Tabla de contenidos para July 2015 en Popular Science

Anyone familiar with Popular Science probably recalls our vintage covers. Back in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, we developed a signature style that depicted, in hand-painted detail, extraordinary machines of the future. We showed transcontinental airships, 50 mph ice-cycles, floating tractors, and any number of improbable vehicles that appeared to defy the laws of physics (most did). Some of the covers were true works of art—check out May 1946, one of my favorites—while others were downright bizarre: July 1937 featured a tanklike thing rumbling out of a swamp and heading straight for a tiger. A tiger! What unified the covers was their unabashed enthusiasm for the future. They made clear that Popular Science embraced technology and its ability to bring a brighter day, no matter how distant that day might…

KEEP IT ON THE DOWN-LOW I am very much in favor of faster, more-efficient elevators [“An Elevator That Will Reshape Skylines”]. But that does not mean we should build even taller structures. There are many reasons not to go higher: fire fighting, evacuation, natural disasters, and eventual demolition immediately come to mind. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. John Corcoran, Clifton, VA DRONE OVERDOSE I appreciate all that you guys do to keep the average individual informed. But I don’t think I’ll be the first to say: Enough with drones! John Froese We apologize… On page 40 of the May issue, the battery capacity of the C-1 should have been listed in kilowatt-hours. And on page 70, the diode referenced was one of the germanium variety,…

As useful as it once was, email has become a hodgepodge of unorganized conversations. Add to that other tools—Twitter, Google Hangouts—that crowd our screens. Slack, an app that’s conquering cubicles worldwide, stacks nearly all of your communications in one place. You can share files, direct-message, and search a project’s entire history. So where is all of this communication headed? We asked Slack’s co-founder, Stewart Butterfield. Popular Science: Is email on its deathbed? Stewart Butterfield: Email isn’t going anywhere, but it’s the lowest common denominator of communication. For one, every message is treated equally: family, work, friends, bank statements, and newsletters. They’re hard to sort through. You also have this very tiny window into a conversation. With Slack, you can view a whole conversation thread—even before you joined it. That means…

Ours is a world of static objects, cut, cast, or forged for specific tasks. But let’s say you opened an Ikea box, and the desk inside assembled itself. Or your water pipes shrank as the pressure decreased: no more weak showers, less wasted water. This is the 4-D-printed future, and labs are already striving to make it a reality. The tech builds on 3-D printing— with the added fourth dimension of time, across which objects transform. Skylar Tibbits, founder of MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, coined the term “4-D printing” in a 2013 TED Talk and showed how a straight plastic strand folded into the letters M, I, T when dropped in water. The emerging research area is a sexy subset within the larger field of programmable matter, which also includes North…

In the 1990s, animal scientist and autism advocate Temple Grandin revamped the livestock industry to improve animal welfare and food safety—which meant lower costs too. Today, almost half of the cattle in North America is processed through a system she designed. Now, she’s focused on a new challenge: how to reverse the damage done by decades of overly selective breeding. 41 Chickens, in millions, infected with avian influenza between December 2014 and June 2015. The USDA says it’s the worst U.S. outbreak ever. “I think a lot of millennials feel a disconnect—they want to know where their food comes from, but a third of them have never been on a farm.” When it comes to breeding animals today, many factors contribute to what I call “biological system overload.” People are…

As manager of outreach at Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, physicist Spiros Michalakis is charged with not only researching quantum mechanics but also getting people excited about it. To do so he makes science-themed comics and videogames and consults on movies, including this summer's Ant-Man and the planned remake of Fantastic Voyage. We spoke with Michalakis about how the science in scifiblockbusters holds up—and whether it even matters that it does. InAnt-Man, the hero gains superstrength when he shrinks. How would the physics behind that work? There are two ways Ant-Man could become so small. The first is to actually lose mass. But where does it go? If it converts to energy, that's going to create an extremely powerful explosion. So he probably can't lose mass because he…

