Inhoudsopgave van July 2014 - Popular Science

Feed 06 From the Editor 08 Peer Review 10 A Bit About Us Now 13 A speaker that plays what you want to hear 17 10 things we love this month 18 Glassware for better-tasting beer 20 Wearable tech in disguise 22 The quietest fan 24 How Porsche is reinventing the sports car 26 A smart bike suspension 29 Xbox attacks cyberbullies Next 31 Solar flares that affect tech 32 An implant to help the paralyzed stand 34 The U.S. wind energy landscape 35 Inside Google's Project Loon 36 A drone to change warfare 39 How to kill garlic breath 40 Naming a piece of extraterrestrial property Manual 69 A robot that fish can drive 70 A DIY space suit for suborbital launches 72 Welding with car batteries 73 A…

In her column, Erin Biba equated wildfires with floods and hurricanes and suggested higher homeowner insurance premiums [Next, May 2014]. That is too simplistic a solution for me, a wildland firefighter. Wildfire environments are a complex mix of fuels and terrain. Ranking homes by geographic zone is too general and could equate a safe house in a clearing with a vulnerable one in thick forest, creating a disincentive for proper siting and other protective measures. John Walker Coaldale, Colo.…

Streaming services are good at playing songs we're apt to like, but they lack a certain contextual awareness. For example, they can't tell that a listener may not want Black Sabbath at breakfast or Sinatra while working out. But the Aether Cone can. The Wi-Fi—connected speaker taps streaming accounts, podcasts, and personal libraries, and uses machine learning to create playlists based on habits. Initially, the listener tells the Cone what to play, verbally or through an app. Then onboard software tracks behavior—location, time, volume—and builds a contextual map, which allows it to deliver the perfect track in any situation.…

For all their breezy comfort, desk fans make quite a racket, but not the Dyson Cool AMO6. The newest in the company's line of bladeless fans, the AMO6 is scarcely louder than a quiet chat. Designers cut the noise in three ways. First, they balanced the motor so that it won't wobble when it spins, eliminating vibration. Then they added a cavity outside the motor that traps any whistling from the impeller fan. Finally, they widened the bottom of the loop to let air flow more easily, minimizing noisy turbulence. Perhaps now you can hear yourself think. Decibel range 40dB–56dB Weight 4.0 pounds Diameter 10 inches Price $299…

1Men really do drool over hot cars, at least when women are involved. A study at Northwestern University found that men who were shown pictures of attractive women followed by images of sports cars salivated more. 2Too much carbon-dioxide can cause drowsiness, so engineers at Hyundai placed a CO2 sensor in the 2015 Genesis. When the level of CO2 exceeds 2,000 parts per million, the sensor triggers an infusion of fresh air into the cabin. 3A study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy has shown that the production of biofuels from corn waste, such as stalks, releases 7 percent more greenhouse gases than gasoline emissions-too high for it to qualify as a renewable fuel source. 4A new feature in the 2015 GMC Canyon will make it safer for children…

In March, a new blog called the Vancouver Taddler popped up on Tumblr. Reportedly inspired by TV's Gossip Girl, it was billed as a tool for teens to exact revenge on one another. The blogger posted pictures of teens defaced with scribbled genitals, gossip about drug use and sexual exploits, and even private text messages. Within a week, local authorities identified the culprit, and the blog was taken down. But the damage to reputations and psyches has undoubtedly remained. The incident, and others like it, prompts a question that's now all too common: What can stop cyberbullying? Bullying is a growing threat on the Web, particularly as social media and online gaming continue to grow. Take, for example, Facebook. According to a survey conducted by anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label,…

The production tax credit for renewable energy expired—most recently—at the end of 2013, and it's unclear if Congress will renew it again. The program gives wind farms 2.3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of renewable energy they pump into the U.S. grid. Since it was enacted in 1992, the incentive has driven a sevenfold increase in the number of U.S. turbines. “Wind has grown so much that it's approaching hydroelectric in scale,” says Gwen Bredehoeft, an analyst with the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Without the tax credit, Bredehoeft says, new turbine construction will probably stall until at least 2030, when the country will need more energy generation. Until then, this is the American wind-energy landscape. Hexagons indicate how many turbines lie within the area. 1–30 30–100 100–300 300–1,000 1,000–4,000 Map shows…

