Popular science usa 2013 12 by Science and Technology

BioniC EyE•unCRaShaBlE CaR•CanCER DEtECtoR•SupERSoniC DRonE RoBot DoCtoR•BullEt-pRoof hElMEt•SMaRtphonE BREathalyzER anD MoRE!

Maltmaster Brian Kinsman tests the 18 year old

Whisky pot stills, the same as the original stills used by William Grant in 1887

Special Promotion

Tour Glenfiddich...

WHISKY TOUR INSIDE THE APP

From Anywhere in the World At Popular Science we are all about innovation. While it’s possible to find out about the newest gadgets and latest models from a host of wonderful sites that are everywhere online, we make it our mission to hunt down and report specifically on those companies and individuals who are breaking the boundaries, who are changing the game, who are shifting paradigms. The pioneers. We want to bring you stories about things that will fundamentally change our lives and experiences. Our reporters recently came across a little-known technology start-up called Condition One that is developing a three dimensional, interactive video technology that we immediately recognized as the first of its kind. Condition One is the brainchild of Danfung Dennis, a respected war correspondent photojournalist and ACADEMY AWARD® Nominee. Danfung’s goal was to try and bring the audience more directly into his dispatches so that they could feel more connected to events that were unfolding. Guided by his experience of being “in the moment,” Condition One employs sophisticated original code to map footage shot in extreme wide angle onto an active virtual panorama around the user, cleverly utilizing the iPad’s accelerometers to allow you to look all around the filmed events in real time. Imagine being able to step into the psyche of another person’s mind, actually seeing the world from their viewpoint. This is a step closer to full immersion. Guess what? You don’t have to imagine that any more. Although the inspiration for Condition One was bringing people closer to the news, it is equally good at bringing us closer to any location that interests us. We’ve already partnered with scientists at Cern’s LHC to give our audience a virtual panoramic tour of one of the most important ongoing physics experiments in the world. Now we’re partnering with Glenfiddich to transport you to Scotland, where arguably the most important whisky making in the world takes place. To ensure that our virtual film would be of the highest quality, we actually sent a specialized film crew all the way to the tiny village of Dufftown in Speyside, Scotland, Glenfiddich’s only distillery. Working closely with their expert craftsmen and women, we’ve designed the tour so that you will not only learn about the fine art and science of Glenfiddich whisky making, you’ll also feel like an honored guest. Trust us, it’s just like being there. But don’t just take our word for it, download the app now.

Glenfiddich, “the valley of the dear,” located in picturesque Dufftown, Scotland

Map of the distillery grounds

Download the free Whisky Tour app and experience it for yourself

To learn more about the fascinating world of single malts, visit

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Contents

VOLUME 283 NO. 6

DEPARTMENTS 04 From the Editor 06 Peer Review 09 Megapixels 95 FYI: Could a virgin birth ever happen? 104 From the Archives

DECEMBER 2013

2 6 TH A N N U A L B E S T O F W H A T ’ S N E W THE 100 HOT TES T INNOVATIONS OF THE YE AR 22 Health 26 Entertainment 33 Home 36 Hardware 41 Engineering 45 Auto 52 Aerospace 58 Security 62 Gadgets 70 Software 74 Recreation 78 Green

HEADLINES

10 Reshaping memories in the lab 12 A whale’s life, written in earwax 14 The end of animal testing 16 An exoskeleton arm for heavy lifting 19 How to ship a 50-foot-wide superconducting magnet

HOW 2.0

81 Mars rover replicas built by kids 84 A 3-D–printed mechanical computer 88 POPULAR SCIENCE’s best crowdfunded projects 90 A biometric toy box 91 Turn a few pennies into a battery

30 SO LONG, DEAR CONSOLE. WE KNEW YOU WELL. Why the eighth generation of gaming systems will be our last By Colin Lecher

43 THE ARCTIC OPENS UP As its ice melts, the Arctic becomes the next frontier. By Amber Williams

COURTESY CHEVROLET

56 THE PROBLEM OF SPACE JUNK What kinds of objects orbit Earth and where are they? By Kate Baggaley and Pitch Interactive

Access videos, animations, and more with the POPSCI Interactive app. Just hover your smartphone over pages with this icon.

Cover illustration by Graham Murdoch

68 THE INTERNET OF YOU

CHEVROLET CORVETTE STINGRAY, PG. 49

How wearable technology will turn human beings into the next interface By Corinne Iozzio

DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 0 3

From the Editor

THE FUTURE NOW

DECEMBER 2013 / POPUL AR SCIENCE Editor-in-Chief Jacob Ward Design Director Todd Detwiler Executive Editor Cliff Ransom Managing Editor Jill C. Shomer EDITORIAL Articles Editor Jennifer Bogo Editorial Production Manager Felicia Pardo Senior Editor Martha Harbison Information Editor Katie Peek, Ph.D. Projects Editor Dave Mosher Senior Associate Editors Corinne Iozzio, Susannah F. Locke Assistant Editor Amber Williams Editorial Assistant Lindsey Kratochwill Copy Editors Joe Mejia, Leah Zibulsky Researchers Kaitlin Bell Barnett, Erika Villani, Lily Vosoughi Contributing Editors Lauren Aaronson, Eric Adams, Brooke Borel, Tom Clynes, Daniel Engber, Theodore Gray, Mike Haney, Joseph Hooper, Preston Lerner, Gregory Mone, Steve Morgenstern, Rena Marie Pacella, Catherine Price, Dave Prochnow, Jessica Snyder Sachs, Rebecca Skloot, Dawn Stover, Elizabeth Svoboda, Kalee Thompson, Phillip Torrone, James Vlahos Editorial Interns Kate Baggaley, Mac Irvine

Evolutionaries

04 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY Photo Editor Thomas Payne Digital Associate Art Director Michael Moreno Junior Designer Michelle Mruk

“I’m thinking of our winners this year as the evolutionary acme of their categories.” Award winner in the Hardware category, is a combination of a monitor, a battery, servos, and wireless radios that were already available elsewhere. ItÕs the idea of stitching them together with software to form a rolling remote-presence avatar that makes the device notable. Remote presence has been around since the Õ90s. But this unit works, and itÕs actually available for purchase. The pattern is that the mechanisms and materials are waiting somewhere for the right partner to come along and make proper use of them. The result is that IÕm thinking of our winners this year as the evolutionary acme of their categoriesÑthe outcome of years of work and dozens of iterations. WeÕre proud to honor technological evolution and its revolutionary results. ItÕs just not much of a catchphrase.

