supplies from ship to shore. But these hovercraft can’t carry much cargo or crawl over obstacles. So the logistics of water-toland transfers continue to bedevil planners and put lives at risk. Since 2008, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has been working with ship-design company Navatek to develop an entirely new kind of beach stormer called the Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious…

As if lice weren’t bad enough, a growing number are now resistant to over-the-counter (OTC) treatment. Scary, yes, but not surprising since doctors have relied on a single compound to kill the bugs for decades, says John Clark, a University of Massachusetts Amherst toxicologist. WHAT USED TO WORK OTC treatments kill lice with neurotoxins called pyrethrins (or the synthetic permethrin). When repeatedly exposed to the drug, bugs evolve a genetic mutation that desensitizes their nervous systems to its effects. WHY THAT’S A PROBLEM Populations of lice develop additional defenses until they become completely immune, as is now the case in Argentina and Israel. In March, Clark reported that 99.6 percent of head lice in the U.S. already have the genetic mutation and are en route to achieving superlice status. WHAT…

1 Launch ComSats Start by placing a pair of communications satellites, one in a Mars stationary orbit and the other in orbit around the Sun, so that future colonists can stay in touch with Earth throughout the year. Technical feasibility: High. We know how to build and launch satellites, and we’ve been communicating with spacecraft near Mars since 1965. 2 Deliver a Rover Use an intelligent ground vehicle to scout the best location for longterm settlement–flat terrain, with ample sun and water–and act as a beacon to guide future shipments. Technical feasibility: Moderate.Curiosity advanced our collective ability to land large craft, but rovers are not yet efficient scouts. For instance, in just more than a year, Curiosity has traveled about five miles. 3 Set Up Habitats Land a series of…

REPORTER The Reporter app helps users build a database of their own habits and moods by requesting data via iPhone alert at random times throughout the day. Then it helps users visualize their digital selves with Feltron Annual Report–style charts. MOVE-O-SCOPE Running in the backgroundof a smartphone,the Moves apptracks the activitylevel and location ofits users. The websiteMove-O-Scope, by designstudio Halftone,renders the defaultMoves timeline as abrightly colored map,so users can see thepatterns in their lives. MEAL MEMORY For diabetics, theMeal Memory app—by Databetes creatorDouglas Kanter—visually correlatesfood data with bloodsugarreadings to helpusers understandhow their meals affecttheir health.…

1 CLASSES In January, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas will offer the online course “Introduction to Infographics and Data Visualization.” In its third year, the course gets an update: Journalist Alberto Cairo will still teach information design, but now coder Scott Murray will offer instruction in the interactive visualization language D3. 2 SOFTWARE Rather than learn to code, users can also explore and visualize their data with off-the-shelf programs. Comprehensive products such as Tableau provide analytics and dashboards for corporate clients. Simpler Web-based software such as Plotly and Datawrapper lets users upload and analyze tables of data, then create simple charts from the result. 3 BOOKS Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a classic, but equally good (and newer) is Now You See It,…

Inside: The littleBits prototyping process. How to mint coins for the postapocalyptic economy. Why reindeer herders are using spray paint. “Watching” a meteor shower with a radio. STATS Time 3 hours Cost $30 Difficulty 2.0/5.0 As the winter months approach, darkness is falling earlier and earlier. Do not bike gentle into that good night! By spending a few hours tinkering with LEDs, you can outfit your dull wheels with hypnotically glowing rings. Some kits on the market use customizable circuit boards to form animations as the wheel spins. Wiring your wheel to display a lighted circle is easier and cheaper, making it an ideal first foray into DIY electronics. Try varying the color, number, and placement of the LEDs to create intricate patterns. Or swap individual lights for a color-changing…

Short answer Maybe for a while. A OnHappy Days, one of the Fonz’s signature moves was to pound the jukebox to make it work. There’s a certain logic there, says Mack Blakely, executive director of the National Electronics Service Dealers Association. “In the old days, devices had a lot of mechanical stuff in ’em, and you could jar something back in place,” he says. “A solder connection might reconnect, but it probably wouldn’t be long before it would be acting up again.” That logic still holds with today’s machines. A good smack can temporarily fix an intermittent connection, but it’s risky. Whacking a platter-based hard drive, for example, could damage the head. That’s why “percussive maintenance” is best left to professionals. A few well-placed taps may identify a weak connection…

Our profile of Bill Nye [September 2014] provoked a passionate response from readers. Many of the more than 100 letters suggested that, in areas other than evolution, the relationship between science and religion is less contentious. Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund’s research shows this is likely true; scientists hostile to religion are in a minority, as are religious people hostile to science. The “science versus religion” narrative could be overcome by focusing on scientific topics that harbor more fruitful discussions. “We need scientists who are willing to engage with people of faith, and vice versa,” she says.…

Inside: The world’s greatest living scientist. Ten things we love this month. Pro-grade cameras for a song. A user’s guide to selfies (no mugs, please!). The surprising allure of difficult games. Mobile connectivity makes its way to luxury vehicles. Tracking technology is everywhere. It lives in activity bands, security devices, air conditioners —even nutrition-tracking smart cups. And that’s the problem. “We have too many needs to buy dedicated devices for everything,” says Rafi Haladjian, founder of Sen.se, so he created a single device that can make dumb items smart. He called it Mother, and it’s designed to care about you as much as your real one. To use it, people place sensors—called cookies—onto anything from a coffee pot (to monitor caffeine intake) to a child’s toothbrush (to keep tabs on…

