Table of contents for September 2014 in Popular Science

Feed 08 From the Editor 10 Peer Review 12 A Bit About Us Now 15 A safer football helmet 19 The rise of cryptophones 20 Harley-Davidson's first electric motorcycle 22 A fitness tracker that helps you relax 23 Facial recognition plays matchmaker 24 10 things we love this month 26 A ridiculously real video game 27 Should you be able to erase yourself online? Next 29 Gamers unlock the secrets of the retina 30 The predator that predates T. rex33 Jill Tarter on communicating with extraterrestrials 34 Food isn't scarce, we're just wasting it 36 The mineral that will revolutionize solar 38 A pill that prevents HIV Manual 69 Build a machine to pitch Wiffle balls … at 50 mph 72 A microscope made from folded paper 74 High-tech tools…

We were not at all surprised that “Core Truths,” our July feature about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), garnered a large response—nor were we shocked that much of it was critical. We don't have the space here to do your dozens of letters and emails justice, but here's a breakdown of reader opinion: Popular Science is a puppet for Monsanto. 27% You glossed over important details. 13% No, really, GMOs do cause disease. 10% You downplayed the potential dangers. 17% You call that science?! 23% The story presented the risks in a balanced light. 10% To address some of your comments and concerns about this complex topic in a nuanced way, writer Brooke Borel has devoted a set of blog posts to GMOs. Read more at popsci.com/GMOs.…

1 Identity theft sounds like a bit of a headache. 2 That whole Target thing made you a Kmart shopper. 3 Was that passing shadow a cloud—or a spy drone? 4 You might be in touch with Edward Snowden. 5 You might be Edward Snowden. STARTPAGE SEARCH ENGINE Free on any platform Pros It allows you to query Google without accepting cookies or giving your IP address, and to use Google as a proxy, clicking through to third-party sites. Con Proxy surfing feature can be slow. Anxiety Rating 1 REDPHONE AND TEXTSECURE BY WHISPER SYSTEMS Free Android; iOS coming late summer Pros Apps enable end-to-end encrypted calling and messaging. Open-source code allows for shared fixes. Con Your callers also need to have the apps installed for the encryption to work.…

Fitness trackers use suites of sensors and algorithms to turn data from your training regimen into (hopefully) meaningful information about how race-ready you are. But for the rest of the time—when you're sitting at a desk—there's not much for devices to do. Spire, a clip-on tracker that looks like a small, silvery stone, monitors a more subtle aspect of your physiology: your breath. By measuring the small vibrations and abdominal movements caused by inhaling and exhaling, Spire's analytics software can determine how stressed or focused you are, the company says. If you haven't taken a deep breath in a while, Spire's smartphone app will kindly remind you. It will even guide you through a calming exercise. Price $150 Battery life Seven days Charging Qi wireless…

Developers begin building Star Citizen in secret, revealing just enough details to entice investors. Crowdfunding campaign begins—and reaches its $2 million goal before the end of the month. A hangar module launches, allowing backers to “walk around” inside their ships. A dogfighting module releases that lets players battle the computer— and other players—in one of three ships. A first-person shooter module is set to be introduced. A planet-side social module will be added, allowing players to explore cities. The single- player military campaign Squadron 42 is slated to release as a stand-alone game within the Star Citizen universe. Early public testing of the universe will begin as the game's designers pull together various modules. Star Citizen will become available as a seamless universe with modding tools and the ability for…

In the age of dinosaurs, a succession of mega carnivores lorded over the landmass that is now North America. First came the 30-foot-long Allosaurus, 145 million years ago. Sixty million years later, the 40-foot-long T. rex reigned supreme. But scientists didn't know what, or who, prevented T. rex from taking the throne during the intervening period. That is, until paleontologists from the Field Museum and North Carolina State University, on a dig in Utah, unearthed bones from the leg, tail, and spine of an all-new species. The researchers dubbed the dino Siats meekerorum after a man-eating monster in local Ute legend. The beast would have rivaled T. rex in size and power had the two coexisted. But only after Siats went extinct could tyrannosaurs, then the size of white-tailed deer,…

