Indice dei contenuti per August 2014 in Popular Science

Feed 09 From the Editor 10 Peer Review 12 A Bit About Us Now 15 The first smart-phone powered by the sun 16 10 things we love this month 18 Hi-fi music's comeback 20 Will alien visitors come in peace? 22 A car that anticipates accidents 24 A grill that can power your campsite 27 500 GB of data, visualized 28 Why regulations need to keep up with crowdsharing Next 30 Hammerhead sharks' evolutionary trap 33 A thinking cap for faster learning 37 Preparing for a future without antibiotics 38 The mysterious world of lightning 39 Cancer screenings may do more harm than good 40 Mapping the risk of natural-disaster damage Manual 73 A metal dress that enables electric performances 74 Enter your drone in aerial combat 76 A knife…

The June issue is an especially fascinating one. Thanks in particular for the “Pure Genius” article about Dean Kamen's current inventions. Potable water is such an important concern; it is encouraging to learn so many bright minds are being brought to bear in finding solutions. Right here in the U.S., there should be much more emphasis on water conservation in our day-to-day lives. Carol Landa Christensen Bradenton, Fla. Dean Kamen deserves a Nobel Prize. Please pass it on! David Seltzer via email I've found your June issue to be very informative. My hat is off to y'all. It covered something close to my heart: water, our most precious resource. Bill Mladenka Brazoria County, Texas…

Screen size 2.4 inches Solar-panel transparency 90 percent Price not set When a high-end Swiss watchmaker introduces what appears to be a plain old dumb phone, odds are there's something more going on below the surface. In the case of Tag Heuer's Meridiist Infinite, the story is the surface: The phone's 2.4-inch screen is also a solar panel. Engineers at Sunpartner Technologies, the French company that produces the screen, place microns-thin strips of photovoltaic material over the display. Inside the phone, micro lenses bend light so the LCD readout travels around the strips, making it invisible to the user. An hour of direct sun could charge the battery 10 to 30 percent, and even ambient indoor light could supply enough juice to keep the handset running in standby mode forever.…

In Earth to Echo (in theaters now), an alien crash-lands in a small town and enlists the help of three kids to get home. The film is pure fiction—it's E.T. for the smartphone age—but it raises some fun questions about our first brush with nonhuman visitors. The star, Echo, has the metallic skin and glowing-bulb eyes of a mechanical being—something like the machines SETI Institute senior astronomer Seth Shostak believes we'll initially encounter (as opposed to fleshier visitors like E.T.). “I think it's likely to be some sort of artificial intelligence,” he says. With humanity closing in on AI capabilities, he expects such systems will be common among advanced creatures. This movie joins a tiny subgenre of films about peaceful aliens—a concept that might not be as naïve as it…

Two years ago, BioLite introduced its CampStove, the first portable cooker to convert waste heat into electricity. The stove produced enough power to recharge a phone—perfect for an overnight in the woods—but lacked the juice to allow a whole campsite to go off the grid. The new BaseCamp generates more than double the electricity of its compact predecessor—enough to power strings of lights, charge GoPros, and furnish other comforts. Engineers overhauled the unit's thermoelectric generator (TEG), incorporating a new fan design that delivers more hot air, increasing the TEG's output. The electricity created powers the fan while charging a device plugged in via USB (or an onboard 2,200-milliampere battery). A side door lets campers feed the flame, so the lights will last as deep into the night as the campers…

In April, San Francisco City Attorney Daniel Herrera brought a lawsuit against a handful of landlords on the grounds that they had illegally evicted tenants from their homes. They had invoked the Ellis Act, which permits evictions so long as the property is removed from the rental market. But the properties were not removed. Instead they were listed on short-term, peer-to-peer (P2P) rental sites like Airbnb, for significantly more money. Usually, renters' rights suits don't make the news. But Hererra's charge is just one of many legal and regulatory actions this year related to P2P companies, which allow for the direct exchange of money between individuals in return for goods and services. Critics argue that because P2P companies don't fit established regulations, they typically operate outside them, which can hurt…

