Popular Scienceの December 2013 の目次

WHEN I'M ASKED what the standards are for our annual Best of What's New Awards, I tend to rely on a catchphrase: “It should be revolutionary, not evolutionary.” But this year, I'm having to rethink that. Every 12 months, as we assemble the 100 greatest innovations of the year, revealing patterns emerge. We created the Green category several years ago to honor the extraordinary leaps in environmentally responsible design, a reflection of the burgeoning efforts to build sustainability into everything from clothes-dyeing to tree-raising. This year, we considered phasing out the category, because we're almost at the point where all great innovations take the environment into account (almost, but not quite—we're keeping Green separate for the moment). Last year, we began to honor software in its own category, because for…

Two hundred fifty million people worldwide require treatment for schistosomiasis, also known as bilharzia, a disease that ravages internal organs. Schistosomiasis is caused by parasitic flatworms that cycle between two hosts: freshwater snails and humans. Seeking ways to stop the transmission, biologists at the university of Illinois are studying the worm's reproduction. This summer, they dyed and sectioned snail muscle tissue. Inside, they saw flatworm stem cells, which develop into thousands of larvae about 300 micrometers long. This image is color-coded to show relative depth; closer objects glow orange and more distant objects, green. Now, the scientists are studying how the stem cells develop, which could lead to ways to halt the parasite's growth.…

Baleen whales have no need for Q-tips. Water blocks off the ear canal, which has a unique anatomy, so over time wax builds up into what researchers call an earplug. Previously, scientists counted the layers of wax, like counting tree rings, to help determine a whale's age, but a team at Baylor University in Texas recently discovered that the gunk contains even more information. Because fluctuations in hormones and chemical exposures are documented in the earwax, it can provide a chronological archive of a deceased whale's life. And while blubber samples can yield one data point on exposure, earwax can reveal when that exposure happened—details that weren't available before now. Museums have hundreds of earplugs from the baleen whale group, which contains 14 species. So far, the Baylor team has…

Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois needed a superconducting magnet to study muons, fleeting subatomic particles. Thirty million dollars for a new experimental setup was out of the question, but they found a used one at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. If Fermi scientists could move it, they could have it. The magnet, however, couldn't be dismantled. And it had to be shipped with the utmost care because a twist of even a couple of millimeters could irreparably damage its internal wiring. The magnet wouldn't fit through tollbooths, so an all-highway route wouldn't work. And if it fell from a helicopter through power lines, it could cause a blackout. Waterways were the only option. The journey began in June: few hurricanes, no frozen rivers. Width: 50 feet…

Forty-one years ago, Magnavox introduced the first cartridge-based console, the Odyssey. Seven generations later, the boxes have become fixtures in our entertainment centers. What's not to love? Consoles represent the pinnacle of electronic engineering (the PlayStation 4's graphics processor, for example, can perform 1.8 trillion operations per second). Yet despite that, it's been a rough couple of years for console gaming. Sales and rentals of disc-based games, like the ones that are core to the Xbox and PlayStation ecosystems, dropped by 21 percent last year. The console won't be far behind. The issue isn't that gamers have suddenly stopped playing; they're just getting their games in different ways. Virtual shops, such as Steam, have made it easy to download titles without relying on brick-and-mortar stores. (Digital downloads spiked 16 percent…

The Haswell is the most efficient and powerful computer chip in the world: It gives laptops the performance of a PC with the battery life of a smartphone. Intel engineers reduced energy-wasting data redundancies between the processor and the graphics processing unit. They also improved low-power-state tasks, such as streaming music, among other tweaks. The result is an up to 50 percent increase in battery life over the previous generation—the largest gain in Intel's history.…