Every year, the planet loses nearly a third of its food—a staggering 1.4 billion tons. That's according to a 2011 United Nations study that assessed food networks in 152 countries. The researchers' results reveal where in the food-supply chain farmers, engineers, and consumers might more effectively get comestibles into mouths. The planet may have to feed a global population of 10 billion people by 2050. With that milestone looming, organizations like the U.N., the National Resources Defense Council, and Food Tank are working on ways to make food systems more efficient. The width of each ribbon represents the amount of food, per person worldwide, consumed or lost annually. Kilograms of food per capita 50 25 10 Industrialized nations Developing nations INITIAL QUANTITY Amount of food that's intended for human consumption…

The drug that could end the HIV pandemic is already here. Branded Truvada, this pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prevents HIV infection by blocking the virus's ability to replicate. “It's a big deal,” says Robert Grant, a leading HIV/AIDS investigator at the University of California, San Francisco. “It's an opportunity for uninfected people to proactively protect themselves.” Approximately 50,000 Americans will develop HIV this year. But since Truvada was approved as a PrEP in 2012, only 10,000 patients—or 2 percent of the 500,000 Americans identified as “high risk” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—have gotten a prescription for it. Critics have vocalized concerns about side effects. “People have memories of what it was like to be treated with very high doses of drugs in the 1980s,” Grant says. “That…

It's not easy to make a cloud indoors, but students at the University of California, Riverside are certainly trying. They're using the Atmospheric Processes Laboratory—the world's largest indoor smog chamber—to learn precisely how clouds form. Led by atmospheric scientist Akua Asa-Awuku, the students inject aerosol-forming compounds and water vapor into the Teflon-lined, two-story-tall chamber. Black lights and a 200-kilowatt Argon arc lamp simulate the sun; factors like temperature, pressure, humidity, and heat can be altered to mimic various conditions. More than 30 instruments—many built by students—help measure the aerosols' chemical and physical characteristics as they attract water to form cloud droplets. Because aerosols are the greatest source of uncertainty in climate models, the findings may refine our understanding of climate change. Other college students, meanwhile, use the lab to study…

Frustrated with the decline of hands-on learning, Stanford University students created SparkTruck as a roving maker lab. They outfitted a Utilimaster van with tools like a laser cutter and hundreds of dollars worth of Popsicle sticks and miniature motors, then drove it across the country—twice—stopping at schools. It's reached about 5,000 kids, plus inspired enough like-minded adults that the Stanford team created a “How to Make a SparkTruck” guide. MakerState got its start bringing hands-on projects to at-risk students around New Orleans and the Hudson Valley of New York. Now, it embeds instructors called “maker fellows” in summer camps and schools across the country, where they teach STEM-based workshops that serve more than 6,000 students a year. Fellows also throw maker-themed birthday parties (robot cupcakes included) featuring 90-minute projects, ranging…

As a freshman at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in the late 1970s, Anant Agarwal was one of the only students to fail the physics midterm. The setback, he recalls, made him see that his small high school in Mangalore hadn't prepared him for college. “I realized that education is very different in different parts of the world,” says Agarwal, who went on to become a computer scientist. “Some people have access to really high-quality material, but others—simply by virtue of what they have or where they are—don't.” Nearly 25 years later, Agarwal was teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when he and colleagues began augmenting their classes with online videos and discussions. He then built a prototype website so he could virtually teach his introductory electronics…

In 1946, my mother, Myfanwy, was 16 and going to school in Cape Town, South Africa, when she wrote a letter to Albert Einstein that changed her life forever. She shared her dreams of becoming a scientist, describing how she and her best friends would stay up late to study the stars. To her amazement, he responded with an encouraging note. She wrote again, this time confessing that he'd been corresponding with a girl. He replied a second time, saying he didn't mind that she was a girl—and that most importantly, she shouldn't mind. At the time, men and women were not yet seen as equals, and my mother really struggled with being a girl and yet wanting to become a scientist. But she gathered that if the Albert Einstein…