The razor clam, rarely heralded for its agility, is an amazing digger. So engineers at MIT stole a few tricks from the slim, candy bar—size mollusk to build an efficient aquatic machine called RoboClam. To burrow, a razor clam begins to squeeze its shells together. Surrounding sand falls into the newly created space. Further squeezing draws water into the mix, making a pocket of quicksand that the clam pulls itself through with ease. The RoboClam works similarly. In version 2.0, now in progress, an electric actuator expands and contracts three aluminum wedges to turn nearby sand into a slurry. A weight allows the cylindrical unit to sink slightly, and the process repeats. “A razor clam can dig one third of a mile through underwater soil on the amount of energy…

There's a long-held assumption that cancer is a universally progressive disease that will metastasize and kill its victims unless it's stopped early. Since the 1980s, “Early detection is your best protection” has been a mantra of the cancer-awareness community, spurring an insistence on frequent screenings to catch ever-smaller abnormalities. But finding cancer in the body doesn't imply a death sentence. In fact, new research shows that its cell behavior is actually quite diverse. To oversimplify: Cancer is born when a cell harboring damaged DNA makes new cells instead of repairing itself or dying. At that stage, some cancers rapidly invade tissues even before they're discernible. But others grow so slowly that they won't spread to different parts of the body in a lifetime. Some even regress on their own. “The…

Remotely controlled vehicles keep human operators out of harm's way. This, of course, means that world leaders can be tempted to engage in a kind of combat with almost no on-the-ground risks—creating a new kind of geopolitical calculus that everyone from President Obama to George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones, has puzzled over. Drones have been a powerful tool in the battle against terrorism; they are responsible for the deaths of 58 high-ranking members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan alone. But drone strikes have also killed civilians and fueled a wellspring of anger. The would-be Times Square bomber became a terrorist out of his rage over drone strikes overseas. Hobbyists love quadcopters and their ilk because they're easy to use, but that…

Parents-to-be who want to conceive a baby with IVF can use genetic testing to choose healthy embryos. But hopeful moms with rare disorders affecting mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles that sit outside a cell's nucleus, don't have that option: Their diseased mitochondria almost always get passed down, producing a devastating illness. One possible solution is to create a baby from the genetic material of three people. The procedure, called oocyte modification, involves replacing the nucleus of a donor woman's egg with that of the intended mother's, either before or after the nucleus of the mother's egg has been fertilized with the father's sperm. The new hybrid embryo contains the nuclear DNA of both mom and dad and the healthy mitochondria of the donor. “This technique is extremely exciting because it completely…

IN LATE MARCH 2012, AN OBLONG LIME-GREEN SUBMERSIBLE BROKE THE SURFACE OF THE WESTERN PACIFIC NEAR GUAM. On the deck of a nearby ship, the Mermaid Sapphire, an 80-person support team and a film crew cheered wildly. The team winched the peculiar-looking craft on board and released the hatch. The door swung open and, to even louder cheers, James Cameron, the legendary Hollywood action-film director, emerged. He had just dived nearly seven miles to the deepest point in the ocean, becoming the first person to ever reach the pitch-black depths of the Mariana Trench alone. With his seven-hour dive, Cameron achieved what the world's top ocean explorers could not, and the eerie scenes he filmed in the frigid darkness form the basis of a documentary, Deepsea Challenge 3D, set to…

Most pilots enjoy keeping their drones airborne. Marque Cornblatt, who studied digital art before turning to robotics, has different pleasure centers in his brain. “Crash your drone,” he says. “Get your hands dirty fixing that thing. Come up with solutions to keep it flying.” This crash-and-rebuild philosophy came out of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) battles between Cornblatt and his friends. The duels were so much fun that they launched a group called Flight Club and the YouTube series Game of Drones. The show chronicles UAV dogfights, the building of unique battle drones—such as a paintball-shooting hexacopter—and abusive tests of a supersturdy airframe designed by Cornblatt and a buddy. (So far, it has survived flights through water, fire, and glass windows, drops from hundreds of feet, and even shotgun blasts.) Cornblatt…