POPULARSCIENCE.COM Digital Content Director Suzanne LaBarre Senior Editor Paul Adams Associate Editor Dan Nosowitz Assistant Editors Colin Lecher, Rose Pastore Video Producer Dan Bracaglia Contributing Writers Kelsey D. Atherton, Francie Diep, Shaunacy Ferro

Executive Vice President Eric Zinczenko Group Editorial Director Anthony Licata BONNIER TECHNOLOGY GROUP

Publisher Gregory D. Gatto Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Burnham Murphy Associate Publisher, Marketing Mike Gallic Financial Director Tara Bisciello Eastern Sales Director Jeff Timm Northeast Advertising Office Margaret Kalaher Photo Manager Sara Schiano Ad Assistant Amanda Smyth Midwest Managers Doug Leipprandt, Carl Benson Ad Assistants Kelsie Phillippo, Mojdeh Zarrinnal West Coast Account Managers Stacey Lakind, Sara Laird O’Shaughnessy Ad Assistant Sam Miller-Christiansen Detroit Managers Ed Bartley, Jeff Roberge Ad Assistant Diane Pahl Classified Advertising Sales Shawn Lindeman, Frank McCaﬀrey, Chip Parham Advertising Coordinator Irene Reyes Coles GM Digital business Development Shannon Rudd Digital Operations Manager Rochelle Rodriguez Digital Campaign Managers Wilber Perez, Ed Liriano Digital Managers Elizabeth Besada, Maureen O’Donoghue Group Sales Development Director Alex Garcia Senior Sales Development Manager Amanda Gastelum Sales Development Managers Charlotte Grima, Kate Gregory, Kelly Martin Marketing Design Directors Jonathan Berger, Ingrid Reslmaier Marketing Designer Sarah Hughes Online Producer Steve Gianaca Group Events & Promotion Director Beth Hetrick Director of Events Michelle Cast Events & Promotions Director Laura Nealon Promotions Managers Eshonda Caraway-Evans, Lynsey White Consumer Marketing Director Bob Cohn Publicity Manager Caroline Andoscia Caroline@andoscia.com Human Resources Director Kim Putman Production Manager Erika Hernandez Group Production Director Laurel Kurnides

Chairman Jonas Bonnier Chief Executive Officer Dave Freygang Executive Vice President Eric Zinczenko Chief Content Officer David Ritchie Chief Financial Officer Randall Koubek Chief Operating Officer Lisa Earlywine Chief Brand Development Officer Sean Holzman Vice President, Consumer Marketing Bruce Miller Vice President, Corporate Communications Dean Turcol General Counsel Jeremy Thompson For reprints email: reprints@bonniercorp.com

JACO B WA RD jacob.ward@popsci.com @_jacobward_

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MARIUS BUGGE

HEN I’M ASKED what the standards are for our annual Best of WhatÕs New Awards, I tend to rely on a catchphrase: ÒIt should be revolutionary, not evolutionary.Ó But this year, IÕm 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 weÕre almost at the point where all great innovations take the environment into account (almost, but not quiteÑweÕre keeping Green separate for the moment). Last year, we began to honor software in its own category, because for every inventor putting something together in a garage, thereÕs another inventor putting something together on a laptop. And this year, our senior associate editor Corinne Iozzio pointed out a new pattern. Toss out the Òrevolutionary, not evolutionaryÓ phrase, she urged. ItÕs evolution that made so much of this stuff possible. SheÕs absolutely right. The mythology of innovation tends to highlight the rogue inventor who created an entirely new mechanism or material or the revolutionary who strayed from a mentor. Time and again, we encountered innovations that are imaginative combinations of existing ingredients. Think of each winner as a brilliant plate of food in a restaurant. The chef didnÕt invent chicken. He or she shopped for the best, combined it with other ingredients, and prepared it more skillfully than anyone else. The Beam, for instance, our Grand

Peer Review POPSCI.T UMBLR .COM

T WIT TER @POPSCI

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Running On Empty Most of the electric-vehicle coverage [“Fuel Boom,” October 2013] is still written from a gas-tank/gas-station mentality, which does not reflect an understanding of the EV refueling paradigm. The vast majority of EV charging does not take place at charging stations. It takes place at home or at work, wherever the car is parked. Bob Bruninga Glen Burnie, Md.

Control Issues

DR I VI N G FAC T O R S For decades, I cringed at the idea of going to a dealership and buying a car [“Why You Can’t Sell Me a Car,” October 2013]. The offerings reflect more the ideas of Detroit than what is of interest to the consumer. As an economist, I find you are absolutely correct—the value is terrible, and, as you suggest, will be worse in the future. Curt Yahnke Sioux Falls, S.D. 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. Alex Haase 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.

I do believe that self-driving technology is the future. However, your article [“Traffic Pattern,” October 2013] raised a red flag. You indicated that Google cars would return control to the driver if faced with an issue they can’t cope with. What about a heavy snowstorm in Michigan? Turning over control to a driver who gets little or no practice actually driving on icy, snowy Michigan winter roads is begging for lethal catastrophe. Eric Fischer Temperance, Mich.

Past As Prologue I am always interested in the glimpses of the future provided by POPULAR SCIENCE, and I loved the similarities between the electric Toyota racecar on the cover and the 1968 Urbmobile [“Taking the Wheel,” October 2013]. When the folks at Google give us a self-driving version of the Toyota racecar, that prediction will look pretty darn good. Byron Wood Scottsdale, Ariz.

THE FUTURE NOW

MAIN OFFICE 2 Park Ave., 9th Floor New York, NY 10016 popsci.com NEW SUBSCRIPTIONS popsci.com/subscribe SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES Change of address or subscription problems: Popular Science P.O. Box 420235 Palm Coast, FL 32142 386-597-4279 popsci.com/cs INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS Inquiries regarding international licensing or syndication: syndication@popsci.com LETTERS To the editor: letters@popsci.com FYI questions: fyi@popsci.com Ask a Geek: h20@popsci.com Story queries: queries@popsci.com Comments may be edited for length and clarity. We regret that we cannot answer unpublished letters.

FROM POPULARSCIENCE.COM

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 Sassone via Facebook

Just because everyone has a voice on the Internet doesn’t necessarily mean they should. I have no problem with the decision. David Swaldo via Facebook

06 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

Interaction with the readers is important. This isn’t the best solution. Make them sign in, maintain a profile instead. @DS_Scriggler via Twitter Hey, look! I’m commenting on an article full of comments about banning comments! Corey R. Wardrop via Facebook FWIW, I approve. Conversation about science is better when we don’t have to keep stopping to defend scientiﬁc inquiry. @Yuricon via Twitter

This product is from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources.

popul ar science / december 2013

cour tesy bo Wang and PhilliP ne Wmar k, hhmi/univer sit y of illinois at ur bana - chamPaign

Megapixels

WO RM P RO B L EMS

stor y by lindse y kr atochwill

wo 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 wormâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 parasiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth.

decem ber 2013 / P oPul ar science / 0 9

A 50-foot-wide magnet travels cross-country PAGE 19

HOT PENGp.U12INS

PLUS: An exoskeleton arm for heavy lifting PAGE 16

HEADLINES@POPSCI.COM

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ANCIENT REMAINS This mummy was once Amenhotep III, King Tut’s grandfather.

DECEMBER 2013

E D I T E D B Y S U S A N N A H F. L O C K E

Spotless Minds

How scientists are learning to shape our memory STOR Y BY V IRGINI A HUGHES

DOWN MEMORY LANE The human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and can store about 2.5 petabytes of information. But where you put your keys last night? The answer is always suspiciously unavailable.