Counter to most vampire lore, there is no magic to the pungent odor of garlic. The stench is the result of four major sulfur-containing compounds, which, when ingested, move into the bloodstream and then out through the lungs and sweat glands. But that doesn't make it any less repellent. In April, food scientists at Ohio State University published a paper exploring the best foods and beverages to neutralize garlic's noxious effect. We drew a few practical conclusions: Fruits that brown when exposed to air contain an oxidating enzyme. This compound also sets off a chemical chain reaction that deodorizes offending sulfides. It's loaded with plant chemicals known as polyphenols, which work through a similar mechanism to neutralize all four sulfide compounds. Acidic beverages with a pH below 3.6 destroy the…

THE ANSWER: There's nothing mysterious about Hollywood's love affair with humanoid aliens. It's easier to throw prosthetics and face paint on actors than it is to fabricate (or animate) menageries of wildly inhuman characters. But if we apply lessons from our own evolution to other worlds, then filmmakers might not be so far off. According to Stuart Sumida, a biologist at California State University at San Bernardino who served as a consultant on Guardians of the Galaxy, an alien advanced enough to master space travel would need to have a large brain. “If you have a big brain, you need a way to protect it,” Sumida says. That means a skull, which rules out whole taxonomies of worms, slugs, and other potential invertebrates. And because exoskeletons would become untenable as…

The most technically challenging scene in Jupiter Ascending shows the movie's hero (Channing Tatum) zipping through the city in antigravity boots, fleeing a spaceship in pursuit of his cargo (Mila Kunis). “Most people will probably think it's digital, but it's not,” says VFX supervisor Dan Glass. Rather, the sequence features stunt doubles suspended from a helicopter as it banks through Chicago's urban canyons. Glass's team had only 15 minutes a day to film the scene—a tiny window of predawn light—so they created a camera capable of squeezing more photography into each shoot. Mounted to the nose of a helicopter, the six-camera rig (called the Panocam) could capture nearly 180 degrees of footage. By stitching together multiple overlapping angles, the filmmakers could effectively pivot and swing through the action in postproduction,…

Let's assume the worst: that aliens exist, and they're invading our humble home world. What sort of high-tech weapons would a desperate human race rush out of the lab and into battle? We asked Suveen Mathaudhu, a program manager and materials scientist at the U.S. Army Research Office, what we could plausibly throw at such a doomsday scenario. Combat exoskeletons, like the ones in Edge of Tomorrow, could enable infantry to carry increased firepower, Mathaudhu says. Guns that would normally generate too much recoil for the human body could instead be mounted on the suit, distributing that force throughout the frame. Today's exosuits are too power-hungry to be effectively fielded, but the use of titanium, magnesium, and other ultrastrong, ultralight alloys could reduce their energy consumption. “You're going to have…

Later this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture may approve the Arctic Granny and Arctic Golden, the first genetically modified apples to hit the market. Although it will probably be another two years before the fruit appears in stores, at least one producer is already scrambling to label its apples GMO-free. The looming apple campaign is just the latest salvo in the ongoing war over genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—one that's grown increasingly contentious. Over the past decade, the controversy surrounding GMOs has sparked worldwide riots and the vandalism of crops in Oregon, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Philippines. In May, the governor of Vermont signed a law that will likely make it the first U.S. state to require labels for genetically engineered ingredients; more than 50 nations already mandate…

INCOLLEGE, Ariel Garten started a clothing line that took its inspiration from neuroscience. She hooked people up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) to record their brain waves, then emblazoned T-shirts with the spiky patterns reflecting their mental activity. She also sewed skirts with 37 pockets, a reference to the number of different brain faculties described in the Victorian pseudoscience of phrenology, and filled them with bric-a-brac to represent the subconscious. At age 34, Garten is still making geek-chic designs—only now her creations can actually read people's minds. Garten is shoeless as she leads me through the Toronto headquarters of InteraXon, the start-up she co-founded in 2007. Her long brown hair nearly brushes her elbows as she pads along the wood flooring in brightly patterned socks. A whiteboard scribbled with nerdy wordplay…