We humans are programmed to grow stronger, faster, and smarter; to climb higher, live longer, and populate every last inch of real estate. We've toppled scores of world records over the past few decades, but how much more progress can we make? No matter how we enhance our natural capabilities, our potential is bound by certain scientific principles—laws of physics, biomechanics, and thermodynamics—that don't yield to human ambition. We asked scientists to define where, exactly, those boundaries lie, and to provide some take-home tips that'll help you stretch your own potential. Fastest We Can Run 9.4 METERS PER SECOND After Olympic sprinter Usain Bolt broke the 100-meter world record at the 2008 Olympics, Mark Denny, a biologist at Stanford University, wondered: Had “Lightning Bolt” sprinted as fast as a human…

Although many have tried and failed to find the fountain of youth, new scientific research reveals ways to naturally extend your lifespan. Cynthia Kenyon started limiting her consumption of sweets after her experiments at UCSF showed that sugar turned off roundworms' “longevity gene,” reducing their lives by 20 percent. According to Howard Friedman, the author of Longevity Project, an eight-decade study, the harder you work, the longer you live. “Those who stayed very involved in meaningful careers lived the longest,” he says. According to a survey of 660 individuals in the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement, older people with positive perceptions of aging live 7.5 years longer.…

Imagine a world where every child owns a microscope. A clever new method to fold the instrument from a single sheet of paper may bring that dream closer to reality. In the Foldscope, invented by Stanford University engineers, creased paper creates a scaffold, which holds a lens and an LED in alignment. A microscope slide sits between them. As users peer at the sample, they flex the paper to adjust the lens and change the focus. The simple assembly can magnify objects more than 2,000 times. Lead developer Manu Prakash originally saw the Foldscope as an inexpensive way to diagnose disease in developing countries. But he soon realized it could also help excite a new generation of scientists. “You learn to appreciate the microscopic cosmos by actually exploring it yourself,”…

In April, Big Cricket Farms became the first U.S. company to raise insects for human consumption. It's no surprise crickets are leaping onto our plates—they require less space and fewer resources than cows or chickens, and they're packed with protein and other nutrients. But farmed crickets and premade cricket foods can be expensive. Why not breed your own crunchy critters instead? For complete instructions, materials, and a recipe, visitpopsci.com/eatcrickets. Time 6 weeks Cost $22 Difficulty 1 out of 5 WARNING: You're not a lizard. Clean insects before consuming and eat them at your own risk. Serving size 100 grams (about 22 crickets) Amount Per Serving Calories 121.5 Calories from fat 49.5 Total Fat 5.5 g Carbohydrates 5.1 g Protein 12.9 g Calcium 75.8 mg Iron 9.5 mg Set terrariums near…

Short answer You're less distracted by your native tongue. A In 1967, neuroscientist Eric Lenneberg laid out his argument for a “critical period” in language acquisition: Beyond a certain age, he said, and without the normal stimulation, a person could never really develop a natural way of speaking. Then he added, almost as a throwaway: The same applies to second languages. If you don't start learning them during your youth, he suggested, you'll be doomed to second-rate pronunciation. Studies found that Lenneberg was on to something with the latter point. When scientists compared the English skills of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. at different ages, the ones who showed up earlier in their lives seemed to have a clear advantage, even if they'd spent the same amount of time…

Last year, the Program for International Student Assessment released the results of its once-every-three-years report on the state of math, science, and reading skills in 65 countries. For the U.S., the news was grim. Our absolute score was basically the same as in 2003, when the test began, and our relative position slipped in every category. In math, we now rank 29th—right between Slovakia and Lithuania. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, called the results “a picture of educational stagnation.” To us here at Popular Science, this came as a real blow. Anyone from the president on down will tell you that a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education is not just good for kids but for the nation. Workers with a background in STEM earn…