Trans-Arctic voyages currently depend on ice-breaking vessels like the Baltika [facing page] to clear a path for cargo ships. It won't be long, though, before those ships travel unescorted during the summer, which scientists say may be routinely ice-free as early as 2020. The area holds vast economic potential: untapped oil reservoirs, rich mineral deposits, and faster and cheaper trading routes. Extracting resources will require new engineering solutions. In August, the oil company Shell, for example, received approval for a unique Arctic capping mechanism to contain spilled oil. The extraction will also require new regulations, which the federal government plans to have in place by the end of the year. As exploration picks up, here's what's at stake: 90 billion Estimated barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil north of the Arctic…

Before the i3, cars with carbon-fiber chassis cost between $250,000 and $2 million. BMW has sped up its injection-molding process, so factories turn out carbon-fiber parts in minutes, rather than in hours or days. As a result, the all-electric i3 costs just $42,275. With its carbon-fiber passenger cell, the i3 weighs about 600 pounds less than the all-electric Nissan Leaf—just 2,700 pounds, including a 450-pound battery that propels the hatchback up to 125 miles on a charge. An optional 650cc gas engine and 2.4-gallon gas tank add another 160 miles of driving range. Range 125 miles Weight 2,700 pounds Price $42,475…

Developed by MIT students, Genshock is the first active suspension system that generates energy from bumps in the road. Each shock absorber houses a compact electric motor, electronic control unit, and electrohydraulic gear pump. When a car drives over a rough surface, the moving shock absorbers generate electricity that helps power the car's electrical systems. Genshock, which is still just a prototype, has another advantage: It can lift individual wheels off the ground, allowing for jack-less tire changes. Price not set…

The MiniMAX is the world's smallest, most portable x-ray machine. Unlike its predecessors, which are a couple of feet wide and quite heavy, MiniMAX weighs five pounds. It can be whisked to accidents, crime scenes, battlefields, airports, sidelines, and any other place that could benefit from on-the-spot x-ray vision. Inside, an x-ray source about the size of a can of soda generates a beam as powerful as stationary machines, and rather than rely on a bulky transformer, it draws power from a 9-volt battery. The secret to the x-ray source is a blend of special polymers that build up huge amounts of static electricity when brought together and discharge it when the surfaces separate. This year, Los Alamos National Laboratory teamed with Leica, x-ray company Tribogenics, and two others to…

Autofocus on most consumer D-SLRs isn't quick enough to keep up with moving subjects. Canon engineers combined the autofocus and image sensors on the EOS 70D to shorten focus time. Each of the 20-million-plus pixels has two photodiodes—typically there's only one—each of which records light. The design allows the sensor to quickly determine how the lens needs to adjust to match up the diodes' signals, which snaps the subject into focus. $1,199 (body only) You can ask your smartphones to do a lot of things—remind you to pick up the dry cleaning, check for traffic on your commute home. But with the Moto X, you don't have to ask. The handset uses your preferences and Google Now to learn your patterns and cater to them. It may mute notifications when…

By federal mandate, public schools in the U.S. must administer standardized tests digitally in the 2014–15 school year. But less than 50 percent of those schools have the hardware necessary to do so, and the cost of purchasing and maintaining even 25 new PCs over their five-year life span is more than 870,000. New York start-up Neverware has developed software that could allow computers to last indefinitely. The setup is fairly simple. Neverware connects a server, called a Juicebox, to the school's network. The server then runs a separate instance of Windows for any workstation on the network. Because the operating system and applications run on the server, a computer with as little as 256 MB of RAM and a 10-year-old chipset will perform like new. Maintenance takes less time…

Foldable kayaks are like jigsaw puzzles: They take a long time to assemble and provide lasting frustration. The Oru is the first folding performance kayak that can be assembled in less than five minutes. Users simply bend the plastic shell in an easy-to-follow pattern; the boat's two seams fold in on themselves and lock by hand. There are no bolts or screws—so none to lose—and the kayak fits back into a card-table-size case at day's end. Length 12 feet Weight 26 pounds Size when folded 33 by 29 by 13 inches Price $1,095…