While the great powers have not fought a battle at sea since 1945, the tide could be turning. The United States’ strategic pivot to Asia and the Pacific, announced in 2011, means military planners are rethinking our naval capabilities. Meanwhile, China’s newfound financial, industrial, and political might has prompted its leaders to develop an open-water navy of its own. During each of the past three years, China’s shipyards have produced more warships than any other nation’s. They are on pace to do it again this year and next. Of the U.S. projects underway, the most anticipated is the DDG 1000 USS zumwalt. The guided-missile destroyer is built with few right angles—a stealth design that gives it the radar profile of a fishing boat. Belowdecks, it is rumored to have the…

NOW: SMART WATCH When the Apple Watch was announced, designer DJ Harrigan didn’t line up to buy one. Instead, he built his own: a wearable version of the 1977 Apple II computer. “I wanted to go back as far as possible in Apple history,” says Harrigan, “but the Apple II is more iconic than the original.” The 3-D-printed watch, less than 3 inches in length, resembles the original full-size machine. (It even includes miniature, nonfunctional floppy disks.) But it’s much more powerful. A Teensy 3.1 ARM processor runs at 72 megahertz and has 64 kilobytes of random-access memory (RAM). The screen is a 1.8-inch liquid-crystal display— inconceivable in the late ’70s. The user interface, though, is simple: a knob that winds through several parody apps, including a clock that displays…

In the iOS appRobot School: Programming for Kids, players 7 and up help a stranded robot refuel its spaceship and return home by steering it through 45 levels. As they play, the game teaches them how to program, demonstrating techniques such as procedures, loops, and conditional instructions. Players can view the code they created after completing each level and even share it on Facebook. “We are already living in a world dominated by software,” says Agata Kozak, project manager at educational app developer Next Is Great. “Teaching coding helps kids understand the technology they are using.” That knowledge isn’t just handy for kids, Kozak says: “We encourage grown-ups to try it out too!”…

Peter W. Singer Defense analyst Peter W. Singer doesn’t think World War III is inevitable, but that we should prepare for it. “The risk of the brewing Cold War with Russia and China turning hot is one we have to take seriously,” he says, “especially to avoid it.” Drawing from his book Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, he assesses the world’s sea, land, air, and cyber arsenals in “The Future of War” (page 46). Judy Foreman A few years ago, health writer Judy Foreman began feeling severe neck pain. “On a scale of 1 to 10,” she says, “it was a 20.” Prior to that, she believed chronic-pain sufferers were exaggerating. “No more,” says Foreman, who tackled the topic in her book, A Nation in Pain—Healing…

SPECS Projection size 14 to 120 inches Resolution 720p Bulb life 20,000 to 50,000 hours Battery life 2.5 hours streaming Ports HDMI, USB Price $399 on contract Setting up a backyard movie screening sounds like a great idea—until you try it. You need an outlet or extension cord, and even more cables to connect a computer or streaming box to your projector. The ZTE Spro 2 frees you from that. An update to last year’s original Spro, the portable projector has a 200-lumen bulb—double that of its predecessor. A full Android operating system makes it an all-in-one device with touchscreen navigation to load the latest movie and project it up to 120 inches. There's no need to worry about spotty Wi-Fislowing down streaming because Spro 2 creates its own hotspot…

PROBLEM The number of Internet-connected devices in your home has exploded— iPhone, Sonos, Nest thermostat, app-controlled cat feeder. When they’re all vying for Wi-Fisignal (or if your router’s across the house), speed slows to a trickle. It’s no wonder buffering keeps killing your Orphan Black marathon. “There’s this last-inch problem,” says engineer Nick Weaver. “We’ve got great pipes bringing faster Internet into our homes. But how do you get that speed to everything?” SOLUTION Weaver helped develop a smarter router called Eero ($499 for three). Each Eero communicates with one another, creating a mesh network of up to 10 units. It switches frequencies to overcome interference caused by neighbors’ networks, and boosts the signal at each node to combat distance and walls. Each system supports hundreds of devices, so your…