Neuroscientist Stephen Larson wanted to make OpenWorm, the world's first open-source digital organism, available for Web browsers. So he and a small team of scientists turned to crowdfunding. With four days left in a 30-day funding window, things looked grim: The project was only halfway to its $120,000 goal, and falling short would mean getting no money at all. The team rallied supporters, obtaining more than a pledge per minute in the campaign's final hours. At right, three lessons to keep in mind for your own crowdfunding projects. “CLOSE TO THE END, SOME FOLKS CAME OUT OF THE WOODWORK AND DECIDED TO BACK US AT HIGHER LEVELS. THEY REALIZED WE WEREN'T GOING TO MAKE IT.” —Stephen Larson 1 TIMING IS EVERYTHING. Galvanize support through social media at the beginning and…

SHORT ANSWER They're trying! ATurns out, a few oral sunscreens already exist, based on the theory that antioxidants offer sun protection. Laboratory studies provide some evidence in support of this idea. When scientists feed vitamin E to hairless mice, the animals show less skin damage upon exposure to ultraviolet light. Dermatologist Salvador González Rodríguez has studied an extract made from a fern called Polypodium leucotomos. The substance, which is high in antioxidants, may decrease sun-related DNA damage in humans, he says. But as a consultant for a Spanish company that makes an oral sunscreen, Rodríguez has skin in the game, so to speak. And he admits that oral sunscreens don't work that well when measured in the standard ways: “If we evaluate protection in terms of how conventional sunscreens are…

So, things are getting pretty weird overhead. On Memorial Day weekend, the club Marquee in Las Vegas launched drone bottle service for daytime VIPs. A few weeks before that, Francesco's Pizzeria in Mumbai delivered a pie to the roof of a 21-story apartment building. It was a stunt, but it proved that drones could cut a 30-minute delivery to 10. Pizza, invariably, leads one to ask, What about the beer? For that, Schell's Brewery in Minnesota had the answer: drones shuttling cold ones to anyone within range. Somewhat disappointingly, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the service, citing safety concerns. Every once in a while, devices develop beyond their original purpose into something more. Phones made the leap in the late 1990s. What was once a corded voice-transmission device is…

I find it hard to believe it takes 40,000 liters of water to make 1 kilogram of beef [Feed, June 2014]. Assuming a steer is about 300 kilograms, that would be a whopping 12 million liters of water, or 1.2 billion liters for a herd of 100 (which is rather small at many ranches). A little more explanation of what that includes would be welcome. Gene Taylor Brookeville, Md. Information editor Katie Peek responds: You're right that 40,000 liters is a lot of water! It includes all the rainwater, groundwater, and irrigation needed to grow the crops that feed the cattle (that's the most intensive use), as well as what the cow drinks and any water consumed by when meat is processed and shipped. There are many methodologies for calculating…

Beginning around 2000, some music no longer sounded as clear or rich as it once did. The problem wasn't the artists; rather, it was the MP3, a technology designed to maximize portability. MP3s employ audio-data compression to reduce file bandwidth, which lets you carry thousands of songs in your phone but limits the music's dynamic range. That's why some audiophiles began returning to LPs, which better replicate a song's sonic footprint. Last year, vinyl sales increased by 33 percent. But you can't carry a record player around. The solution? High-resolution downloads. The format has become more viable as storage capacity increased and download times dropped on sites like HDtracks.com. The latest innovation comes from Neil Young's start-up, PonoMusic. The goal of Pono (which means “righteous” in Hawaiian) is to give…

Collision-avoidance systems have an Achilles' heel: In heavy traffic, they are just as blind to risks down the road as drivers are, particularly when trucks or buses obscure the view. The Predictive Forward Collision Warning system on the 2015 Nissan Murano tries to address that. It monitors not only the vehicle directly ahead but the vehicle in front of that one too. A bumper-mounted radar simultaneously tracks the car being followed and shoots beams underneath it to scan the road beyond. The system can see about 390 feet ahead and will beep and flash dashboard alerts if it detects a problem, such as a slow-moving or stopped car. Predictive Forward Collision Warning is part of Nissan's greater Safety Shield system, which rings the car with four cameras and three radars…