The chicken egg is a culinary powerhouse. In one tidy package, it contains more than 20 essential functions for cooking, such as the ability to bind and leaven foods and give them a satisfying mouthfeel. But the egg has a downside. Industrial chicken farming is tremendously energy intensive and polluting, and poultry can spread avian flu. Hampton Creek Foods has engineered a safer, cleaner alternative: the plant-based egg. The company's formula of plant compounds accurately reproduces egg-like qualities in baked goods at a cost that's 18 percent cheaper for food manufacturers. By appealing to industry's bottom line and not its environmental ethic, Hampton Creek could quickly make food production more sustainable. Vegans will benefit from the quest to replace eggs with plants too. (They can buy the company's first consumer…

By taking advantage of an immutable force, the GravityLight may be the most reliable electric light source of all. A person simply lifts a 22-pound bag of ballast up to the base of the device; the weight falls over a period of 30 minutes, pulling a strap that spins gears and drives a motor, which continuously powers an LED. Peripheral LEDs can be attached to focus light on certain spots. DeciWatt is field-testing units to replace kerosene lamps in developing countries and plans to sell them there for $10 next year.…

TIME 1 year COST $2,000 Hand tools weren't cutting it for high-quality robots, so the Beattys built a computer-guided milling machine. A water-cooled spindle turns at 24,000 rpm, while a three-axis gantry system moves the spindle to carve out metal, plastic, and other materials. TIME 2 weeks COST $200 When Camille and Genevieve started tapping out messages in Morse code, their dad came up with a quieter idea: a 21st-century telegraph. They wired two antique telegraph keys to an Arduino Nano microcontroller, a UHF radio, and a speaker. The devices can communicate up to a mile away.…

Four-year-old Ewan Gibson loves toy cars. His dad, Grant, a Scottish Web developer, prefers electronics. Hoping to find common ground—and inspired by Apple's new finger-scanning iPhone—Grant built a biométric lockbox for his son's cars. He installed a sensor that scans fingers in the lid of the toy box. The data is sent to an Arduino microcontroller, which, when it recognizes one of Ewan's prints, unlocks the lid. Although Ewan is more interested in the cars than the box, it does fascinate him: As he says, his “fingers are magic.” TIME 3 days COST $100…

SHORT ANSWER Despite claims to the contrary, the storage media in wide use today—CD-ROMS, spinning hard drives, flash memory, etc.—aren't very durable. “You're talking years, not decades,” says Howard Besser, a professor and archivist at New York University who was named a pioneer of digital preservation by the Library of Congress. “A CD-ROM was originally supposed to last 100 years, but many fail in 10.” Old-fashioned paper has done very well by comparison. Until people made a habit of adding acidic chemicals to their paper in the 19th century, books could last five hundred years or more. And while paper has its vulnerabilities—to fire and water, for example—so do more newfangled technologies. A hard disk, for instance, may suffer from a loss of mobility. “You've got to have it spinning…

When it comes to automotive preferences, speak for yourself. More than a few of us millennials love cars and love driving. I would advise automakers not to forget about us. Alfred, N.Y. Dave Mosher responds: Since my essay went to press, an insurance group asked Americans for their opinions on driverless cars. Only 19 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 18 and 34 said they'd buy one, putting me in the minority. But 19 percent of the about 90 million Americans in that age bracket equates to 17 million potential buyers. Read an updated look at the subject at popsci.com/millennialcars.…

ROADSIDE BOMBS, childhood abuse, car accidents—they form memories that can shape (and damage) us for a lifetime. Now, a handful of studies have shown that we're on the verge of erasing and even rewriting memories. The hope is that this research will lead to medical treatments, especially for addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Researchers have known for decades that memories are unreliable. They're particularly adjustable when actively recalled because at that point they're pulled out of a stable molecular state. Last spring, scientists published a study performed at the University of Washington in which adult volunteers completed a survey about their eating and drinking habits before age 16. A week later, they were given personalized analyses of their answers that stated—falsely—that they had gotten sick from rum or vodka…