Q: WHAT'S THE MOST VALUABLE LESSON YOU'VE LEARNED? 1. At some point, you just have to stop editing. 2. People think diamonds are forever, but education stays with you for life. 3. Make it a great day, or not, the choice is yours. 4. You can fail at something the first time, but take credit for trying. 5. No one is perfectly smart—even physics professors make silly arithmetic mistakes. 6. Microwaving a marshmallow for 90 minutes is a terrifying sight and should never be done. 7. The next person you meet could change your life in a positive way. Make sure you're open. 8. Life's tough questions can always be answered with a glass of red wine. 9. You never look as cool as you think you do. 10. If…

Engine Clutch-less electric motor Horsepower 74 Fuel economy n/a Price n/a For 111 years, the Harley Davidson has been known for many things—freedom, leather, and, most of all, its rumbling V-twin engine. This summer, Harley took a step in a new, quieter direction when it introduced Project Livewire, its first battery-powered bike. The Livewire has a lightweight aluminum frame rather than the classic tubular-steel version, and a 74-horsepower electric motor. With nearly 100 percent of its 52 foot-pounds of torque available instantly, it can hit 60 mph in under four seconds. Several niche companies have marketed electric bikes over the past few years, but Harley's entry into the market is telling. The manufacturer sees the technology as a way to court new riders. This fall, before the motorcycle goes into…

Facial-recognition software cut its teeth on criminal mugshots, but now it offers an arguably more civic service: uniting people with potential life partners. Algorithms search for a match based on your prior dating or pet-ownership preferences. Friends accuse you of living in the past? Now you can relive it. The dating service Three Day Rule—which recently partnered with Match.com—feeds a customer's relationship history and preferences into software that hunts for potential dates with similar physical characteristics. The service's software examines facial shape, jaw structure, and “eyes and nose coordinates.” The company says its goal is more efficient matchmaking, not to help customers find people that look like their exes—but we can't help thinking of Lyle Lovett's classic lyric: “I married her just because she looks like you.” To home in…

In the late 1990s, Mario Costeja González ran into financial trouble and a bank foreclosed on his house in Spain. Eventually he put the situation behind him, but more than a decade later, newspaper notices of the subsequent auction still popped up in Web searches for his name. So in 2010, González filed a complaint against the paper and Google, arguing that the foreclosure had been long-since resolved and should be scrubbed from their sites. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in May that González can't compel the paper to remove any accurate information, but he and other private citizens may request that search engines remove erroneous, inadequate, or irrelevant links from their results. The landmark decision granted Gonzalez what's known as the right to be forgotten. This legal…

Paleontologists from the University of Utah announced the discovery of this 11-foot-long dinosaur in March. The 500-pound raptor is the largest known oviraptorosaur—a group of dinos closely related to birds—found in North America. Anzu wyliei roamed the Dakotas with T. rex about 66 million years ago, just before dinosaur end-times. In Portugal, paleontologists uncovered what may be Europe's largest known terrestrial predator. Torvosaurus gurneyi ruled the continent during the Jurassic Period 150 million years ago. It weighed in at 2,200 pounds, and stretched 33 feet from snout to tail. Some of its blade-shaped teeth measured nearly four inches long. Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, a new tyrannosaur recently found by Texas paleontologists, is believed to have lived some 70 million years ago in the region that's now Alaska. The pygmy dinosaur, whose name…

To tackle food waste, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and partner Worrell Water Technologies developed a one-square-inch packet that extends the refrigerated life of fruits and vegetables by up to five weeks. Each permeable packet contains Curoxin vapor, a proprietary disinfectant that releases slowly inside a clamshell container and envelops fresh food in an antimicrobial cloud. The effect? Water loss and fungal growth are significantly arrested, which maintains produces' firmness, color, and taste. Currently in trials, Curoxin should be available in 2015.…

1939Condoms, issued to soldiers in WWII, gain social acceptance. 1960Oral birth control, a.k.a. “the pill,” hits the market. 1965Landmark case expands access to contraceptives. 1981The New York Times runs a story on “rare cancer” in homo-sexuals. 1984Scientists identify human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). 1993Hollywood explores the homophobia surrounding HIV and AIDS in Philadephia. 1994AIDS becomes no. 1 cause of death for Americans 25 to 44. 1996Time magazine names HIV/AIDS researcher David Ho its “Man of the Year.” 2004Truvada gets FDA approval for treatment of HIV and AIDS. 2013Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launches competition for a better condom. 2014Pill-takers proudly wear #truvada-whore T-shirts.…