With this souped-up lighter, coals will be ready five times faster—no lighter fluid needed. It's battery-powered and jets a four-inch flame onto coals; an internal fan stokes the fire. The embers will be ready for burgers in about five minutes. $100 Mom wants her steak well done, Dad prefers his bloody, and the kids like theirs slightly pink? No problem. The iGrill2 lets the chef track the progress of four cuts at once. Temperature probes relay data to a smartphone app over Bluetooth, so you'll know when your food is cooked without having to babysit it. $100 Using a combination of convective, conductive, and radiant heat, the Pizza Oven Box turns a grill into a makeshift wood-fired oven. Place the cooking chamber on the grill surface, and in 15 to…

Hammerhead sharks' oversize fins allow them to maneuver underwater with incredible control. The fish evolved this and other traits over the span of 10 million years, turning them into one of the ocean's most agile hunters. “But today, the rules of the game have changed,” says University of Miami biologist Austin Gallagher. “People are now in the picture.” In a paper published in June, he describes how adaptations that make the sharks so deadly to sea creatures also leave them vulnerable to humans. Hammerheads, like sports cars, are built to accelerate in short, energy-intensive bursts, Gallagher says, which means encounters with fishhooks are often fatal. Once caught, a super-high stress response causes the shark to fight furiously, often until it dies of exhaustion. Between accidental bycatch, recreational fishing, and a…

Starting with the mass-production of penicillin during World War II, antibiotics revolutionized modern medicine. But their effectiveness is rapidly waning. Overuse and misuse in both humans and livestock is spurring the evolution of drug-resistant superbugs, which kill at least 23,000 people in the U.S. each year. Resistance threatens to set back the entire field of medicine—imagine returning to a time when a minor wound could spell death by infection. To prepare for a post-antibiotic era, we tracked down four promising alternatives that target specific pathogens and kill them in novel ways.…

Earthquakes in California, hurricanes in Florida, blizzards in New York, tornadoes in Kansas—Mother Nature has many options for wreaking havoc everywhere in the U.S. A comprehensive risk estimate for every type of natural disaster can help insurance underwriters decide how much to charge for covering structures against damage. But creating one is an enormous endeavor. The world's biggest risk analysis and management company, Risk Management Solutions, has been developing this catastrophe risk map—the most comprehensive of its kind—since the early 1990s. Insurance companies are less concerned about hazards that affect sparsely developed areas. So instead of just calculating where a disaster might strike, analysts compute the likelihood—and likely severity—of property damage at a given location. The result is a single scale that reveals the scope of vulnerability—and most of our…

WHEN KIRA WALKER was born, on June 13, 2013, her parents and doctors knew she might have health issues. Her mother, a recovering heroin addict, had taken methadone to manage her addiction throughout the pregnancy. Kira was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, where she was born, so that doctors could watch for withdrawal symptoms. That's why they happened to notice she had a different and equally serious problem: abnormally low blood sugar. At first, Kira's doctors could control her blood sugar with cortisol, and she was allowed to go home. But at her one-month checkup, her blood sugar was so low that the glucose meter couldn't initially read it. Kira was admitted to nearby Children's Mercy Hospital in…

After 10 years of circuitous travel, Rosetta has begun to edge toward the icy, black core of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In August, it will become the first spacecraft to orbit a comet's nucleus and, shortly after, the first to land a probe on the surface of one. The data it gathers could unlock the history of the solar system, just as the spacecraft's namesake, the Rosetta Stone, was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. “Because comets are frozen most of the time, they provide a fingerprint of what the conditions were like at the time the planets formed,” says Samuel Gulkis, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 1MARCH 2, 2004 Rosetta thunders into space aboard an Ariane 5 rocket launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The main rocket…