LAST SUMMER, the National Institutes of Health announced that it's phasing out experiments on chimpanzees. All but 50 of its 451 chimps will go to sanctuaries, and it won't breed the remainder. The change is based on its 2011 study that determined that advancements have rendered human trials, computer-based research, and genetically modified mice more scientifically useful than chimps. The U.S. is late to this. Australia, Japan, and the E.U. have already banned or limited experiments on great apes in medical research. But the science community should take it further. We should work to end all animal testing for good. It's not just a moral question. Ethics aside, there are plenty of scientific reasons to push away from animal testing. The most important is that animal-based methods are being equaled…

The Argus II does something once thought impossible—it gives sight to the blind. The device is the first FDA-approved artificial retina. It consists of a miniature video camera mounted on a pair of glasses that sends footage to a microprocessor worn on a person's belt. The processor converts the visual data to electronic signals, which are transmitted wirelessly to a 60-pixel electrode array implanted in the back of the eye. The optic nerve picks up these signals and sends them to the brain, where they are interpreted as rudimentary gray-scale images. So far, the Argus has enough resolution for people to see the lines of a crosswalk, find objects, and read letters a couple of centimeters tall. The device is currently approved for patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a group of…

Gone are the days of dropping screwdriver bits into bottomless household voids. The SD SemiAutomatic is an entirely new take on the cordless driver. Engineers developed a magnetic mechanism that holds an array of bits at the ready, allowing users to swap from Phillips to flathead to hex—and back—in seconds. Pulling the top of the driver backward reveals a six-chamber cylinder; yanking back farther engages a gear that rotates the cylinder counterclockwise and readies the next bit for duty. At 1.3 pounds and the size of a hotglue gun, the driver fits comfortably in a hand and tucks neatly into a kitchen drawer. The SemiAutomatic comes with two cylinders loaded with 12 bits, including one for predrilling—even though the tool's 27 pound-feet of torque can easily bore screws into wood…

When a national lab that supports research into nuclear weapons and national security decides that it's not happy with its download speeds, it doesn't call Xfinity to complain. It builds the largest fiber-optic LAN on the planet, connecting 265 buildings and 13,000 network ports at speeds that rival the world's best. The breakthrough isn't the system; it's the scale. Researchers at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility, way out on a remote site at the edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico, can now push and pull data or movie trailers faster than almost anyone on Earth. Sandia replaced its conventional four-inch copper cable with a half-inch fiber-optic one that's capable of transferring voice, computer, and security data along a single line. The network now tops 10 gigabytes per second—blazing fast, especially…

Autonomous cars have many hurdles to clear before reaching consumers, but they're coming. Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have pledged to bring self-driving cars to showrooms by 2020. This year, Nissan's Infiniti Q50 luxury sedan debuted one of the biggest steps yet toward that goal: the first consumer steer-by-wire system. Direct adaptive steering bypasses the mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels that meet the road. Sensors measure how a driver turns the wheel and send that data through an electronic controller to actuators, which, in turn, pivot the steering rack. (For safety, two backup controllers provide redundancy.) Because there's no physical link between the road and the steering wheel, drivers don't feel jarring bumps or vibrations, but the system does electrically simulate natural steering resistance. Computers vary steering ratio…

With three cylinders and less than one liter of displacement, Ford's EcoBoost is smaller than many motorcycle engines. Yet it still produces 123 horsepower and 148 pound-feet of torque. Direct injection, variable-valve timing, and a turbocharger that spins at a lofty 248,000 rpm allow higher engine pressures and more complete combustion, which squeezes more energy from each drop of fuel. As a result, the new EcoBoost is even more powerful than the larger engine it's replacing: the 1.6-liter four-cylinder in the Ford Fiesta hatchback. Fuel consumption should improve to 41 mpg or more on the highway. $17,500 (est.)…