OADSIDE 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 as a teen. One in fve not only didn’t notice the lie, but also recalled false memories about it PHOTOGR APH BY S AM K APL AN

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and rated that beverage as less desirable than they had before. Studies like these Studies have point to possible treatments found chemifor mental health problems. cal compounds Both PTSD and addiction disorders hinge on memories that can be that can trigger problematic used to subdue behaviors, such as crippling or even delete fear caused by loud noises or cravings brought about by the memories. sight of drug paraphernalia. Several studies have found chemical compounds that can be used to subdue or even delete memories in mice (and maybe someday in people). In June, a report led by an Emory University researcher showed that SR-8993, a drug that acts on the brain’s opioid receptors, can prevent a fear memory from forming. Researchers strapped mice to a wooden board for two hours—a stressful experience that later gave them a heightened sense of fear similar to PTSD. But mice given SR-8993 before or afer the stressful incident were less likely to end up this way. Another study identifed a drug, Latrunculin A, that can erase memories days later. The researchers trained rodents to consume methamphetamine in an environment with distinctive visual, tactile, and scent cues such as black walls, gridded foors, and the scent of vanilla or peppermint. Rodents that were injected with Latrunculin A two days later didn’t seek out meth when returned to that environment, but others did. Latrunculin A is known to mess up scafolding that supports connections between neurons. Considering how broadly these two drugs afect the brain, there’s a possibility of serious side efects. To make more targeted treatments, researchers will ultimately need to understand how the brain’s neurons encode each memory. Last year, Susumu Tonegawa at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that individual memories in mice leave telltale molecular signatures in the brain’s hippocampus region. In July, his group caused mice to falsely associate an old memory with a new context— essentially creating a false memory. First, they genetically engineered a mouse so that when its hippocampal cells were activated, they would be tagged with a protein that the researchers could switch on later. Then, they put the mouse in an unfamiliar cage. The next day, they moved it to a strikingly diferent cage (smelly with black walls). Then, at precisely the same time, they gave it an uncomfortable shock and switched on the tagging protein to briefy activate cells that had been active in the old cage. When they put the mouse back in the old cage, it froze as if afraid—as if it had a false memory of being shocked there. The idea of scientists manipulating memory does, naturally, sound a bit creepy. But it also points to some possible good: treatment for millions of people tormented by real memories. And that’s something worth remembering.

HEADLINES / THE BIG FIX STOR Y BY LILLI AN S TEENBLIK HWANG

A LI F E I N EA RWA X

Bridge in a Backpack THE PROBLEM

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.

VISUAL DATA As if their home in Antarctica weren’t cold enough, emperor penguins allow their exteriors to drop at least 7°F below their surroundings. The change helps the penguins stay warm, a recent paper showed. When the outer layer of feathers radiates heat to the sky, it becomes colder than its immediate environment, so heat ﬂows back in. The cycle keeps the temperature underneath the plumage constant—and the penguin alive. — M A C I R V I N E

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THE SOLU TION 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 to use it as a ramp over a 15-foot wall. –4.50C –5

–10

–15

–20

–25 –25.70C

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 used one (about a foot long) from a male blue whale to figure out when it hit puberty, what pollutants its mother passed along during nursing, and when it encountered pesticides and mercury. Next, the researchers plan to try to answer questions such as how many pregnancies a female has had and whether the noise of passing ships has physiological effects. —AMBER WILLIAMS

C LO CK W I S E F R O M TO P: C O U R T ESY U TA H STAT E U N I V E R S I T Y; M A R K J O N ES R OV I N G TO R TO I S E PH OTO S / G E T T Y I M AG ES ; C O U R T ESY U N I V E R S I T É D E STR A SBOUR G AND CENTR E NATIONAL DE L A R ECHER CHE SCIENTIFIQUE ( CNR S ) , STR A SBOUR G, FR ANCE

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Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. ÂŠ2013 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.

HEADLINES / SUBJECTIVE MEASURES COLUMN BY ERIN BIBA

ILLUSTR ATION BY RYAN SNOOK

Ninety percent of drugs that pass animal testing then fail in human trials.

From Chimp to Chip How to get rid of animal testing

AST 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 animal14 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

based methods are being equaled or surpassed by other means. And the result is better science overall. Over the last 10 years, we’ve started replacing rodents with human cells in drug toxicity tests. But the biggest hurdle is probably testing efficacy: how well a drug treats a medical condition. A common tack is to genetically manipulate mice to imitate human diseases, but human and mouse genes still behave differently. In part because of this, 90 percent of drugs that pass animal testing then fail in human trials. Organs on a chip are one alternative. The thumbsize devices combine a thin layer of human cells with microchips that pump bloodlike fluid through them. At Harvard’s Wyss Institute, researchers have built a human gut-on-a-chip that replicates intestinal muscular contractions and a lung-on-a-chip with airsac and capillary cells that exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. The pseudo-lung can get infected and mimic complicated diseases such as chemotherapy-induced pulmonary edema. The institute is also working on chips for bone marrow, heart, and even brain tissue. Computer models can help replace animals too. In the relatively new field of systems biology, scientists are making digital maps that simulate entire systems of the human body, down to the molecule. The Center for Systems Biology at the University of Iceland recently finished modeling all the chemical interactions of human metabolism and is starting on the blood. Last year, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco used a computer to predict negative side effects in on-market drugs with about 50 percent accuracy. That accuracy will only get better. Human studies are also getting stronger. Lab animals are usually genetically identical clones, but people have lots of DNA differences that can affect how a drug works. For example, in 2010 it was discovered that the popular heart-attack-prevention drug Plavix is less effective for nearly one in three patients because of variances in their metabolisms. Now, gene tests can help doctors choose whether or not to prescribe it, and similar tests could do the same for other drugs. By relying on cloned animals and cells, we’ve probably been screening out helpful medicines before they even get to human trials. Some animal testing will remain scientifically necessary for a long time. Studying visual perception, for example, requires a working eyeball connected to a brain (until a computer perfectly mimics it). But the more research options we create, the better science we’ll have.

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ILLUSTR ATION BY TRE VOR JOHNS TO N

WHAT IS IT ?

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A BAT TERY-POWERED EXOSKELETON ARM TH AT M AKES YOU STRONGER

“

Our Titan Arm exoskeleton uses a motorized elbow joint to increase someone’s weightlifting 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 elbow joint and can add resistance

to help you build up your own muscles. You can also engage a ratchet brake, allowing you to hold something at a speciﬁc angle. Joint sensors record the range of motion and send it to a microcomputer on your back, which can relay it via Wi-Fi so that a doctor could remotely oversee the progress of physical therapy. Unlike most exoskeletons currently on the market, our prototype is designed speciﬁcally for the upper body, and at $1,500, it costs less than many other suits. The name? We went with Titan after the superpowerful Greek deities.” Nick McGill is an engineering graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. He developed the suit with classmates Elizabeth Beattie, Nick Parrotta, and Nikolay Vladimirov.

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Sheep 8

Galapagos tortoise 1,360

Elephant 7

Sperm whale 7

HEADLINES / TIMELINE STOR Y BY AMBER WILLI AMS

How to ship a 17-ton superconducting magnet across the country

hysicists 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.

By the Numbers

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.

