Popular Mechanics March/April 2022

JENNIFER LEMAN News Editor Hey! Come check out this rock. Moon or Mars? Titan! This moon of Saturn blows our moon and Mars out of the water. Its surface is covered in water ice and liquid methane lakes. The upcoming NASA Dragonfly mission will search for signs of life. Coolest Thing on My Desk Does anyone actually know what day it is? Fortunately, my vintage Perpetual Ring-A-Date Wall Calendar by Euroway helps me keep track. CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP RESEARCHING Chairs! To me, chairs perfectly sit (ha) at the juncture between form and function. Some are beautiful but completely nonfunctional, while others are ugly but extremely functional. To make something that exhibits both qualities is magic. I highly recommend the documentary Chair Times by Vitra on Vimeo. Best Thing POP Has Taught Me (So Far) I’ve spent a lot of…

DaVinci Resolve is Hollywood’s most popular software! Now it’s easy to create feature film quality videos by using professional color correction, editing, audio and visual effects. Because DaVinci Resolve is free, you’re not locked into a cloud license so you won’t lose your work if you stop paying a monthly fee. There’s no monthly fee, no embedded ads and no user tracking. Editing, Color, Audio and Effects! DaVinci Resolve is the world’s only solution that combines editing, color correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post production all in one software tool! You can work faster because you don’t have to learn multiple apps or switch software for different tasks. For example, just click the color page for color, or the edit page for editing! It’s so incredibly fast! Professional Editing DaVinci Resolve is…

▶ As a product tester for PopMech, I’m constantly opening boxes and severing packaging and strapping, so I use knives all the time. But I rarely stop and learn about a knife’s unique backstory like I did with my TL-29, a simple, single-blade pocketknife that handles well, sharpens easily, and has a fold-out screwdriver that locks in place. I’ve had this knife for decades, but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that it had a specific name and reputation. Knife enthusiasts refer to it as an electrician’s pocketknife, not so much for its main blade but for its screwdriver; you sharpen the side of that blade, turning it into a wire stripper. Dozens of reviewers consider the knife to be the last word in pocket cutlery, and the U.S. military…

WHITTLE → The knife works remarkably well as a whittler, thanks to a beefy handle that provides a good grip and a blade that takes a nice edge. I sharpen a point on tomato stakes and make wood plugs (shaped sort of like golf tees) to wedge into holes where a screw has stripped out. SCRIBE → When you need to mark a precise cut line, nothing beats a mark scribed with a knife. It’s narrow, it’s sharp, and it won’t smudge off. It’s as accurate as it gets. The spear-point blade on the TL-29 performs wonderfully in this respect. Just run it along the edge of a square. SCRAPE → That narrow screwdriver blade works wonders when you need to scrape gunk out of a narrow channel. Whether it’s scraping with…

IN A GROUNDBREAKING 2021 EXPERIMENT, surgeons from NYU’s Langone Health connected a genetically modified pig kidney to the blood vessels of a brain-dead organ donor on life support. The pig’s organ filtered waste from the woman’s blood and produced urine, just like a human kidney, for the entire 54-hour experiment. This first-of-its-kind procedure could signify pig kidneys as a transplant option for more than 90,000 Americans waiting for such an operation. Transplanting organs is difficult, because our immune system is programmed to destroy anything it doesn’t recognize as native to the body. Animal-to-human transplants are extra challenging because most mammals, including pigs, carry a gene that allows their body to make a sugar found in cell membranes called alpha-gal. But that gene is inactivated in some species of primates, including humans.…

Lone star ticks can transfer alpha-gal sugar molecules through their saliva when they bite you, spurring an immune system response that sends a flood of antibodies to attack the sugar. If your body overproduces those antibodies, your immune system might also attack the alpha-gal found in animal food products such as pork, beef, gelatin, and milk. This can lead to an allergic reaction ranging from hives to nausea to, in extreme cases, anaphylaxis. Alpha-gal syndrome—unique for its immune system response to a sugar (most allergic reactions are triggered by a protein)—has no cure, but sometimes symptoms fade over time. Meanwhile, Revivicor breeds GalSafe pigs for human consumption in addition to creating organs safe for transplants, so meat lovers with an alpha-gal allergy could soon enjoy the occasional slice of bacon.…