Although single-celled, xenophyophores are not microscopic. They can grow to the size of a hand. The unusual organisms have been spotted far underwater in other locations, but the Mariana Trench is the deepest sighting. In the trench's subduction zone, where a tectonic plate plunges into the Earth's mantle, scientists have found large beds of single-celled organisms. They likely live off chemical compounds seeping up from the depths. With no need for sunlight, they may expand scientists' understanding of the requirements for life. Before Cameron dived the Mariana Trench, his team did some shallower tests in the New Britain Trench, located off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Scientists had expected a flat, silty seafloor but found large, lumpy pillow lavas instead. The formations could help explain how the trench was…

Before bows and arrows, language, and even vertical foreheads, some of our ancestors survived by industriously chipping rocks into sharp tools. Today we take metal knives for granted, yet few are made to survive a world without order. There are two ways to make a knife: Heat up a hunk of metal and hammer it out, or cut out a rough shape and file it to a sharp edge. The latter seemed easier, and I already had some leaf-spring steel from my days as a craftsman of crossbows [see “Rebuild,” April 2014]. But the metal proved too stubborn to cut with a hacksaw. I needed a forge. The heat would soften the steel and ready it for shaping. I had only a wimpy workshop blowtorch, which can barely melt solder.…

Next time you have to crunch numbers, fight the urge to grab a calculator. Wire together some linear potentiometers, also known as variable resistors, into a simple math tool. Twist the potentiometers' knobs, measure the resulting voltage or resistance, and calculate the analog way. MATERIALS: INSTRUCTIONS: 2 HRS.Approximate time to build this project Cost: $30 Difficulty: 2 out of 5 hearts For complete instructions, tools, materials, and usage tips, visitpopsci.com/mathbox Two 9-volt batteries Three 1K-ohm potentiometers One 10K-ohm potentiometer Project box with an on/off switch Multimeter Connect the two batteries in series to create a simple power supply. Make an addition circuit by soldering two 1K-ohm linear potentiometers in series. Solder the remaining potentiometers into a voltage divider to create a multiplication circuit. Hook the power supply up to the…

When Popular Science published its February 1923 cover story, underwater cinematography was in its infancy. Less than a decade before, film pioneer J.E. Williamson invented the first device capable of capturing footage below the surface: a steel-and-glass underwater chamber that attached to an accordionlike tube. Adding a more lifelike hue to the industry, Williamson's first aquatic color film, The Uninvited Guest, came out in 1924. Nearly 90 years later, director James Cameron worked with engineers to develop his own innovation: a submersible capable of taking IMAX-quality 3-D images at the deepest point in the ocean. That story begins on page 66. 1916 TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Photosphere: an observation chamber with enough room for a cameraman and his equipment 1946 ÉPAVES (“SHIPWRECKS” Aqua-Lung: a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus…

Richard Guilliatt met Ron Allum in a small workshop in Sydney, where Allum had been toiling away in secret for years. For his article (page 66), Guilliatt spoke extensively with those close to Allum—including his wife, and his collaborator James Cameron—in order to better know the talented but self-effacing engineer who helped send Cameron to the bottom of world's deepest ocean trench. Photographer Sam Kaplan routinely shoots product still lifes, so working with dolls to create the opening image for “Infant Possibilities” (page 50) wasn't too out of the ordinary—except for one thing. As the prop stylist took apart the dolls, their audio recordings would play inadvertently, making the studio sound—and look—more like a horror-movie set. Seven years ago, Melinda Wenner Moyer learned that the first in vitro fertilization baby…

Q: WHERE WOULD YOU EXPLORE WITH A DRONE? 1. A buried Mayan city in Guatemala. Too many snakes to go in person. 2. I would pretend I'm flying over picturesque landscapes. 3. The Grand Canyon, to feel the thrill of swooping over the edge. 4. Abandoned buildings too treacherous (or acrophobia-inducing) to infiltrate on foot. 5. Area 51. 6. Mars. Put a solar-powered drone on a rover, and let's colonize space with tiny robots. 7. Shrink them and gulp them down our throats. The human body is a fascinating place to explore. 8. St. Jetersburg—Derek Jeter's gated property. 9. Quantico. 10. The North Pole, to look for Santa's workshop. 11. I would explore Manhattan. It's perfect to go between buildings.…