Mayson Trujillo stretches across a rock at the edge of a stream cascading through Lassen Volcanic National Park. Braving snow from an advancing blizzard, she meticulously collects a sample of the sulphur-scented water. Trujillo, a senior at Red Bluff High School in California, is intent on the task at hand: gathering data that may hold clues for early life on Earth—and potentially, Mars. To reach the stream, Trujillo and 13 classmates snowshoed a mile into the center of an ancient volcano—for them, a routine field trip in a one-of-a-kind collaboration with NASA. The park's mud pots and fumaroles can exceed 240F, too hot for most creatures but potentially habitable to the types of microbes that populated Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Understanding those conditions could help astrobiologists interpret signs of…

More than 150 confirmed wrecks lie deep beneath the waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. And since 1996, undergraduate students under the guidance of Hans Van Tilburg, a maritime archaeologist with the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, have donned scuba gear to document these technological relics. “This is a way to survey cultural resources and tell part of the historical story,” Van Tilburg says. Over the years, the University of Hawaii students have surveyed fighter planes, landing craft, and bombers lost during World War II. This summer, they spent two weeks diving to a landing craft submerged near Pearl Harbor. The field course teaches them how to measure a wreck and the surrounding ocean floor using baseline trilateration, a mapping method that doesn't require permanent grids. They also produce underwater drawings,…

Four years ago, billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel announced the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year start-up accelerator for young science and tech prodigies. The program awards 20 kids under age 20 $100,000 each to pursue world-changing innovations and businesses. The one caveat: They have to drop out of school to get it. The unorthodox program did not go over well with many. Larry Summers, former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury secretary, told attendees at a conference last October that it was “the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade.” He called the fellowship “meretricious in its impact and the signals that it sends to a broader society.” Thiel, a 46-year-old tech prodigy himself, has never hewed to convention. He co-founded PayPal in 1998, and in 2004 became the first outside…

“LET'S SAY THAT I AM, through my actions, doomed, and that I will go to hell,” Bill Nye said. He was prepping for a Super Bowl party and making pizza dough from a recipe given to him by his friend, Bob Picardo, who played The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager. He ducked beneath the countertop, pulled out a KitchenAid mixer and a bag of flour, and then returned to the topic at hand, which was religion and science and what he believed. “Even if I am going to hell,” he continued, “that still doesn't mean the Earth is 6,000 years old. The facts just don't reconcile.” He turned back to the mixer, sighed, and slumped a little. For a moment, Nye looked weary at the thought of ill-informed parents undoing…

In a 2012 study, English cyclists were told to pedal as fast as they could. Then they raced against a computerized competitor going one percent faster, and kept up. So it's a good idea to train with someone better. Tim Noakes at the University of Cape Town had runners take a maximal oxygen consumption test that started surprisingly tough and got easier. He found that oxygen levels actually don't limit performance. In a 2008 study, cyclists gargled sugar water and spat it out, tricking their brains into thinking they'd ingested carbs. Swilling drinks stimulates taste-bud receptors, boosting the metabolism.…

At this year's Labor Day picnic, don't yawn through another game of Wiffle ball. Instead, transform the low-key sport into a battle of batter versus machine. With only cheap plumbing supplies and a leaf blower, you can build a Wiffle ball cannon that will barrage players with an endless volley of howling pitches. The project hinges on a key component: a PVC plastic fitting called a “low-heel inlet elbow,” available at most hardware stores. Although it's typically used to vent bathroom plumbing, by a miraculous quirk of fate, the elbow happens to be the ideal tool to transform a leaf blower into a Wiffle ball pitcher. One inlet of the 3″x3″x2″ fitting accepts a 3-inch-diameter PVC barrel—the ideal size for a regulation Wiffle ball. The 2-inch inlet connects to most…