Aerospace innovations tend to be notable for a terrestrial accomplishment. Perhaps it's a simple benchmark like speed (see: X-51 Waverider). Or perhaps it's the fulfillment of a maniacal desire to be personally rid of gravity (see: Martin P12 Jetpack). But Gaia meets an almost spiritual standard: It was built to crack open the universe. Gaia is a launchable observatory, a two-ton satellite mounted with the largest digital camera ever to reach space. Its imaging system, which includes that billion-pixel camera and two telescopes, is so powerful it will do much more than chart the position of a billion stars—it will map where they've been and where they're going. At press time, the European Space Agency was scheduled to launch Gaia on November 20 from aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in…

First responders can toss the baseball-size Explorer into a building or enclosed space for a quick snapshot of any hazards. Sporting six cameras with wide-angle lenses, it can take 360-degree panoramic images of its surroundings and send them to a cellphone or tablet in less than three seconds. Bounce Imaging strove to make the Explorer affordable, so it built the device using off-the-shelf parts. Future iterations could have swappable sensors to detect carbon monoxide, radiation, or hydrogen cyanide. Less than $1,000…

Amid a flurry of text and e-mail alerts, designers tend to forget something critical about smartwatches: They still need to show the time. LCDs wash out in the sunlight, and e-ink is blank in the dark. The Toq's Mirasol display is the only full-color one that's always visible. Each pixel is a tiny glass pane; as charge moves through the screen, the pane moves to reflect different ambient light wavelengths—red, blue, or green—to the viewer. An LED provides the necessary light when it's dark. Price not set…

For years Google has been the biggest name in mapping, so its purchase of Waze, another mapping company, bears notice. Waze builds its maps in a new way. Instead of relying on a small fleet of cars to plot roads, Waze collects driving data from its 50 million users. The app interprets traffic status based on how quickly users are moving and aggregates user-submitted reports of accidents, speed traps, and inaccurate maps. Google has already begun integrating Waze traffic data into its maps. Free…

Becoming a skilled marksman can take years. Or hunters could just use a TrackingPoint precision-guided rifle. Once a user gets a bead on a target, the rifle's built-in ballistics computer combines readings from a laser range finder, three gyroscopes and accelerometers, and temperature and air pressure sensors to fine-tune the shot. The gun has a range of up to 1,000 yards and comes with built in Wi-Fi and in-scope video capture, so hunters can stream their exploits to a tablet or phone. From $22,500…

With its so-called brilliant turbine, GE has cleared two of wind power's biggest hurdles: energy storage and predictable power. An integrated battery enables the 2,500-kilowatt turbine to store extra electricity during strong gusts, smoothing the supply sent to the grid. Advanced software enables a turbine to share wind data with other turbines to maximize production on the farm. GE will install the first three units at the Goldthwaite Wind Project facility in Texas early next year.…

We review all our projects before publishing them, but ultimately your safety is your responsibility. Always wear protective gear, take proper safety precautions, and follow all laws and regulations. When Camille Beatty was 10 years old, she dismantled a TV remote and handed the parts to her surprised father, Robert. Next came a string of questions about the circuitry. “I got to a point in my life where electronics seemed magical, but I knew they weren't,” says Camille, now 13. “So I started opening some up. I wanted to know what was inside and how they worked.” Robert hadn't a clue, so he, Camille, and his other daughter, Genevieve, now 11, searched the Web to find out. The family used their newfound knowledge to build their first robot only weeks…