When producers at Maxis wanted to make Sims appear less robotic, they filmed employees at a staff party moving between groups, telling jokes, and responding to awkward situations. They used the footage to help build a model of human behavior that—in combination with other new software—led to a more realistic virtual world. One major improvement in The Sims 4 is the characters' ability to navigate multiple interactions at the same time. In previous versions, a Sim would stop one behavior before starting another, but now the characters can flirt while also dancing or running next to each other on treadmills at the gym. Sims now act out cascading emotional responses—meaning their feelings have a true-life trajectory and don't just come and go. Your Sim might do something in the morning,…

1Google is working on an autonomous electric car that needs no steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedal. It will be restricted to speeds of 25 mph or less and have a range of 100 miles. Testing begins this summer. 2In June, Tesla made all of its patents public in order to encourage more innovation in electric-vehicle technology. CEO Elon Musk wrote on the company website that with climate change looming, Tesla and the world would benefit from more electric cars. 3Volkswagen is working on a 10-speed dual-clutch gearbox, which reportedly will be compatible with the company's four-, five-, and six-cylinder engines. More gears allow for a more efficient engine across a broader range of gear ratios. 4Arrow Electronics made a 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray C7 semiautonomous. Sam Schmidt, a quadriplegic,…

In May, David Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast, hinted that in five years, we could see monthly data caps on our Internet use, to the tune of 500 gigabytes. When it comes to streams and downloads, we wondered what that much data actually looks like. 12.7NUMBER OF TIMES YOU CAN WATCH EVERY FREAKS AND GEEKS EPISODE ON NETFLIX* or 910NUMBER OF HOURS YOU CAN STREAM SPOTIFY (WHICH IS LIKE LISTENING TO THE WAR OF THE WORLDS AUDIO BOOK 153 TIMES)* or 37,372NUMBER OF TIMES YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE JUNE IPAD EDITION OF POPULAR SCIENCE *In HD or high-quality mode…

Scientists at Vanderbilt University developed this literal thinking cap to test the notion that a mild current applied to the medial frontal cortex—a brain region that governs adaptive behavior—can speed up learning. “It sounds a bit like snake oil, but electrical-chemical signals are what thoughts are made of,” says neuroscientist Robert Reinhart. “We're using the language of the mind to ask the question, Can we control the controller?” A9-volt battery: Generates a weak 1.5-milliampere current BRegulator: Allows researchers to control the electrical juice CNylon cap: Houses electrodes that measure electrical activity in the brain DAnode: Directs current through the skull to the medial frontal cortex of the brain ECathode: Terminates electrical current in the cheek…

When it comes to thunderheads, lightning is the great equalizer. Essentially a giant spark, lightning relieves the charge differentials that build up in storm systems. But it's also one of the greatest mysteries in atmospheric science. Recently, scientists have started to explore lightning's lesser-known siblings, which appear in ash plumes, labs, and even on other planets. A typical lightning bolt carries 100 million volts—compare that to the 110 volts in an average electrical outlet. Yet more than a century's worth of data shows that only 30 percent of lightning strikes are fatal. A charge can spark across skin like electricity across a resistor, causing severe burns but sparing internal organs. Some lightning can't be seen. Gamma rays burst from thunderheads without giving off heat or light, but their radiation is…

* AND 5 REASONS TO FEAR THEM We know what you're thinking: love drones? Those ominous, free-floating, sometimes unseen killers that have walked our nation out onto some perilously thin ice, geopolitically and ethically? Even the word itself is loaded. No one can agree on what a drone is, exactly, or whether they should be referred to as drones at all. Turns out we don't just think about drones. We have feelings about drones. But yes, there is plenty to love beyond the headlines about the Middle East. Once the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) establishes airspace rules, which is likely to happen next year, the drone industry could fuel a decade-long, $82-billion economic boom, according to a study done by the industry's leading trade group. Already, one analyst estimates the…