Hand a kid some LEGOs, and you'll get anything from a sword to a starship. The same adaptability that makes the bricks amazing playthings also endears them to makers, who use the simple toys to create complex machines—at a fraction of their usual cost. 1 BRAILLE PRINTER Twelve-year-old Shubham Banerjee first heard of braille when his family received a mailer raising money for the blind. He then researched braille printers online and learned they cost $1,800 or more. Banerjee thought he could build a cheaper version out of his favorite toy, so he bought a LEGO robotics kit and created the Braigo for only $355. A thumbtack on the Braigo's print head punches braille letters on a roll of paper. “It's very easy,” Banerjee says. “Even my eight-year-old sister can…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is most famously home to the Titan supercomputer, capable of performing more than 20 quadrillion calculations every second. But the lab also houses the lesser known “Tiny Titan,” whose nine processing units, or “cores,” are made from Raspberry Pis. Making a small-scale supercomputer is relatively simple—just yoke together microelectronics to run in parallel. The hard part, explains Titan support specialist Adam Simpson, is writing the code for it. “There really is no adequate platform for do-it-yourself supercomputing,” Simpson says. So he and two colleagues decided to create a set of software tutorials. By working together, parallel cores can solve complex problems, and the tutorials aim to demystify that process. For example, one lesson will show how to add two lists of numbers together, by dividing the…

In May 1947,Popular Science looked back on 75 years of scientific progress. Though fewer than two years had passed since the world witnessed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists foresaw a new era of clean, reliable energy from the same destructive source: nuclear power. In 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor I near Arco, Idaho, became the first nuclear plant to generate electricity, powering lights in the testing area. More recently, disasters at the Chernobyl and Fukushima plants triggered backlashes that stifled the expansion of nuclear power in Western countries. Turn to page 62 to see where plants have been decommissioned and where more are planned. 100 KW First usable amount of electricity produced by a nuclear power plant near Arco, Idaho, in 1951 10 MW Capacity of the USS…

As a strategist and senior fellow with the New America Foundation, Peter W. Singer spends a lot of time thinking about how the world is changing. After noticing the growing overlap between military operations and new digital technologies, he proposed a story on the future of cyberwar. To write “The War of Zeros and Ones” (page 40), he combined original reporting with material from his recent book, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know. When writer Judy Dutton hears the sky's the limit, she's rightfully skeptical. She would much rather quantify things using science, as she did in “Pushing Our Limits” (page 64). Dutton found that not only is it interesting to definitively learn about human capabilities, such as how old we can get or how much we can…

For decades, football players have worn rigid, unyielding helmets that protected the skull but did little to prevent concussions. To address this shortcoming, Riddell built a smarter helmet. Available to NFland college teams, and soon youth and high school players, the new SpeedFlex is designed to diminish the impact forces of a hard hit. It will also alert coaches on the sideline if a blow was powerful enough to potentially cause a head injury. At a time when the sport has been hammered with bad news, this might be a game changer. At the crown of the helmet, a flexible panel that has a polycarbonate shell attaches with a living hinge. It is padded with polyurethane and synthetic rubber and can depress up to a quarter of an inch, dispersing…

1Ford will add adaptive steering into some models in 2015. The technology, thus far limited to luxury vehicles, varies the steering ratio with the speed, making parking easier and adding stability at high speeds. 2Toyota has donated 208 used Camry Hybrid batteries to Yellowstone National Park, which when paired with solar panels and onsite micro-hydro turbine systems will power a cluster of five remote outbuildings. 3San Francisco startup Cruise Automation is making a $10,000 sensor system (due out next year) that mounts to the roof of Audi A4 and S4 sedans, and enables semi-autonomous driving on highways. 4Honda has started using 3-D visualization technology co-developed with tech firm 3DX CITE for crash simulations. Originally created for animated film, the software also allows for easier design changes.…