In 2008, Cameron Smith, an anthropology professor at Portland State University in Oregon, decided to build a space suit. He designed the Mark I to protect himself on a high-altitude balloon ride, and so far it's passed tests in a hypobaric chamber and underwater. Last year, independent space program Copenhagen Suborbitals offered him a potential path to the stratosphere (between about 30,000 and 165,000 feet above Earth). Smith will make a suit for the Danish group this summer, and they'll help him build a helium balloon craft. Traditional pressure garments can cost upwards of $30,000. Smith's materials set him back about $2,000, thanks to creative use of junk parts and spare kitchenware. “We're trying to make it easier for people to get into space,” he says. 1 HELMET LOCKSmith needed…

Ever since his dad built a replica of KITT, the sentient car from the 1980s TV show Knight Rider, Patrick Priebe wanted to be a full-time tinkerer. Losing his job as an industrial chemist created the spare time he needed to pursue a love of building replica movie weapons. Priebe posted videos of his toys online—including Iron Man—style palm lasers, sci-fi—inspired rifles, and a high-tech wrist crossbow. After a few of the clips went viral, custom orders started pouring in. Who are your customers? Geeks like me. The kind of guys who are not satisfied simply watching Battlestar Galactica. They want to shoot real lasers and pop some balloons. Metal. It's sturdy. It's heavy. My customers like the feel. The device has to have some weight. Plastic is too light…

For the November 1965 cover story, a Popular Science editor walked around in a so-called man amplifier to test its range of motion. Researchers at Cornell University designed the metal exoskeleton to bolster the wearer's strength while minimally limiting flexibility. Built for the Office of Naval Research, the suit was intended to help sailors handle torpedoes and machinery. Today, exoskeletons continue to capture the imaginations of engineers and filmmakers alike. In the movie Edge of Tomorrow, characters battle aliens with help from the powered suits. For more, turn to page 42. 1959 Starship Troopers The mobile infantry in this dystopian novel—adapted into a film in 1997—was equipped with motorized armor to help combat aliens called Bugs. 1963 Iron Man Marvel Comics debuted the superhero suit of billionaire Tony Stark in…

When I was in college, I worked in a genetics lab. It started out as an internship and then grew into a part-time job, which helped pay the bills. For the most part, the work was pretty mundane. I did a lot of pipetting, ran a lot of gels, and tried my best not to contaminate the samples (which I did more than a few times). Staying late to dig into some problem or yet another baffling result, I often lost sight of why I was there: My job was to genetically modify plants. Much as I hate to date myself, those were the early days of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). My task was to alter the nitrogen-assimilation pathway in plants, so they could grow in poor soils with less…

In May 2014, Ask Anything addressed the question of how colonies would grow food in space. Several readers still had lingering questions. Writer Daniel Engber responds. Q: Why not build a greenhouse-equipped ship in Earth orbit? The crops could be started prior to departure and, upon arrival to Mars, greenhouses could be detached and parachuted to the surface. Douglas R. Benn Spokane, Wash. A: There are two problems, says Cornell's Jean Hunter: First, planted crops could add weight to the landing vehicle, making it unfeasible; second, the microgravity on a trip to Mars would make cultivation very difficult. Instead, one might send robots to establish agriculture ahead of human colonists. Q: Have you considered sprouts as a permanent space-colony food source? Highly nutritious sprouts, such as bean sprouts, just need…

Brewers spend years perfecting a chocolaty stout or balanced IPA, but when it comes to showcasing their craft, a pint glass serves about as well as a bucket. To rectify this crime against taste, the glass makers at Spiegelau created a line of beer-specific glassware. The vessels ($24.90 for two stout or two IPA) better convey the complexity of craft brews—and keep them cold and foamy longer. Spiegelau claims that the straight walls of a pint let beer flood into the mouth, triggering an antidrowning instinct that causes the tongue to press against the teeth. If this occurs, beer may not hit every type of taste bud; it could miss sweet ones and taste bitter. A thick-walled pint glass has the potential to hold onto and, therefore, transfer more heat…

Pyrotechnics that produce shapes, be they faces or hearts, come from a single shell that contains multiple flares. But because there's no telling which way a shell might face when it explodes, designs can wind up backward or sideways. Not the best plan for words or details. Simulation software, such as Finale Fireworks [right], allows designers to draw almost anything on the sky by coordinating the flight of dozens of lights at once. The programs control each mortar's angle and target altitude, and signal the launch of complex designs.…