Eliana Lewis was born on New Year's Eve 2013, and she had problems almost immediately: fluctuating blood sugar, and seizures every few minutes. When drugs didn't help, doctors took blood samples from both Eliana and her parents and sent them to the hospital's lab. Technicians isolated DNA from the blood, copied it millions of times, and used ultrasound to chop it into easy-to-read pieces. They then loaded a chip containing the DNA samples into Illumina's HiSeq 2500 sequencer, which reads all the fragments in 26 hours. A supercomputer took that information and reordered it by aligning the genetic fragments with those in a reference genome. Then the computer searched for differences among the three samples and the reference; there can be five million, and most are probably harmless. Bioinformatics software…

featuring DANIEL ABRAHAMco-author of the new Cibola Burn, part of The Expanse series ELIZABETH BEARauthor of the novel One-Eyed Jack, due out in July MARY ROBINETTE KOWALauthor of the Glamourist Histories series and winner of a Hugo Award ANN LECKIEwinner of a 2014 Nebula Award for her book Ancillary Justice SCOTT LYNCHnominee for a World Fantasy Award and a Locus Award SEANAN MCGUIREauthor of the best-selling novel Sparrow Hill Road JOHN SCALZIauthor of Redshirts, which won a Hugo Award in 2013 KARL SCHROEDERauthor of the novel Lockstep, released in March MELINDA SNODGRASSauthor of the Edge series, whose latest installment is due out in 2015 IAN TREGILLISauthor of the novel The Mechanical, due out in November IAN TREGILLIS on TRANSPORTATION “IN THE OLD DAYS,” she said, “we used hydrogen. The lightest…

Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht has taken fashion to a shocking new level: She recently donned a custom-built metallic dress and zapped herself with nearly half a million volts of electricity. The stunt came about when she met ArcAttack, a band that makes music with giant Tesla coils. Together they decided to craft a shockproof costume for an upcoming show. Wipprecht built a spiked helmet and plate-metal dress and secured them over a head-to-toe suit of chain mail. For extra flair, she hacked toy plasma balls into shoulder ornaments. “Normally I work with fashion models,” Wipprecht says. “But this time, nobody else wanted to wear it.” When she walked between ArcAttack's Tesla coils at Maker Faire this May, Wipprecht remained unscathed. Her garment safely conducted the coils' electrical bursts around her…

Fran Blanche's workshop is more than a place to unwind. It's home. “I put a bed in my office,” she says. Her fashion business is downstairs; upstairs is a music studio and a laboratory with 30 years' worth of tools. A private collector recently asked Blanche to study part of his Apollo-era Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC), which NASA designed to fly a Saturn V rocket. “All modern boards would come to emulate it,” Blanche says. “Trouble is, there's no information about how it was constructed.” 1TEKTRONIX 564B OSCILLOSCOPE Blanche owns two, and they help her examine DC- and audio-frequency signals. 2ARTICULATED DENTAL-EXAM LAMP Designed in the 1940s, the lamp has a tightly focused beam that gives Blanche a clear view of a project from any angle. 3HOMEMADE ADJUSTABLE DC-POWER…

SHORT ANSWER It's up for debate. AIf humans can indeed smell fear they wouldn't be unusual in the animal kingdom. Sea anemones, earthworms, minnows, fruit flies, rats, mice, and deer, among others, have all been shown to signal unease through odor. Some responses are even more overt. For example, the offspring of one bird species vomits up a pungent, orange liquid when frightened by a predator; if a parent catches a whiff, it becomes warier in the nest. From an evolutionary perspective, a silent signal makes sense. “If you find yourself in a fearful situation, you might want your cohorts to know about it, but without calling attention to yourself by screaming or jumping around,” says Charles J. Wysocki, of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. The same could…