START The magnet sat in

Building

Width: 50 feet Weight: 17 tons Distance: 3,200 miles Cost to move: $3 million

At midnight on June 24, the truck drove along the William Floyd Parkway as a police escort set up a rolling road closure, shutting down

Several trees along local roads were removed to accommodate the behemoth ahead of time. The magnet took up all four parkway lanes.

at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

64 15 MPH

The truck arrived at a Long Island marina two hours later, where an extralarge crane transferred the magnet to a barge.

Top speed

Because of high waves, the barge harbored in Chesapeake Bay for

~2 ft. Clearance per side on a I-355 toll collection area

FINISH

days.

The moving team built a steel structure around the magnet to help it remain ﬂat during the trip.

In its casing, the magnet now weighed

-wheel flatbed truck.

The barge traveled up the Mississippi, Illinois, and Des Plaines rivers. It didn’t encounter problems going through lock systems and had to stop only once because of fog in Tennessee.

Lifted back onto its truck, the magnet traveled over Illinois highways for three nights.

919

With rollers, rigging, and jacks, they maneuvered it onto a specially adapted

~500–1,000 feet at a time.

COUR TESY BR OOKHAVEN NATIONAL L ABOR ATOR Y

TRAVEL ADVISORIES

53 tons.

For the next three and a half weeks, it traveled down the East Coast, around Florida, and through the Gulf of Mexico.

Tugboats Trident and Miss Katie guided the barge, and accelerometers mounted on the magnet warned the team in real time if it was rocking too much.

JULY 26 / ARRIVAL AT FERMI / 4:07a.m. Now the magnet sits in a staging area about a mile from where it will ultimately reside in a new building currently under construction. Over the next few months, physicists will inspect the magnet for damage, although they won’t know whether it will work until it’s hooked up to the rest of the equipment.

DECEM BER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 1 9

We create chemistry that makes mosquitoes love to stay away.

In villages where malaria is a lethal threat, we supply Interceptor®* nets that stop mosquitoes and keep kids safe. But the nets save more than kids’ lives. With the dramatic decrease in infection, everyday activities like playing or going to school are possible again. A healthier, more educated population is a key to reducing poverty. When mosquito nets help the community ﬂourish, it’s because at BASF, we create chemistry.

www.wecreatechemistry.com *INTERCEPTOR® IS NOT OFFERED FOR SALE IN ALL COUNTRIES. ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE. INTERCEPTOR IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF BASF.

2 6 t h A n n u A l B E S t O F W h At â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S n E W

1 0 0 i n n o vat i o n s t h at w i l l shape the future reporting by: Michael Berk, rebecca Boyle, Berne Broudy, elbert Chu, Daniel Dumas, nicole Dyer, emily Gertz, alan henry, pavithra s. Mohan, Matt saford, harry sawyers, lawrence ulrich, and the editors of PoPular Science

I L LUS Tr ATI O N bY G r a H aM Mu rDocH

December 2013 / PoPul a r Science / 2 1

B E S T o F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

HEALTH

h e a lt h enter taInMent hoMe harDware engIneerIng auto aerosPace securIt y gaDgets soFtware recre atIon green

YEAR

S TAT S

N ATIO E V O TH INN

Pular s

Electrode array resolution 6 x 10 Battery life per charge 2.5 to 6 hours Color Gray scale

seco n D s Ight a rg us II

THE BIONIC EYE IlluSTr ATION By DON FOLE Y

22 / P oPu l ar scI e nce / DEC EMB ER 2013

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 degenerative diseases that affect two million people worldwide. And trials are planned to test the treatment of macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in Americans over the age of 60.

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B E S T o F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

Bac tr ack M oBIl e

Smartphone Breathalyzer roughly the size of a box of Tic Tacs, the BACtrack Mobile connects to an iPhone via Bluetooth to help people monitor their blood alcohol levels. The drinker breathes into the device, which senses booze the same way a police breathalyzer does: A catalyst breaks down the alcohol, releasing electricity that the BACtrack then measures. Such data could help bargoers decide when to stop drinking—or when to stay oﬀ the road. $150

AUTo DrUG DoSEr

IroBot anD Intouch he alth rP-VIta

A SAFEr ToIlET Pit latrines—used by 1.8 billion people—let fying insects in, which can spread diseases such as cholera. The SaTo is a simple piece of plastic that, with some concrete, retroﬁts latrines so they close themselves oﬀ between uses. When someone pours in water, a trapdoor snaps shut before all of it fows through, sealing the edges to block bugs. $1.50

Du n e M e D Ica l De V Ic e s M a rg InProB e

caNcer detector After about 40 percent of breast cancer lumpectomies, patients require follow-up surgery. The MarginProbe is the ﬁrst tool doctors can use during an operation to check whether the borders of a tumor they’ve cut out are cancerous (a sign they need to remove more). The device bounces radio waves at the cells, distinguishing healthy tissue from bad. In trials, the MarginProbe decreased second surgeries by 56 percent.

roBoT DoC Physicians are in short supply in the u.S. rP-Vita could help docs see more patients by reducing travel time within and between medical complexes. It’s the ﬁrst doctor-patient consultation bot that self-navigates to a chosen destination. It avoids obstacles such as gurneys and IVs and is equipped with two cameras (to relay responses such as eye dilation) and a stethoscope.

F r O M TO P: S A M K A Pl A N ; C O u r T ESy A M E r I C A N STA N dA r d ; C O u r T ESy d u N E M E d I C A l d E V I C ES

The Sedasys is the ﬁrst computerassisted sedation machine. It lets non-anesthesiologist doctors reduce the risk of oversedation by helping them give the sedative propofol and by monitoring vitals (such as blood oxygen and pulse) for modifying the dose as needed. The Sedasys is approved for routine colonoscopy and upper endoscopy.

a MerIcan s tanDarD s ato

24 / P OPu l A r SC I E NC E / Dec eMB er 2 0 1 3

ethIcon enDo– surgery seDasys

h e a lt h

M aDDak MorPh wheel s

Foldable Wheelchair Wheels Traveling with wheelchairs can be tough. Even when all folded up, they’re too big to stow easily in a small trunk or overhead compartment, in large part because of the wheels. Maddak’s Morph Wheels are a standard two feet tall, but jointed rims and solid tires let them fold into half that height. $950 au to no MIc tech no lo g Ies atI n e u ros tIMu l atIo n sys te M

Vascul ar Pathways accucath IV catheter

SAM KAPlAN (2)

FoolprooF IV Forty-eight percent of IV attempts end with complications, such as puncturing a vein’s far side. The AccuCath reduces that number. Once a needle is inserted, the medical practitioner pushes a fexible guide wire out of it. As he slides the catheter over the guide wire, the wire’s coiled tip acts as a bumper to prevent the catheter from poking through the vein.

headache eraser Twenty-two percent of patients with cluster headache—one of the most excruciating ailments known—say they don’t have a treatment that works. The ATI Neurostimulation System uses six electrodes to stimulate the SPG nerve bundle behind the nose, killing pain signals. The least invasive pain neuromodulator, the system has a jellybean-size power box implanted beneath the cheekbone. The company is testing a similar version to treat migraines.