Meeting Hawking “It’s like meeting the Queen, or meeting God,” says Marsh. “You don’t quite know what you should be saying, or how you should be saying it, or what kind of answer you need to wait for.” Accuracy The movie’s biggest eureka moment features Hawking stuck while putting on a sweater--a predicament that inspired Hawking radiation theory. “We modeled the scene exactly on that breakthrough, which [his ex-wife] acted out for me in the room where it happened,” Marsh says. Hawking’s Voice After seeing a rough cut of the movie, Hawking volunteered his unique voice software. “It made a big difference,” Marsh says. “The film was just better with the real voice. It has a music to it. It has more emotion, oddly enough, than the voice that…

Social media has spawned the slackeractivist, someone who supports a cause through an audacious public display that actually requires very little effort. This summer, the #IceBucketChallenge clogged newsfeeds with videos of folks dumping ice water on their heads instead of (or often in addition to) donating to the ALS Association. In a single month, the nonprofit collected more than $100 million— 36 times what it had raised the previous August—to support research for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “It’s an unprecedented situation, not just for our cause, but for any charity outside disaster relief,” says ALS Association spokesperson Carrie Munk. But how much can a viral campaign actually propel medical research? Does slacktivism advance science in a meaningful way? ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, kills off the motor neurons…

Why should robots be able to learn? Personal robots are going to be out in human environments, and it’s going to be really hard for engineers to think of all the things we’re going to want those robots to do. So my lab is trying to enable end users to teach robots. We’re thinking about different elements, from the interaction itself—how should the robot phrase questions so that it’s gathering the right kind of information?—to machine learning, or algorithms to deal with the kind of input people will provide. Can you describe a typical interaction with Curi in the lab? We’re teaching Curi to help out in the kitchen—scoop some pasta from a pot onto a plate and serve the sauce on top. One way to do that is by…

*Popular Science assembled a panel of data-visualization experts—practicing designers at the forefront of the field—and asked them to rate candidate visualizations, chosen for their novel graphic forms, smart execution, or comprehensive underlying data. Their favorites appear on the following pages. Wes Grubbs directs Pitch Interactive, a visualization studio in Oakland, Calif. Pitch Interactive mapped international water conflicts for the June issue of Popular Science. Giorgia Lupi is design director and co-founder of the Accurat design agency, based in Milan and New York City. Her studio contributed the visualization “A Shift in Nuclear Powers” in September. Jan Willem Tulp runs the visualization studio TULP Interactive based in The Hague, the Netherlands. He created “Hungry Planet” for the magazine’s November 2013 issue. We are awash with data, and it keeps piling up:…

In a project he calls Stadtbilder—which translates to “city images”— Moritz Stefaner mapped the collective life of a city’s inhabitants, rather than its buildings or land. The underlying data is a popularity index of public places based on social media check-in services, such as Foursquare. Using diagonal lines, Stefaner overlaps four categories of places—music, shopping, nightlife, and food—to show not just the city’s shape, but its culture, revealing clubs throughout the city’s center with a cluster of music venues in the east, along the river.…

1 The Warrior Web suit conforms to the lower body and supports the hip, knee, and ankle joints. 2 Motors, mounted at the waist and attached by cables to joints, transmit force at key moments in the walking cycle, augmenting muscle strength. 3 The suit is made of nylon in places where force is applied, and spandex where it needs to be flexible. A new type of soft sensor monitors motion so that the suit works smoothly. POWERED EXOSUITS SOME WEIGHT troops will never shed. That’s why DARPA is creating the Warrior Web, a soft, flexible suit that supports the back and lower body. It uses a system of springs to store the energy a soldier produces while walking or running. Motors then release and augment this power in…

Pressure on coin at moment of impact, in tons per square inch. That’s equivalent to 24 elephants perched on a postage stamp. Money makes the world run—but without a stable government, paper bills will be little more than fire starters, and coins chips of cheap metal. Bartering is inconvenient: If I desperately want the cat food you’ve stockpiled, but you have no need for the fine moonshine I can produce, it will take multiple trades to satisfy us both. A more efficient solution would be to mint a new currency. Coins are manufactured by squeezing a disk of soft metal, or planchet, between two harder dies—typically cylinders with images cut into their faces. Given enough energy, the planchet briefly acts like a liquid, flowing into the nooks and crannies…

3,665 Number of reindeer hit by cars in Finland in 2013 GOOD IDEA PROTECT ANIMALS In Finland, reindeer herders are spraying antlers with a reflective paint to make the animals more visible to nighttime traffic. You can do the same for pets. Albedo 100’s washable “Horses and Pets” blend is safe and effective on short-haired animals. In daylight, it appears as a semitransparent gray. On a clear night, it can reflect a vehicle’s headlights from more than 500 feet. Cut a stencil from cardboard and use it to apply fun patterns, such as stars or paw prints, to your pet’s fur. Or, if your pets are skittish, skip the stencil and tag collars and leashes instead. BAD IDEA CREMATE CREEPY-CRAWLIES The propellants in a can of spray paint are often…

100 Approximate weight, in pounds, of equipment carried by soldiers today, nearly double that of the 1940s WhenPopular Science featured these soldiers on its May 1941 cover, U.S. riflemen carried state-of-the-art weapons for the era, such as the Garand semiautomatic rifle. Just as impressive was the load they carried: All of a soldier’s equipment weighed only 57 pounds—33 pounds less than during World War I. Or as we put it then, “The modern infantry is no more like that of World War days than the rhumba is like the 1917 shimmy dance.” Future soldiers (and dances) will be just as different, using exoskeletons and robotic mules to shoulder their burdens. To read about the evolving battlefield, turn to page 60. More Advances That Changed Warfare AIRPLANES Introduced during a battle…