The revelation of the hit PC game Star Citizen isn't that people love space-flight—we knew that. It's that they like their games as realistic as possible, with a universe obsessively hewing to Newtonian physics for even the smallest detail. The crowdfunded Star Citizen features player-controlled spaceships that travel through a virtual universe governed by the same forces as our own. For example, designers modeled each ship's landing gear to retract without interfering with the hydrogen fuel system that feeds the nuclear reactor. Then they have to animate heat shielding to close over the landing gear so that the ship can safely pass through an atmosphere. The same commitment to detail applies to piping, working gauges, cargo-loading equipment, Gatling guns, toilets (really), LCD screens with real-time readouts, and so on. The…

The human retina, shown here at 480x magnification, allows the eye to follow the path of a moving object, such as a Ping-Pong ball in play. Neuroscientists have been toiling for 50 years to explain how, but they lack the processing power to map the eye's neural network. (With today's cutting-edge modeling software, 100 people would have to work 24/7 for half a million years.) An online game called EyeWire, developed at MIT, harnesses the power of gamers instead. Each player navigates a single nerve's path across a tiny section of mouse retina. “It's actually extremely challenging,” says Amy Robinson, EyeWire's creative director. “No computer program can do it automatically.” Some 135,000 gamers have spent a year and a half connecting retinal dots, which scientists then used to reconstruct the…

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), people typically seek messages, not send them. Think Jodie Foster in the movie Contact as an alien signal pulses in her headphones. The inspiration for Foster's character, astrophysicist Jill Tarter, wants to help make future humans the kind of talkative interstellar society she has spent the past 38 years trying to find. Popular Science:Why search for alien broadcasts if we're not sending them ourselves? Jill Tarter: Given the history of the galaxy, statistically, any civilization that we could communicate with is going to be much older. And since transmitting is harder than listening, we put the onus on them. PS:What about the messages we sent on Voyager 1 and 2? JT: Those are like messages in a bottle. If you're serious about sending…

Solar panels are cheaper than ever before, thanks to government subsidies and a flooded market. But they're not yet affordable enough to eclipse traditional energy sources. Enter perovskites: crystalline minerals that may emerge as the darling of solar power. In only five years, the sunlight-to-energy efficiency of solar cells made from lab-grown perovskites has almost quintupled, from 3.8 to nearly 20 percent. Compare that to sluggish gains made with silicon technology, which took three decades to reach the same threshold. Today, commercial silicon panels top out at 18 percent. Perovskite cells may best that rate, and have the added advantage of being cheap and easy to manufacture. They could reduce the cost-per-watt of solar by more than half. Plus, some prototype cells are partially translucent, so researchers like Oxford University's…

Military operations around the world are quickly expanding into the digital realm, forever changing the way conflicts play out. The hard reality: With cyberwarfare, we're all in the line of fire. Like so many stories in the world of digital security, this one began with simple human carelessness. In 2006, a senior official in the Syrian government brought his computer with him on a visit to London. One day, he stepped out of the hotel and left the laptop behind. While he was out, agents from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, snuck into his room and installed a Trojan horse onto the machine, which allowed them to monitor any communications. For the Syrians, that would have been bad enough, but when the Israelis began to examine the official's files, a…

When Reshma Saujani toured New York City schools during her 2010 primary run for Congress, the gender divide in computer-science classrooms shocked her. “I'd be in a robotics lab on the Upper East Side where there would be a hundred boys,” says the politician and lawyer. “And then I'd be in Queens and there'd be one girl in the basement of a church.” With jobs increasingly dependent on computer know-how, Saujani saw girls facing an economic disadvantage—particularly since the number of women earning computer-science bachelor's degrees has actually dropped by more than a third since the mid-eighties. The key, she decided, was connecting them with computer programming early. Saujani lost the race, but the coding idea stuck. Within two years she launched Girls Who Code (GWC), a summer program that…