When the hackerspace NYC Resistor hosted a “digital archaeology” interactive show last spring, electrical engineer Chris Fenton built a throwback computer using modern technology. Fenton works with supercomputers all day but wanted to slow things down, so he designed the Turbo Entabulator. The 3-D-printed hand-cranked calculator relies on punch cards, string, and rubber bands to execute functions. One minute of turning produces part of the Fibonacci sequence, a numerical pattern that appears in nature. The plastic machine may be inefficient, but it's a computer nonetheless and uses parts analogous to those in modern devices. TIME 50 hours COST $100 A/ SOFTWARE: A drum of four punch cards works like a program. Three of the cards engage a set of levers that, in turn, pull strings that increase or decrease the…

Skip the tangled strings of holiday lights this year and go wireless using a few copper-coated cents. U.S. pennies minted since 1982 conceal a zinc core. If exposed to acid, the zinc dissolves and frees electrons for use in a circuit. The battery will run until the liquid dries up or the chemical reaction dies. DIY enthusiast Grant Thompson recently made a 10-penny battery that powered a small light for nearly two weeks. See how far you can stretch your money. TIME 20 minutes COST About $5 DIFFICULTY 1 lemon One 3mm LED 150-grit aluminum oxide sandpaper Electrical tape Duct tape 5 to 10 pennies Cardboard Fold a piece of duct tape into a sticky square, attach it to a table, and affix a penny. Sand one side until the…

With help from scientists National Committee for the International Geophysical Year, POPULAR SCIENCE profiled probable designs for the first satellites and featured one on the January 1956 cover. The scientists, who worked on the satellite program, hypothesized that the orbiters would fit inside the nose of a rocket and be spherically shaped for data consistency and constructed from lightweight plastic. One year later, the first satellite—the Soviet Union's Sputnik—launched. Two years after that, spacecraft broke free of Earth's orbit to explore the solar system and began to provide services such as tracking hurricanes and photographing distant galaxies. Now, the European Space Agency has built the most powerful space-based imager yet. Turn to page 52 to read about how Gaia will 3-D-map the Milky Way. October 1957: Sputnik 1 becomes the…

This fall, faced with bad behavior in our comment sections and little means to moderate it, we decided to disable reader comments on most stories. As we hoped, people turned to social media and email to respond instead. Here's some of the feedback we received. There must be a better solution than shooting the exchange of ideas in the head just to avoid letting the tools of the Internet do what they do. Would you send your kid to school with a bag over his head to protect him from bullies? Joel Sassonevia Facebook Just because everyone has a voice on the Internet doesn't necessarily mean they should. I have no problem with the decision. David Swaldovia Facebook Interaction with the readers is important. This isn't the best solution. Make…

If U.S. Special Forces agents need to scale a wall, traverse a canal, or cross between rooftops, they typically use an everyday 40-pound aluminum ladder. That means one of them has to carry it in addition to the standard 150 pounds of gear and body armor. It's heavy and requires both hands—hands that may have to fire a gun at any moment. There has to be a better way. The BAMBI (Break-Apart Mobile Bridging and Infiltration) device is a modular bridge that weighs 27 pounds and can be strapped to a backpack. The prototype, created by engineering students at Utah State University, has six sections composed of carbon-fiber tubes and a foam platform. Together, they create a 22-foot-long structure that can hold 350 pounds. A sandy finish provides enough traction…

“Our Titan Arm exoskeleton uses a motorized elbow joint to increase someone's weight-lifting capacity by 40 pounds. When people see it, they always jump to thinking about Iron Man, but the idea is to give injured patients strength and to assist with their physical therapy. The 18-pound suit goes on like a backpack. A repurposed scuba backplate holds the electronics and motor. Your arm straps into aluminum and 3-D-printed plastic pieces that run from your shoulder to wrist. The design distributes the lifted weight to your back and promotes good form. We're looking into using brainwaves or muscle sensors to control the suit, but for now, Titan has a wired joystick that a nurse or patient could operate. A battery-powered motor uses a cable transmission to pull and push the…