BIo DaP t V ers a Foot

Pro sPorts Prosthetic The Versa Foot is designed for extreme sports, such as snowmobiling. It has an adjustable air-compression shock absorber and a 28-degree range of motion (versus 5 to 10 degrees in other prosthetics) that allows standing on the toes or squatting with the heels planted. People can use it with or without a shoe. $2,245 DeceM Ber 2013 / P OPul Ar SCIENCE / 2 5

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ENTERTAINMENT D

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H e a lt H enter tainment Home Hardware engineering auto aerospace securit y gadgets software recre ation green

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Resolution 720p processor speed 1.9 gigahertz GPU cores 72 Weight 1.3 pounds Price $300

n v id i a sHiel d

a new gaming standard PHoToGr APH BY SAM K APl AN

26 / p opu l ar sci e nce / DEC EMB ER 2013

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 frst 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 fve-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 device’s controller layout. And users can stream more than 1,950 PC games through the Steam cloud-delivery service via a tether to an Nvidia-enabled PC. Also Nvidia says it plans to one day stream games from the company’s own servers over LTE. How’s that for mobile power gaming?

ProP St yling by alix winSby/theProPSt yliSt agency

S TAT S

®/TM trademarks ©Mars, Incorporated 2012

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B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

Hdmi 2.0

FASTEST HOMETHEATER CONNECTOR

though most feature films are now projected in 4K, home viewers have to watch them in lowly hD. that’s because the compression, delivery, and display of such large video files have yet to be standardized. in September, the hDMi Forum, an industry consortium, announced a crucial step toward a solution: hDMi 2.0. the specification ups the bandwidth of wired connections to 18 gigabits/second, enough to pipe 4K video to a compatible tV at up to 60 frames per second. wingnut films & parK road post prod. Hfr 3-d

a nKi d ri v e

Real-Life Videogame

the anki r/c cars are the ﬁrst toy racers that interact as they would in a videogame. an iPhone app constantly tracks each car’s location and calculates its most likely path around the loop. that data allows racers to deploy virtual weapons (think blasters and tractor beams) to get ahead. each car also has a memory, so the more a user plays with it, the faster and deadlier it becomes. $199 (two cars and track)

3-D THAT DAZZLES

For all the splashy effects, 3-D films suffer from a serious shortcoming. because the picture refreshes at 24 frames per second (the same rate as 2-D films), our eyes can easily perceive the flickering between frames. when he began shooting The Hobbit trilogy in 2010, director Peter Jackson decided to try something new and capture the movies at 48fps—a format called high frame-rate 3-D. the faster format reduces annoying flickering effects and creates more-realistic movement.

JH audio JH13 witH freQpHase

audio sounds best when each frequency reaches the eardrum at the same time. the Jh13 is the ﬁrst earphone pair to provide that level of accuracy. engineers at Jh audio alter the length and shape of the tubes that extend from the drivers so that each signal arrives at the listener’s eardrum within 1/100th of a millisecond—almost simultaneously by human perception. from $1,099 28 / P oPU l a r Sc i e nc e / dec emBer 2 0 1 3

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big-screen oleDs promise the best picture—fast refresh rates, oﬀ-the-charts contrast levels. but you couldn’t get one, until now. the S9 Series is the ﬁrst big-screen oleD on the market in the U.S. the 55-incher delivers all an oleD should, with a bonus. curved glass further immerses the viewer—a feature that will be more important as screen sizes increase. $9,000 google cHromecast

THE EASIEST SYNC chromecast frees web videos from tiny device screens. the dongle plugs into a tV’s hDMi jack and connects wirelessly with a phone, tablet, or Pc. within a video app, such as youtube, users tap the “cast” icon. the app relays the source Url to the dongle to stream to the tV. $35

CONVINCING VIRTUAL REALITY Virtual reality is one of the white whales of the technology industry. the oculus rift is the ﬁrst headset to successfully immerse users in other worlds—be it a fantastical land or the surface of the moon. the key to the system is a sensor array that tracks the pitch, yaw, and roll of a player’s head every millisecond. the rift refreshes the image it pulls from a connected Pc every two milliseconds, adjusting to every movement. $300 (developer version)

so l re pu Bl ic decK

Long-Range Wireless Speaker Most bluetooth speakers claim a range of 30 to 50 feet—on a good day. the DecK sextuples that distance. engineers modiﬁed the speaker’s bluetooth transmitter to pull more power from the onboard battery, which helps transmit the signal up to 300 feet. $200 mic roso f t Kinect fo r X BoX o ne

PRECISION BODY MAPPING the new Kinect is 10 times as accurate as its predecessor. a high-def camera and an infrared sensor capture a body’s movements—right down to the ﬁngertips—in any light. algorithms interpret the data to map skeletal and muscular movement, estimate heart rate, and track emotions. Developers will be able to use that data to code games that play oﬀ a gamer’s every tick, blink, or gasp. $499 (with Xbox one) decemBer 2013 / P oPUl ar Science / 2 9

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

E N T E R TA I N M E N T ES SAY BY COlIN lECHER

SO LONG, DEAR CONSOLE. WE KNEW YOU WELL. Y orty-one years ago, Magnavox introduced the frst cartridge-based console, the Odyssey. Seven gene generations later, the boxes have become fxtures in our entertainment centers. What’s n not to love? Consoles represent the pinnacle of electronic engineering (the PlayStation 4’s gr graphics processor, for example, can perform 1.8 trillion operations per second). Ye 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 diferent 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 in 2012.) And cloud services such as OnLive stream games directly over the Internet. As a result, developers no longer need to choose between the Sony and Microsof ecosystems or spend time coding titles for both platforms. Games can now be console agnostic. Beyond that, what passes for a console is also changing. The Razer Edge Pro, a Windows 8 tablet, can download and render console-quality titles, such as Dishonored and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The Nvidia Shield [page 28], an Android-based handheld, can stream PC games. Both devices have powerful enough graphics engines—the Shield’s chipset can handle nearly a trillion operations per second—to drive an image on an HDTV over HDMI and do so with little sacrifce in quality. In this democratized gaming world, where consumers have more places to get games and more ways to play them, consoles can’t compete. Right now, a couple of people in a basement can release a game instantly in the Google Play store and make a solid proft charging a few bucks per download. And it won’t stop at small start-up vendors. If tablets can play blockbuster games, big-name developers can cut themselves of from Sony and Microsof too. Consoles are going the way of CD players—and for better or worse, the eighth generation will likely be our last.