1 HELIOS HANDLEBAR Helios has created handlebars—which are available in bullhorn, drop, and flat—with a built-in 500-lumen LED headlight and two taillights. The latter double as blinkers, which allows a rider to indicate a lane change or a turn without taking a hand off the bars. Using Bluetooth Smart, the bars can connect to a smartphone, and rider-facing lights will pulse with turnby-turn directions to keep eyes on the road, not a GPS device. During those long night hauls, the glow won’t fade because the system’s USB-rechargeable batteries run for up to 15 hours with lights on high. $280 2 SCOTT RC PROTEC A typical Lycra riding suit might be sleek and lightweight, but it shreds in a crash— along with your flesh. With help from Swiss textile maker Schoeller,…

Every year, mosquitoes infect 400 million people with dengue fever, causing severe headaches and joint pain. Since a 2009 outbreak in Key West, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District has spent $1 million a year to try to curb the primary vector: Aedes aegypti. Last July, another mosquito-borne virus reached U.S. shores: chikungunya. Now officials are considering a radical—and highly controversial—approach to control the spread of tropical disease: genetically-modified mosquitoes. 5,000 Rough number of modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes released per resident during Oxitec’s 2014 Panama trial “I think this is one of the greatest ideas in the history of pest control.”—Rebecca Trout Fryxell, entomologist at the University of Tennessee 1 The Aedes aegypti mosquito thrives in urban settings and is highly resistant to insecticide. Plus it almost exclusively bites people.…

P.W. Singer’s latest book, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, is out in late June. When the Cold War ended, the world changed fundamentally. For most of the 20th century, conflicts between great powers—two world wars and the specter of a third—defined our global politics, as well as science and technology. Almost overnight, that dynamic shifted. Warfare didn’t go away in the 21st century, but it became mostly a story of insurgencies and terrorism. In a world with only one superpower, the probability of a high-stakes battle between leading nations became remote. Some even viewed it as impossible. History may look back on this period as an anomaly. Tensions between great powers are again on the rise. In Asia, China is now a legitimate superpower and has…

American air dominance has long rested on staying technologically ahead of the enemy. With high-speed stealth design, advanced avionics, and integrated computing, the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II is built to keep that edge for the United States and its allies. The problem—aside from a spate of cost overruns, malfunctions, and delays—is that other countries are no longer far behind. The Chinese J-31 Gyrfalcon1 resembles the F-35 not just in looks, but also in speed and strike capabilities. The Russian T-50 PAK FA is a fifth-generation fighter jet whose capabilities parallel those of the U.S. F-22. As more countries reach the technology frontier, the advantage gained by any one of them diminishes. And so military planners are looking for another edge: unmanned craft. That means the F-35 could earn a different…

1,500 Estimated price of Shaper, in dollars, when it hits the market It can be hard to follow guidelines precisely when cutting wood, especially if you’re tracing a perfect circle or punching unsightly knots out of a floorboard. You could solve the problem with a $10,000 CNC machine, a large device with range limitations. You could risk steering a router by hand. Or you could use the newly developed Shaper, which combines the two tools to cut precise right angles and curves. A would-be carpenter first draws the shape he wants to cut in third-party graphics software. Then he pushes Shaper over the wood. The tool automatically adjusts the path of the cutting bit to match the digital image, amending the line to within a hundredth of an inch. “You…

In early 1941, the United States had yet to enter into World War II, but weapons and warplanes were already a topic of national interest. One of those planes was the F4F-3 Wildcat, which the Naval Air Force deployed to monitor the coasts. The fighter, which graced the February 1941 cover of Popular Science, could drop 100-pound bombs while flying at speeds greater than 250 mph. As we wrote then, “Perhaps our patrol bombers and flying fortresses can’t send capital ships with heavy deck armor to the bottom, but they can certainly send them to dry dock, back where they came from.” Aviation technology has advanced significantly in the 70 years since World War II, and it stands to change even more. Future air battles will likely be fought by…