Building a mobile device that can satisfy a hardcore gamer is a seemingly insurmountable task. Screens are too small, graphics processors too underpowered, touchscreen controls too clunky. But the Shield is the first mobile console that anyone can get behind. Nvidia engineers built the clamshell device around the Tegra 4 mobile system-on-a-chip, which features a 72-core GPU and a quad-core CPU that tops out at 1.9 gigahertz. The architecture is so robust that the Shield can render detailed graphics—smoke, shadows, textures—either on its five-inch 720p screen or on any size HDTV over HDMI. The device also has one of the largest game catalogs of any console. It can play any of the tens of thousands of games in the Google Play store, about 100 of which are optimized for the…

At least 3.3 million people in the United States work remotely. But no number of phone calls, e-mails, or videoconferences with colleagues will change the fact that the person just isn't there. A handful of companies are now attempting to fill that physical void with telepresence robots, but many of them are awkward—and creepy—humanoid devices that make co-workers focus more on the bot than the person driving it. The Beam is a remote presence device that proves a robot could become a natural part of the workplace. At five foot two, it's the proper height for face-to-face interaction, and its 17-inch LCD shows the user in life size. Noise-canceling microphones and a speaker system make conversation easy on both ends. Meanwhile, the motor is nearly silent, so the Beam doesn't…

Seismic tests usually involve either a scale simulation of an earthquake or a computer-generated one, neither of which can fully replicate the kind of shaking a real tremor dishes out. When engineers want to test a new joint, a connector, or a foundation piling against the violence of seismic activity, they can now plop the real thing onto UC San Diego's Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table. The biggest in the country, it can subject a 400-ton payload to 1.2 Gs, the high end of recorded seismic movement.…

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class combines some of the most significant advances in safety and autonomy on the market today. A 360-degree sensing system integrates onboard technology—including cameras, radar, sonar, stability controls, throttle, and steering-so that the car can automatically negotiate traffic and curving highways at speeds of up to 124 mph. A night-vision system can spot animals on the road from up to 500 feet away. And the world's first camera-based suspension braces for bumps before they arrive. $93,825…

The Mazda6 sedan features two fuel-saving firsts. The i-ELoop captures braking energy in a capacitor, which charges and discharges faster than a battery and is lighter, cheaper, and longer lasting. The capacitor powers the car's electrical components, boosting the gas engine's efficiency to a best-in-class 40mpg highway. The optional Skyactiv-D engine is the first modern clean diesel in a Japanese car. With diesel, the Mazda6 should top 45 mpg in real-world driving. $27,000 (est.)…

More than 100 million objects orbit our planet, experts estimate, but only 1,134 of them are operational satellites. The rest is space junk: moribund satellites, discarded rockets, and millions of smaller pieces of debris, the result of in-orbit collisions. The Joint Space Operations Center—part of U.S. Strategic Command—tracks about 17,000 of the largest objects, including active satellites. Until now, little has been done to mitigate the space-junk problem, but two proposed missions could change that. DARPA's Phoenix program [page 54] would launch incomplete nanosatellites into space that could make themselves whole by harvesting working pieces from retired satellites. And CleanSpace One, a Swiss satellite due to launch in 2018, would clear low Earth orbit by directing debris into the atmosphere to burn up. LOW EARTH ORBIT Most space activity happens…

When the Google Glass concept debuted in June 2012, it became one of the most anticipated gadget launches ever—rivaling the first iPhone. For all intents and purposes, Project Glass, as it was then called, promised Terminator vision, a hovering overlay of information as crisp as a 25-inch HDTV. Impossible as it sounds, the product, which came out as a developer version in April, goes beyond that pledge: It's like wearing a piece of the future. Glass is, in essence, a consumer head-up display. Incoming calls, messages, and calendar alerts pop up just above eye level. It also has a videocamera, turn-by-turn navigation, voice search, Google Now, and partner apps, including Twitter, Facebook, and The New York Times. With such a basic set of features, it would be easy to write…