Mountain bikers need suspensions with dual personalities: Barreling downhill, they want a soft suspension to absorb bumps; chugging uphill, they want stiff shocks so that their energy transfers to forward motion, not bobbing up and down. Finding that balance usually requires riders to make several manual adjustments. The Float Fit iCTD electronic suspension from California company Fox lets them make changes in half a second. Bikers initiate a shift by rotating a switch on the handlebars. That signals two motors, one on the frame-mounted shock and one on the fork, to turn oil-regulating valves, which restrict or free internal pistons. The system is just five ounces heavier than a manual one, so there's not a lot of extra heft to lug uphill. Fox will debut iCTD on mountain bikes from…

On March 29 at 1:48 p.m. EST, the sun issued a massive X1 flare that caused a brief radio blackout on the sunlit side of Earth. Because the atmosphere insulates technology from most solar-weather effects, flares of this magnitude don't typically have a drastic impact on the planet. But, says Dean Pesnell, project scientist at NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, “Our vulnerability to solar flares will become more personal as we increasingly rely on GPS—or even as the overloaded power system has more problems.” For this reason, scientists are studying the phenomena in unprecedented detail. NASA announced in May that the X1 event, captured by the SDO in extreme ultraviolet light, is the most comprehensively observed flare to date.…

Mike Cassidy works at Google X, the company's self-described “moonshot factory,” as the leader of Project Loon. His team's goal is to deploy a global network of thousands of Wi-Fi—connected balloons that will provide affordable Internet access to everyone on the planet. Ambitious much? We asked how they plan to pull it off. Popular Science:What was the inspiration for Project Loon? Mike Cassidy: People have talked about high-altitude communications platforms for a long time, but they all had the same concept: a tethered balloon, or a vehicle that kept itself in one spot over the ground. We said, “We can let the balloons move with the wind.” As one balloon moves away, another comes and takes its place. PS:How did you develop the right balloon for the job? MC: Initially,…

In October 2012, Swiss astronomers announced they'd found an Earth-size planet in orbit around the smaller star of the binary Alpha Centauri system. Following tradition, the scientists who discovered the planet gave it an alphabetical designation: Alpha Centauri Bb, after the name of the star. In search of a more memorable moniker, the start-up Uwingu mounted a public naming contest. It charged $4.99 to suggest names and 99 cents to vote. A portion of the proceeds would go to research and education. The campaign was a success—thousands of people participated—but it also drew fire from the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which has been the arbiter of celestial names since 1919. The IAU insisted, “Such schemes have no bearing on the official naming process.” The organization came out against Uwingu again…

New Orleans in mid-July is no place for a chimp. The sweltering, mosquito-assaulted set of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a minor marvel of engineering, a three-story habitat with interlacing tree trunks, recessed rooms and passages, and a flowing aqueduct that's turned the ground level into a swamp of pooling water and sucking mud. The filmmakers call it Ape Village, and it really does look like something hyperintelligent, domineering apes might construct. Until, that is, you notice the dozens of motion-capture cameras dotting the structure, and the guys in gray full-body suits, broiling in the merciless sun and steamy humidity. They're the sweatiest, most miserable make-believe chimps imaginable. And then they start to move. Two of the gray suits scramble up the sides of the habitat, grabbing…

THE ANSWER: The giant alien robots in Michael Bay's Transformers franchise aren't built in factories. They're grown in egglike pods and referred to as hatchlings, and they exhibit the kind of physical and behavioral diversity that implies something closer to biological reproduction than mass assembly. Just as no two humans are identical (with the exception of twins), each Autobot and Decepticon is unique in character and form, whether it's a humorless tractor-trailer or a hot-tempered Tyrannosaur. The Transformers, in other words, seem to be products of evolutionary robotics, a burgeoning field of research that applies biological principles to the creation and behavior of robots. Rather than simply engineering a bot to perform a given task, such as moving toward a light, researchers can plug that goal into a computer program…

Only Scott Toth knew exactly how this would go. He deftly hooked his tow truck to a gleaming white 2012 Chevy Cruze in a matter of seconds. A young woman in the passenger seat jumped out and screamed toward the convenience-store entrance: “Somebody get ---! He's inside!” Then Toth began securing straps to the wheels and hoisted the Chevy onto a hydraulic boom that resembled a giant spatula. The car's owner emerged from the store, advancing angrily. Other drivers pulled out of adjacent spaces like cowboys abandoning their bar stools. At 5′11″ with wide shoulders and a buzz cut, Toth—a repossession agent out of Cleveland—looks a little like a drill sergeant, though he has considerably better people skills. To calm older drivers, he'll turn the conversation to his four daughters,…