1 VAPOURLIGHT HYPER SMOCK 2.0 On long hiking trips, every ounce matters, so Berghaus has created the lightest-weight waterproof jacket yet. At a mere 85 grams for a size large, it’s roughly 30 percent lighter than its nearest competitor. $150 2 TRAINER BY GIBSON Legendary guitar maker Gibson worked with Olympian Usain Bolt to develop wireless over-ear headphones for runners. Built-in LEDs in the earpieces increase nighttime visibility. At the touch of a button, you can also lower the volume to stay alert during your run. $250 3 STOWER CANDLECHARGER With Stower’s Candle Charger system, a single Sterno canister can charge a smartphone— twice. The candle’s flame heats and purifies a pot of water, which serves as a thermoelectric generator. $99 4 MISFIT SWAROVSKI SHINE Who says you can’t count…

Tattoos say a lot about a person. They’re about to communicate a lot more. A new wave of ultrathin, flexible stick-on sensors are entering the wearables game, promising to improve our lives with (even more) data. For now adhesive mini computers are mostly in the “look-how-cool-it-is” phase. Google released a digital tattoo last summer that uses near-field communication (NFC) to unlock a Motorola Moto X smartphone. That’s fun. But that’s all it does. Other companies are jamming sensors and antennas into these nano-thin waterproof devices that could potentially save lives. The wider promise of digital tattoos will come with health and fitness trackers. The SEEQ Mobile Cardiac Telemetry System, created by Medtronic, sticks onto a cardiac outpatient’s chest and sends continuous heartbeat information to a medical monitoring service. The staff…

44 Number of Americans who die every day from overdosing on prescription painkillers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Nothing hurts Americans more than chronic pain. It’s our single biggest health problem, affecting the lives of 100 million adults— more than heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. And that figure, from a 2011 Institute of Medicine report, doesn’t even count kids in pain, veterans with devastating war injuries, or people in nursing homes. Yet despite the fact that chronic pain is the primary reason Americans receive disability benefits, its one of the least understood afflictions. Medical schools teach doctors almost nothing about it, spending a median of nine hours on the topic over four years. The federal government puts absurdly few dollars toward research: $4 a year…

1927 METROPOLIS Scientist: C.A. Rotwang Hubris: Builds a robot to replace the woman who rebuffed him and later died Comeuppance: Hoping to destroy the city and its ruling class, Rotwang alters the robot to look like a labor leader and orders it to incite riots. The crazed genius succeeds in sowing chaos—cinema’s first feature-length act of mad science— but falls from a roof to his death. 1931 FRANKENSTEIN Scientist: Henry Frankenstein (not Victor, as in Mary Shelley’s book) Hubris: Creates life using a dubious recipe of corpse parts and lightning Comeuppance: Unlike other big-screen mad scientists in the ’30s, such as Dr. Jekyll and the Invisible Man, Frankenstein lives through his self- inflicted ordeal. Victims of his monster, including a little girl, aren’t so lucky. 1958 THE FLY Scientist: Andre…

INTELLIGENCE Augmented reality combat goggles— such as those being developed by Israeli Defense Forces and for the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS)—will record everything a soldier sees. They will also provide an information overlay: The projected data could include navigation instructions, intelligence on enemy sites, and real-time translations of local languages. PROTECTION Next-generation body armor will use layered scales, like those on a fish, for light, flexible protection. Scientists from MIT and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are designing a material that would fuse hard plates to a soft, pliable substance, just as actual fish scales anchor to tissue. The eventual armor could be fine-tuned to specific roles, with more scales on the chest and back, and fewer at the joints. PERFORMANCE Exoskeletons will not…