Generation 1

Generation 2

Generation 3

Generation 4

8 g ame consoles from 8 gener ations

Generation 5

Generation 6

Generation 7

1. Magnavox odyssey (1972) 2. Atari 2600 (1977) 3. Nintendo Entertainment System (1983) 4. Sega Genesis (1988) 5. Sony PlayStation (1994) 6. Microsoft Xbox (2001) 7. Nintendo Wii (2006) 8. Microsoft Xbox one (2013)

30 / P oPU l a r Sc i e nc e / dec emBer 2 0 1 3

Generation 8

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

HOME

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S TAT S Weight 1.3 pounds Battery 4 volts Speed 230 rpm Torque 27 pound-feet Price $50

WO R X S D S E M I AU TO M ATIC CO RD LE S S D RI V E R

SWAP BITS LIKE BULLETS

PHOTOGR APH BY SAM K APL AN

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 without it. DECEMBER 2013 / POPUL A R SCIENCE / 3 3

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ROCK WE LL CO MPAC T C IRC U L A R S AW

Small Saw, Big Bite Most small circular saws are too wimpy to cut a two-by-four, so Rockwell squeezed contractorgrade gearing into a handyman-friendly tool. A parallel gearset helps an ultra-thin 4.5-inch blade plunge deep into lumber without sacriﬁcing any of the power provided by a ﬁve-amp motor. $99

URBNE ARTH URBMAT

ROLLOUT GARDEN The reusable UrbMat is an all-in-one system that helps prevent woes for new gardeners. It comes with built-in tubing to irrigate plants directly and signiﬁcantly reduce water waste. Thick landscaping fabric, meanwhile, helps block weeds and keeps plants spaced for optimum growth. Pre-fertilized “seedballs” come in 23 varieties, including carrots, chard, spinach, and herbs. $55

PHILIP S H UE

LIGHTBULBS WITH BRAINS

NETATMO PERSONAL WE ATHER STATION

RAIN CHECK Wi-Fi–enabled Netatmo modules let users generate and share hyper-local weather reports online. Eventually, Netatmo plans to combine the data into maps that could put the National Weather Service to shame. $180 (one indoor and one outdoor module)

34 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

FROM LEF T: COURTESY PHILIPS ; SAM K APL AN ( 2 )

How many electricians does it take to install a smart lighting system? Zero—if it’s the Hue. Homeowners just need to screw in the multicolor LED bulbs, connect a wireless hub to their router, and download an app. They can control a network of up to 50 bulbs from a smartphone or other device. $200 (hub and three bulbs)

HOME

RYOBI HYBRID TRIMMER

TRIM WHILE YOU CHARGE

JO H N DE E RE X 7 0 0 S IGN AT U RE SERIE S TR AC TO RS

MOWING MADE SIMPLE

Detachable mower decks are the workhorses of consumer tractors, yet they can be toilsome to hook up. The AutoConnect system on John Deere’s X700 series tractors lets drivers ready a mower in less than a minute—without any tools. The operator need only drive over the deck to connect the tractor’s accessory driveshaft, attach a brace in front, and pull a lever to raise it into position. $10,500 (with mowing deck)

When a batterypowered tool runs out of juice, users typically have to wait through the recharge cycle before they can start work again. The Ryobi hybrid trimmer can run corded in the meantime, a ﬁrst for yard tools. Engineers included circuitry for both AC and DC power in the trimmer’s motor. That ﬂexibility also means users can default to corded power or just use the battery when they need a longer reach. $119

COR AVIN WINE ACCESS SYSTEM

NEVER WASTE WINE AGAIN Uncorking a bottle of wine immediately begins degrading the vintage’s ﬂavor. The Coravin lets a user pour without pulling the cork, keeping the beverage fresh to enjoy another day. The system’s hollow needle plunges through the cork, and a canister pressurizes the bottle with inert argon gas. The pressure lets wine pour without introducing oxygen. When the needle is removed, the cork reseals. $299

FROM TOP: COURTESY JOHN DEERE; SAM K APL AN

DYS O N H A RD D C 56

Fastest Floor Cleaner

Sweeping, mopping, and waiting for wood or linoleum ﬂoors to dry is a drag, so Dyson invented the DC56 to get the job done in a swipe. Its 104,000rpm motor generates enough suction to pull crumbs, dust, and hair into the cordless vacuum’s cylindrical bin. Meanwhile, a disposable wet wipe soaks up stuck-on grime. Users can swap the 4.86-pound device’s mopping attachment for two other tools to vacuum high-up or otherwise hard-to-reach places. $330

DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 3 5

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

HARDWARE

H E A LT H ENTER TAINMENT HOME HARDWARE ENGINEERING AUTO AEROSPACE SECURIT Y GADGETS SOFTWARE RECRE ATION GREEN

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S TAT S Screen 17 inches Battery life 8 hours Speed Up to 3 mph Price $16,000 PHOTOGR APH BY SAM K APL AN

36 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

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 sound like a weed whacker running loose in the office. What better way to pull up to a boardroom table from the beach?

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To give gamers an edge, BMW teamed up with PC accessories maker Thermaltake to design a mouse that’s both fast and well ﬁtted, so marathon sessions remain comfortable. The palm piece is adjustable by height and tilt; it also ﬂoats up to 1.5 inches above the single-piece aluminum base, letting air circulate around the hand to keep gamers cool. An 8,200-DPI laser sensor allows the quickest reaction time possible.

S TAT S Programmable buttons 7 Laser sensor 8,200 DPI Price $70

ALL-DAY LAPTOP LIFE 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 energywasting 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.

HP OFFICEJ E T PRO X576DW

SPEEDIEST PRINTER At 70 pages per minute, the Oﬃcejet Pro X576dw is the fastest desktop printer. HP scrapped the traditional inkjet head, which races back and forth across a page, for a stationary head that uses 42,000 nozzles at once to apply ink to the entire width of a page. The method produces better quality photos and graphics at a lower cost per page than a laser printer, formerly the go-to for speed. $799

L ENOVO THINKPAD HELIX

A HYBRID DONE RIGHT Since Microsoft launched Windows 8 last year, computer makers have released dozens of hybrid PCs that promise both the power of a laptop and the portability of a tablet. The Helix is the ﬁrst convertible to make good on that promise. Thanks to a unique hinge, users can view the screen three ways: facing forward, backward, or detached. From $1,499 38 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

FORML ABS FORM 1

SHARPER 3-D PRINTING Up close, most 3-D– printed items have rough surfaces, a result of the typical printer, which stacks 100-micrometerthick layers of melted plastic. The Form 1 uses the technique stereolithography instead. A laser runs under liquid resin, hardening one 25-micrometer layer at a time. The products are the smoothest, most intricate of all consumer desktop 3-D printers. $3,299

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SAM K APL AN; COURTESY FORML ABS; SAM K APL AN; COURTESY INTEL

INTE L 4 TH - G ENER ATIO N CO RE PRO CES SO RS ( H A SWE L L)

Considering the extent of government surveillance, more people may want to take their online data out of the cloud. The N2 hard drive is the safest way to secure digital assets at home. Three nested layers protect 8 terabytes of storage. A sealed case blocks water up to 10 feet deep; an inch of insulation shields against high temperatures; and a steel shell prevents external damage. From $599

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WORLD’S LARGEST HIGHSPEED LAN

Speed At least 10 Gbps Scale 265 buildings Size Half-inch ﬁber Cost $15 million

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 considering that all 13,000 ports crank at that speed; eventually, Sandia aims to have a 100-gig network. Think of it as a miniature version of the Internet as it should be. DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 41

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

HIGHEST, FASTEST LOOPING COASTER visitors to valencia, California’s six flags magic mountain can now subject themselves to a world-record 160-foot vertical loop, blistering 0 to 70 mph acceleration, and weightlessness on the same insane ride. The dual magnetic-pulse propulsion system is similar to those that throw jets oﬀ aircraft carriers.