Very few genetically modified crops end up on plates, but the ones that do can be found in roughly two-thirds of processed foods sold in the U.S. Trait: Tolerates herbicides; resists insects Total U.S. crop, by acreage: 85% herbicide-tolerant; 76% insect-resistant Found in: Processed foods, such as crackers and cereals; corn on the cob; livestock feed Trait: Tolerates herbicides; resists insects Total U.S. crop, by acreage: 82% herbicide-tolerant; 75% insect-resistant Found in: Processed foods, including salad dressings; livestock feed Trait: Resists ringspot virus Total U.S. crop, by acreage: More than 50% Found in: Whole fruit and other products Trait: Tolerates herbicides Total U.S. crop, by acreage: More than 50% Found in: Canola oil; processed foods Trait: Tolerates herbicides Total U.S. crop, by acreage: 93% Found in: Processed foods, such as…

Ever since NASA established its history program in 1959, the agency has periodically compiled the world's aeronautics advances into a single report. Assembled mostly from press releases and news stories, the documents recount coverage of budget negotiations alongside milestones like the shuttle program and the moon landing. Data illustrators at the Office of Creative Research distilled the trove of reports from 11,000 pages and 4.9 million words into just over 4,000 discrete phrases. Their illustration charts the frequency of some of the most important terms, colored by topic and arranged by time, and presents a new view of how NASA took humanity to the stars. October 11, 1958 NASA launches its first spacecraft, Pioneer 1. April 12, 1961 Aboard the Soviet Vostok 1, Yury Gagarin becomes the first human in…

If we're lucky enough to survive Armageddon, our precious electrical grids won't. But we needn't pine for energy as we build a new civilization from the scraps of the old one. Inside every abandoned car is a lead-acid battery just waiting to power a makeshift arc welder. Saws, drills, grinders, and lathes may be more precise tools, but welding devices are unmatched for their versatility and brawn. Arc welders work by melting steel with a blinding electrical discharge. They can both sever thick beams and fuse pieces of metal together in ways that other tools can't. Amid their showers of sparks, a pile of scrap can become a house or a boat—or even an arena for postapocalyptic blood sport. A single car battery lacks the juice to sustain a metal-melting…

Short answer It's all comes down to portion control. Taken as a whole, a cooked cadaver would yield about 81,500 calories' worth of food, says James Cole, a lecturer on human origins at the University of Brighton in England. But that's only if you wolfed down every part that could be consumed. To create his “nutritional template” for cannibalism, Cole used body-composition data published in the 1940s and '50s, drawn from four dead males between the ages of 35 and 65. From these he built something like a beef chart for human beings, with caloric content listed for every cut of person-meat. Cole determined that a human arm would supply about 1,800 calories, for example, while each leg would yield 7,150 calories. The lungs, liver, and alimentary canal each provide…

This month's infographic, “The Whole Brilliant Enterprise” (page 64), was made possible thanks to a trove of publicly accessible NASA documents. “This isn't a pure time line of what happened,” says project lead Noa Younse. “It's an impression of what NASA has accomplished throughout history,” The source code used to create the four-page visualization is freely available on GitHub. While waiting in the airport after a missed flight, Bob Parks and photojournalist Paul Shoul noticed a crowd forming around a man telling stories about his work in the repossession industry. Parks was intrigued by the sophistication of the tracking technology involved in repossessing cars, which he writes about in “Scan Artist” (page 50). His eventual ride-along in Cleveland—complete with a chase—showed him the power of the technology firsthand. For our…

Q: WHAT VILLAIN DID YOU FEAR MOST AS A CHILD? 1. The Gmork from The NeverEnding Story. He only appears in flashes. 2. Vigo the Carpathian. It's a miracle I set foot in a museum again. 3. The cold, unforgiving vacuum of space in The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System. 4. The scarlet fever that killed Beth in Little Women. 5. I'm still afraid of the preacher in Poltergeist II. 6.Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Judge Doom. Half human, half animation, all trauma. 7. The cannibalistic witch from Hansel and Gretel. Prion-laced gingerbread! 8. He turned out to be good, but E.T. scared me. 9. The Wicked Witch of the West. 10. Hexxus from Fern-Gully: The Last Rainforest. I literally ran out of the theater crying.…