Exo Labs Model 2 Camera The Model 2 camera attaches to any standard microscope and captures high-res images of the field of view. An app streams images to an iPhone or iPad so that students can annotate and measure the object they're observing. SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge The first game in the SimCityEDU series turns middle school kids into urban planners. Six missions challenge them to balance a city's environmental concerns with the economic needs of its citizens. Teachers get a related lesson plan. LEGO Mindstorms Education EV3 Teachers can use this EV3 robotics kit to help students learn the fundamentals of subjects like electrical engineering and computer programming. It includes design projects that follow the process used by many scientists and engineers. MaKey MaKey Invention Kit With MaKey MaKey, everyday…

Three Stanford University students float weightless about 30,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, as they wiggle a probe into a mannequin's esophagus and try their best not to vomit. The undergrads hope to learn whether a portable ultrasound machine can take useful images of the heart—in this case, the lifeless heart of a $26,000 dummy—in zero gravity. The parabolic flight is part of NASA's so-called Microgravity University, which gives students the opportunity to design experiments that will help determine the future of space flight. Stanford's ultrasound machine (donated, like the dummy) seems well suited to a trip to Mars. It's light and compact, requires little medical training to use, and the probe can remain in the body for 72 hours while recording images of the heart. But no one…

Nuclear energy provides 11 percent of the world's electricity, but most reactors are now decades old. Many are approaching—or have surpassed—their initial 30- to 40-year lifespans (though upgrades can extend their lives to 60 years). Early nuclear adopters like France and Germany are curtailing their programs, even though analysts—including the authors of a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—say nuclear is necessary to keep worldwide carbon emissions in check. Emerging economies may take up the mantle: Planned reactors in China, Russia, and India could keep the world's inventory stable. Each line represents a single reactor. Colors along the stripe indicate the four stages of the reactor's life cycle. Marker indicates the reactor type: Generation IThese are prototype and early power reactors. Generation IIDesigned to operate for about…

Sometimes it feels like our hard drives are full, but there are ways to improve how much you can remember. UCLA psychiatrist Andrew Fuligni says cramming is not effective, especially if it comes at the price of sleep, because that's when the brain shifts memories to long-term storage. Ample studies show memory tricks work. To remember someone's name, concoct some visuals to go with it. Or try an acronym where each letter stands for something you want to remember. A study at Fairfield University in Connecticut showed the more photos people take—outsourcing memory to an external device—the less they remember.…

It's not just gravity that feeds Wiffle balls into the pitching machine. The dynamics of air flow fuel the rapid-fire action. 1 Ready Even when air seems still, its molecules constantly jiggle in random directions. But when molecules speed out of the leaf blower, the energy that was fueling the random motion instead focuses on traveling in a single direction. 2 Set The random motion of molecules contributes to air pressure. Without it, the focused air streaming from the leaf blower has a lower pressure than the jiggling air in the vertical loading tube. This pressure difference sucks air from the loading tube into the elbow. 3 Action Drop a Wiffle ball in the loading tube, and the pressure difference will pull it into the elbow, along with the air…

Robert Simons intended to design real cars for a living. But when his sketches drew Hollywood's attention during an internship, he turned to sci-fi instead. This year, the 25-year-old concept designer created a weaponized exoskeleton for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. But he's most excited for the levitating racecar in Momentum, which is due out in December. How did you get into imaginary vehicle design? I grew up on job sites with my dad, around backhoes and huge trucks, but I didn't draw them. I'd look at the parts and draw robots based on them. What does a concept designer do? My job is to get the ball rolling. Normally I'll crank out two or three sketches a day and we'll go back and forth until we get something the client…

Short answer Excellent skull design. A One day in 1976, psychiatrist Philip May asked his colleague at the University of California, Los Angeles a peculiar question: “Why don't woodpeckers have headaches?” May specialized in treating schizophrenia, but proposed a radical shift: How, he wanted to know, might an animal that repeatedly slams its head into a tree trunk at 16mph keep from getting brain damage? May started his research with a pair of pickled woodpeckers borrowed from a zoologist. In studying their cranial anatomy, he and his collaborators found a patch of spongy bone at the front of the skull, which they thought might act like a shock absorber. Woodpeckers also have a bone called the hyoid, which supports the tongue and then winds all the way around the bird's…