VErMEEr BP714

STRONG BRICKS, DIRT CHEAP Concrete-brick construction is cheap in the united states, but in developing nations, it’s often an unaﬀordable luxury. Traditional fred-earth bricks, meanwhile, disintegrate over time. The vermeer uses 55,000 pounds of pressure to make compressed earth blocks 20 to 30 percent stronger than u.s. cement-code requires. it can slam one out every 15 seconds using dirt and a small amount of cement.

u.S . N AV y/ WO O D S HOlE OCE ANOgr APHIC INS TIT uTE AlV IN

Born-Again Submersible

since 1964, Alvin has made more than 4,600 career dives in pursuit of bombs, hydrothermal vents, and the wreck of the Titanic. now, engineers at woods Hole are flling the iconic submersible with 21st-century technology. The reborn Alvin will dive 1.2 miles deeper (to four miles), haul twice the scientifc payload, and carry new sensors and instrumentation. it will open nearly the entire ocean to exploration and research.

NEES @ u C SD l HPOS T

LIFE-SIZE EARTHQUAKE SIMULATOR

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.

AKEr ArCTICH AND ArCTECH NB 508

SIDEWAYS ICEBREAKER

The nB 508, called Baltika, clears a wider path than any other ship. The hull is asymmetric, and when thrusters turn it sideways, it’s a massive knife, clearing a 160-foot-wide path through three feet of ice. Built for the russian ministry of Transport, Baltika is a rescue and oil-cleanup vessel, but it portends a new era of high-volume shipping traﬃc across the frozen top of the world.

42 / p opu l a r sC i e nC e / DEC EMB Er 2 0 1 3

gENSlEr SHANgHAI TOWEr

CHINA’S TALLEST STRUCTURE The 2,073-foot shanghai Tower, the third-tallest in the world, uses an interlocking system of columns and trusses to soar without a massive footprint. amenities and the world’s fastest elevators, complete with airplane-style pressurization, make it a vertical city of its own.

CloCkwise from Top: kevin Hand; CourTesy Gensler ; CourTesy aker

PrEMIEr rIDES Full THrOT TlE

ENGINEERING sTor y By AMBEr WIllI AMS addiTional r ep or TinG By K ATE BAgg AlE y AND M AC Ir V INE

THE ARCTIC OPENS UP 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

Cubic feet of recoverable natural gas

MILES

84 days per year the northwest passage is accessible to fortifed ships today

122

VErSuS

days per year the northwest passage will be accessible by late century

150

prospective deposits of rare-earth elements

estimated barrels of undiscovered, recoverable oil north of the arctic Circle

1,670 Trillion

Approximate mileage saved shipping through the Northwest Passage, rather than the Suez Canal

Percent of the world’s wood reserves in the region’s boreal forests

% of The world’s minerAls 40 20 15 10 11 8 9

fourTy-four billion

Barrels of recoverable liquefed natural gas

palladium diamonds platinum nickel cobalt zinc tungsten

10% Current percentage of the world’s total fshing catch in the arctic

DECEM BEr 2013 / p opul ar sCienCe / 4 3

I’m dreaming of a white... Haiku Winner of 19 international design awards, Haiku® is the unexpected gift of the holiday season. Hidden behind a seamless ﬁt and ﬁnish, Haiku’s revolutionary motor features Whoosh®, a proprietary algorithm that simulates a natural breeze. Haiku is recognized by Popular Science as the world’s quietest ceiling fan and rated by ENERGY STAR® as the world’s most energy efcient.

Make the season merry and bright. Use promo code PS1213 to receive a free LED kit* when you purchase a Haiku ceiling fan before December 31, 2013. Visit haikufan.com/ofer or speak to a consultant at 888-958-0205.

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B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

AUTO

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S TAT S System controllers 3 Price $37,605 (2014 Infniti Q50)

courteSy nISSan

n is s a n d irec t a da p ti v e s teering

Driving towarD autonomy

H e a lt H enter tainment Home Hardware engineering auto aerospace securit y gadgets software recre ation green

Autonomous cars have many hurdles to clear before reaching consumers, but they’re coming. Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have pledged to bring selfdriving cars to showrooms by 2020. This year, Nissan’s Infniti Q50 luxury sedan debuted one of the biggest steps yet toward that goal: the frst 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 and power assist for easier low-speed maneuvers and high-speed stability. And in the event of total power loss, a clutch restores mechanical control to the driver—that is, until the human driver becomes obsolete.

more auto award winners inside!

december 2013 / P oPul ar ScIence / 45

INTRODUCING A CAMERA

AS NIMBLE AS YOU ARE.

The powerfully portable Olympus OM-D E-M1 is one of the smallest and lightest cameras in its class. You get all the features you want, such as an ultra-large EVF, Dual FAST Autofocus System and dust, splash and freezeproof technology, in a compact, lightweight body. So unlike a bulky DSLR, it can go where you go. And since Micro Four Thirds lenses are smaller and lighter, yet still fast and powerful enough to capture incredible images, you can tell amazing stories from anywhere. www.getolympus.com/em1

Move into a New World

B E S T OF W H AT ’S N E W 201 3 B M W I3

CarbonFiber City Car M ER C ED E S - B EN Z S - C L A S S

THE SMARTEST RIDE 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

Before the i3, cars with carbon-fiber chassis cost between $250,000 and $2 million. BMW has sped up its injectionmolding 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. S TAT S Range 125 miles Weight 2,700 pounds Price $42,475

AU D I R18 E -T R O N Q UAT T R O

KICK-BUTT DIESELHYBRID RACER This year for the first time, a diesel-hybrid racer won the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race: Audi’s R18 e-tron Quattro. Diesel’s greater fuel efficiency meant fewer pit stops. Also, the car stores braking energy in a carbonfiber flywheel and then sends 150 kilowatts of juice to the front wheels via a pair of 75-kilowatt electric motors, which provided extra acceleration out of every turn. 47 / P O P U L A R S C I E N C E / D EC E M B E R 2 013

FO R D 1.0 - L I T ER EC O B O O S T

A TINY TURBO 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 fourcylinder in the Ford Fiesta hatchback. Fuel consumption should improve to 41 mpg or more on the highway. $17,500 (est.)

MA ZDA6 WITH I - ELOOP AND SK YACTIV- D

THE NOCOMPROMISE DIESEL The Mazda6 sedan features two fuelsaving 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 bestin-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.)