The market for wearable gadgets will reach about $1.8 billion within the next four years, according to Juniper Research, a firm that specializes in mobile telecommunications. Trouble is, it's hard to wear a gadget without looking like you're wearing a gadget. Plastic or silicone fitness monitors, such as the Fitbit and Nike Fuelband, practically scream “activity tracker!” And smart watches are large, heavy, and obvious—the calculator watches of the 21st century. But that awkward stage may be drawing to a close. As sensors become smaller and cheaper, and low-energy Bluetooth data sharing mitigates the need for bulky batteries, designers can integrate smart components in unobtrusive ways. The Misfit Shine activity tracker, for instance, looks like a piece of jewelry (and can last four months on one watch battery). Start-up Cuff…

The Porsche 918 can make a claim that other supercars can't: It's a blueprint for what everyday sports cars will be like in the next few years. Unlike models in the past, they won't have huge engines with bad fuel economy. Instead, they will rely on electric motors and quick-charging batteries supplemented by smaller gas engines. The pitch for hybrid sports cars has been clear for some time; battery power delivers an instant jolt of acceleration—the 918, for instance, hits 60 mph in 2.5 seconds. But the 918 stands apart in its ability to fully recharge cells while driving. (Typical plug-in hybrids get only a trickle of power while the car's in motion and need to be plugged in once depleted.) When the 918's battery is spent, the car's brakes…

At first glance, something may seem a little off about the new SRAM RockShox RS-1: It's inverted. Unlike most bike suspension forks, the thinner piston sits underneath the fatter structural stanchion. The arrangement, standard on motorcycles, keeps the piston bathed in oil, which helps the suspension respond better to small bumps. To compensate for the rigidity lost by moving the stanchion away from the axle, SRAM engineers developed a aluminium double axle, which stiff ens the ride. $1,865…

On December 5, 2011, Andrew Meas wiggled his toes for the first time since a motorcycle accident four years earlier paralyzed him from the chest down. Within a week, he was beginning to stand. Meas's remarkable (albeit partial) recovery comes courtesy of a groundbreaking use of an electrode array implanted over his spinal cord. For decades, researchers have been seeking ways to help the millions of people with spinal cord injuries regain control of their limbs, with frustratingly little success. The new device provides a rare glimmer of hope. Scientists at the University of Louisville's Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center, where Meas and three other patients received their implants, speculate that the stimulation may be reawakening connections between the brain and the body. “There's residual circuitry that we can…

As early as next year, the Department of Defense will test-fly an entirely new type of combat drone. The craft is called Ares, for Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System, and it's designed to take off and land vertically. Unlike airplane-esque drones, which are cumbersome to launch and land, Ares could drop into a tight spot, unload supplies or rescue soldiers, and then zip up and away. The remote-controlled prototype, now under construction by helicopter manufacturer Piasecki Aircraft and defense giant Lockheed Martin, relies on two massive, articulating ducted fans for lift and forward thrust in flight, much like the tilt-rotor Osprey used by the Marines. If all goes as planned, a fully autonomous production version is next, capable of carrying up to 3,000 pounds and forever changing the art of warfare.…

In Edge of Tomorrow, exoskeletons play a critical role in humanity's desperate last stand against alien invaders. It would be easy to assume the futuristic systems are digital illusions, mapped to the actors' movements, but they're actually elaborate props. The modeler, Pierre Bohanna, made each suit from 350 to 400 discrete components that together form a fully articulating device. The materials include standard nylon, high-grade aluminum, and a lightweight polymer created specifically for the film. “It's not a costume,” Bohanna says, “it's a machine.” Unfortunately for the actors, the humans power the suits, not vice versa. They had to sprint through battle scenes lugging 72 to 132 extra pounds. “These things were incredibly hard work, and all of the actors and stunt guys had to do boot camp in them,”…