When people describe the Internet of Things, they're referring to a network of Webenabled devices that speak to one another. In the home, that could mean a phone that talks to a garage-door opener or a thermostat that talks to motion detectors. While these smart devices might represent someone's preferences (I want my lights to glow blue), they don't necessarily represent needs (I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm drunk). For a heater to know we're cold or a vending machine to know that we need an apple and not a bag of Funyuns, those devices need to talk directly to us. And for that to happen, we'll need a wearable network of gadgets, an Internet of You. Much of the groundwork is in place already. Inexpensive health and fitness monitors are…

Since the dawn of the mechanical age, there's been a tension between standardization, which keeps costs low, and customization, which offers better quality at a higher price. For the last 150 years, uniformity has, by and large, prevailed. But now, the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, and New Balance's 3-D-Printed Track Spikes epitomize that shift. New Balance designs and fabricates each pair of shoes to meet the needs of its elite athletes. The company's research lab collects each athlete's biomechanical data, such as peak force and foot strike, and pairs it with feedback from the athletes themselves to create custom models of spike plates (the part of the sole that has spikes). A 3-D printer then builds the spike plates layer by layer in plastic. While the shoes…

The Halo 28 JetForce pack is shoulder-mounted peace of mind. It's the only avalanche pack that can come to the rescue up to four times on a single charge. Once triggered, a fan inflates a large puncture-resistant balloon, increasing the size of a hiker or skier dramatically. The larger an object, the greater the chance it will rise to the top of a slide. Because hikers or skiers can deflate and repack the balloon, they won't hesitate to activate it, which makes for safer behavior.…

The TidGen Power System takes advantage of one of nature's most consistent energy sources: the tide. It sits on the floor of a bay or deep river, where water rotates foils that drive a permanent magnet generator, sending roughly 150 kilowatts of electricity to shore. The first TidGen unit, installed off the coast of Maine last year, was the first ocean-energy project of any kind to connect to the U.S. grid. An environmental assessment released in March showed no adverse impact to the marine ecosystem.…

A rechargeable 7.4V lithium-ion battery with an electric power capacity of 10,000 mAh stores enough energy for a full day of nonstop roving—and then some. The solar panels are real but don't function well indoors. A rocker-bogie suspension enables the rover's wheels to clear obstacles taller than a foot. Servomotors allow each wheel to move independently and turn the robot 360 degrees in place. A UHF radio chip inside the rover lets museum visitors steer it wirelessly. Staff can also drive the robot using a radio remote control that Camille (left) and Genevieve (right) once built for a BB-shooting tank bot.…

This summer, we asked readers to submit their best project ideas for a shot at crowdfunding through RocketHub.com. Hundreds vied for the chance to make their dreams a reality, and by the end of the POPULAR SCIENCE #CrowdGrant Challenge, two dozen finalists had raised a total of more than $50,000. Here are a few of our favorite projects. Self-driving trikes EARNED $2,724 GOAL $3,500 77.8% FUNDED A small team of engineers in Washington state has created an autonomous tricycle called Elcano. By year's end, they hope to make kits for hobbyists to build their own road-worthy self-driving trikes. Student experiments flown to 100,000 feet Pilot Paul Kaup enjoyed mentoring fifth-grade students but felt he could do more to stoke their interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. “I realized space…

SHORT ANSWER If you're a mammal, no. LONG ANSWER Virgin birth, known to scientists as parthenogenesis, appears to be rather common in the animal kingdom. Many insects and other invertebrates are capable of switching between sexual and clonal reproduction. Among the vertebrates, virgin births have been documented in at least 80 taxonomic groups, including fish, amphibians, and reptiles. But humans and our fellow mammals provide a notable exception. So far as anyone can say—and there are a few gaps in the data, notably the platypus—no mammalian species is capable of giving birth without a father. So what stands in the way? First, a mammal's egg cell usually won't divide until it receives a signal from the sperm. Second, most mammalian eggs have only half the number of chromosomes necessary for…