THE ANSWER: The filmmakers of Jupiter Ascending augmented human characters with animal genes to make them more physically imposing. In reality, human-animal hybrids have never been people with animal traits but, rather, animals tweaked to host or benefit from human biology. The first documented example occurred in 2004, when the Mayo Clinic injected human stem cells into fetal pigs, creating swine with human blood in order to study how viruses jump between species. Last year, neuroscientists at Stanford University boosted the intelligence of mice with human brain cells. In both cases, researchers sidestepped any actual genetic engineering by simply introducing foreign tissue and letting it take root. In theory, similar experiments on humans could yield incredible results, such as modifying photoreceptors to enable catlike night vision, or borrowing a newt's…

THE ANSWER: Science fiction has long relied on mutation as an evolutionary shortcut. Sometimes it's the work of external forces, as with the atomic testing that gave rise to Godzilla in the original 1954 film, and the glowing “ooze” that turned garden-variety turtles into man-size martial artists. At other points it's a naturally occurring hiccup, like the “X-Gene” that allowed superhumans to manipulate brain waves or magnetic fields. The common thread is speed: Within a single generation, the protagonists are transformed. It's an interpretation that's correct in spirit: Genes can mutate spontaneously or be manipulated in the lab to create new traits. Take, for example, the ability of most adult humans to process lactose in dairy products. Researchers believe this mutation, a kind of gastrointestinal superpower, began in Europe some…

Put enough processing power behind a digital camera and you've got “computer vision,” the process by which machines can analyze the visual world. Since the advent of the transistor, systems that can do this have become cheaper, faster, and smaller. Here's a quick overview of the highs and lows in the technology's history. The first computer scanner copies a 2-inch photo of the inventor Russell A. Kirsch's son. Defense contractors Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson launch a facial-recognition system for an unnamed intelligence agency. U.K. police invent a license-plate recognition system. The first major installation is in 1993, as a “ring of steel” around London to counteract IRA bombings. The first autonomous land vehicle, made by Lockheed Martin, Carnegie Mellon, and others, uses video-based imaging to follow…

Today's most common GMO technology, recombinant DNA, inserts genes into a plant's cells via bacteria or specialized delivery tools, but it involves some trial and error. A new method called gene editing uses enzymes to snip out a specific bit of DNA to either delete it or replace it. This allows for more precise changes to a plant's genome. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley are already working with it to create virus-resistant cassava. Gene editing may also provide fodder for fresh controversy. Current GMO methods leave a trace behind—for example, a bit of the DNA from bacterium used to insert new genes. The enzymes used in gene editing don't leave such a fingerprint, so future genetically modified plants will be harder to detect with tests.…

If Thomas de Wolf gets his way, pet fish will soon navigate terra firma. A co-founder of Netherlands design firm Studio diip, de Wolf built a motorized tank that empowers goldfish to drive around. “We wanted to make something that showcases computer vision technology, but not in such an industrial way,” he says. “We thought, ‘Let's do something for fish.’” De Wolf and fellow industrial designer Guust Hilte built a platform to hold a one-gallon tank and attached four DC motor—powered wheels, a miniature computer, and a battery pack. A webcam monitors the tank from above, and software analyzes the image feed to determine where the fish is. Then the program steers the tank relative to the fish's location* (e.g., if it's at the front of the tank, the tank…

Engineer Andrew Maxwell-Parish has identified the element every tip jar lacks: Wu-Tang Clan's masterpiece “C.R.E.A.M.” (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”). Using a 3-D printer, a laser cutter, an Arduino microcontroller, a speaker, a battery, and other parts, he turned a tin can into a receptacle that plays part of the track every time money goes inside. Maxwell-Parish's Wu-Tang Can arrives just in time for the group's 20th-anniversary album, which is slated for release in July. Beneath the 3-D—printed lid, an LED shines onto a photoresistor. This sensor detects whenever money drops into the can, triggering the Arduino to play a random clip from an audio file of “C.R.E.A.M.” Time 1 day Cost About $70…

Short answer Months, if you're very careful. Most cut flowers will last a week or two under normal conditions, but “vase life” varies widely. Genetics play a major role, of course, but so does how the plant was grown and harvested. At the moment of cutting, the stem will have a supply of starches and sugars inside—more if the plant was grown in lots of light and harvested in the late afternoon. This supply is fuel, and once it has been depleted, the flower can take up nutrients from the water in a vase. That's why people often dose their bouquets with “flower food.” But the ability of cut flowers to take up water and nutrients deteriorates over time. These processes are limited by obstructions in the stem, often caused…