AUTO

C H E V R O L E T C O R V E T T E S T I N G R AY

The Fastest Car You Can Aﬀord

Speed tends to cost a lot. But the 190mph Corvette Stingray matches the technology and performance of much pricier sports cars, including $250,000-and-up Ferraris and Lamborghinis, with a $51,995 sticker price. The car’s chassis is aluminum; the body panels, composite. A 460-horsepower V8 engine pushes the Stingray to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. S TAT S

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY PORSCHE; COURTESY CHE VROLE T ( 2 ) . OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEF T: COURTESY MERCEDES ; COURTESY FORD ; COURTESY BMW; COURTESY AUDI

Top speed 190 mph Fuel economy Up to 30 mpg Price $51,995

PORSCHE PANAMER A S E- HYBRID

A PLUGIN THAT RESTORES RANGE The Panamera S E-Hybrid can fully charge its lithium-ion battery while in motion—one of the ﬁrst plug-in vehicles to do so. By diverting some engine power, it recharges its 9.4-kilowatt-hour battery in under an hour, restoring all-electric range to 22 to 33 miles at speeds of up to 83 mph. The 416-horsepower hybrid can race from 0 to 60 mph in 5.2 seconds and to a top speed of 167 mph. $99,975

CHE VROLE T SPARK E V

FAST, FLEXIBLE CHARGING Until now, electric cars that charged at varying speeds required separate and bulky onboard outlets. But the Spark debuts a new plug standard that many automakers are set to adopt. The threeway “combo plug,” created by auto engineering group SAE, puts household, 240-volt, or DC fast charging on the same lightweight, higher-capacity plug. The Spark is also the most eﬃcient electric car in America, with an EPArated 119mpg equivalent. $19,185

Z F & L E VA N T P OW ER G EN S H O C K

DOUBLE-DUTY SHOCK ABSORBERS

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

INNOVATIONS THAT ENHANCE OUR LIVES THE AUDACIOUS NEW OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 This revolutionary camera has ﬁnally taken the Micro Four Thirds Compact System Camera to the point where it provides the total DSLR shooting experience in an amazingly compact, lightweight, seamlessly ergonomic package. Its brilliant integration of advanced technology, innovative features, and astonishing speed of operation deliver a level of performance, responsiveness, and spectacular image quality, both in still images and HD videos, rivaling that of leading full-frame DSLRs. Here are some of the OM-D E-M1’s amazing features:

CUTTING-EDGE ELECTRONIC VIEWFINDER (EVF)

ULTRA-FAST, SUPER-PRECISE AUTOFOCUS (AF)

The E-M1’s superb EVF shows an ultra-hi-res 2,360k-dot image at a high-magniﬁcation 1.48X, automatically transfers the image from the 3.0-inch 1,037k-dot tilting touch-screen LCD when you lift the camera to your eye, and provides real-time visualization of camera settings including HDR Preview, Hue, and Chroma in a breathtaking 0.029 ms, simulating the look of an optical viewﬁnder.

The E-M1’s state-of-the-art, dual-mode, on-sensor AF system combines the high precision of contrast detection using 81 AF zones, and the super speed of phase-detection using 37 zones. Four different AF area sizes can be selected including Super Spot AF for pinpoint accuracy, and the DUAL FAST AF system captures extreme action subjects perfectly.

IN-BODY 5-AXIS IMAGE STABILIZATION (IS)

IMAGE SENSOR & IMAGE PROCESSOR

This unique sensor-shift Image Stabilization system minimizes the effects of handheld camera shake across 5 axes, compensating not only for horizontal and vertical shift like conventional systems, but also for vertical and horizontal angular rotation, oblique motion, and rolling camera shake movements. The result: Sharper handheld pictures of virtually any subject with any lens, even when shooting in low light or at long telephoto focal lengths.

The E-M1’s upgraded 16.3MP Live MOS sensor is integrated with a state-of-the-art TruePic VII image processor, delivering unprecedented speed and enhanced image quality especially in low-light and in images shot at sensitivities up to ISO 25600, and provides full-res framing rates up to a sizzling 10fps in Single AF with Tracking AF plus broadcast quality Full HD 1080p video capture in MOV and AVI formats.

FOR MORE INFO ON THE OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 VISIT GETOLYMPUS.COM/E-M1

Photo shot with OM-D.

• Size: 5.1” (W) x 3.7” (H) x 2.5” (D) * • Weight: 17.5 ounces* • Ergonomic and comfortable in your hands. *E-M1 body only

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

AEROSPACE E U ROPE A N S PAC E AG E NCY

THE EYES OF THE UNIVERSE D

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H E A LT H ENTER TAINMENT HOME HARDWARE ENGINEERING AUTO GAIA AEROSPACE SECURIT Y Aerospace innovations tend to be notable for a terrestriGADGETS al accomplishment. Perhaps it’s a simple benchmark like SOFTWARE speed (see: X-51 Waverider). Or perhaps it’s the fulﬁllment RECRE ATION of a maniacal desire to be personally rid of gravity (see: GREEN 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 French Guiana. By observing the motion, brightness, temperature, and composition of one billion stars 70 times each over the course of ﬁve years, Gaia will assemble a three-dimensional map of the galaxy. That map should tell us which stars are the survivors of galaxies swallowed by our own, and by showing the universe in aggregate, it may even be able to provide some clues as to the distribution of dark matter. There are sleeker ﬂying things—we’ve gathered them together for you here—but Gaia is more powerful than them all.

Diameter 36 feet Weight 2 tons Target area 1 billion stars

52 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

COURTESY ESA

S TAT S

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B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

VIRGIN GAL ACTIC/SCALED COMPOSITES SPACESHIP T WO

Launch Vehicle To reach space, Sir Richard Branson’s Spaceship Two must eventually pass Mach 3.5. This year, it exceeded Mach 1, making it the ﬁrst commercial spacecraft—an allcarbon-composite one, no less—to do so. Branson himself says he’ll be on the next test ﬂight in December. After that, you can go.

S TAT S Passengers 6 Wingspan 27 feet Length 60 feet Speed 2,500 mph Ceiling 361,000 feet

BAE SYSTEMS TAR ANIS

SUPERSONIC DRONE

54 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

NASA CHAMBER A

DARPA PHOENIX

SPACE ON EARTH

STAR SALVAGE

NASA’s vacuum chamber, upgraded to test the James Webb Space Telescope, can subject anything within its 400,000 cubic feet to the unyielding and deadly conditions of deep space while maintaining the scrubbed conditions of a clean room. Behind the 40-ton door, Chamber A can reach 11 Kelvin, making it the coldest place on Earth.

If one part of a satellite dies, the whole thing goes dark. The Phoenix robot harvests abandoned but functional antennas, solar array, and other communications gear from defunct satellites, attaches those components to mini satellites it carries with it, and redeploys the combination as a new unit. It’s the ﬁrst salvage platform in space.

BOEING/USAF X-51 WAVERIDER

MACH 5, SUCKERS On May 1, this 25foot, 4,000-pound test bed for future missiles survived the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight: three minutes at Mach 5. It’s the first true flight of a scramjet, a type of vehicle in which supersonic force pulls, burns, and accelerates oxygen without any moving parts (at these speeds, they’d melt).

FROM TOP: COURTESY VIRGIN GAL ACTIC; COURTESY BAE SYSTEMS

Current military drones just sort of putt-putt along. The Predator does a measly 135 miles per hour. The Reaper does only 300. BAE gave its unmanned combat aircraft system a Rolls-Royce Adour 951 engine, which pushes it into the oﬃcial “fast jet” category, likely faster than 700 miles per hour. That makes this drone the equal of a ﬁghter jet. It’s capable of transcontinental travel and aerial combat in addition to air-to-ground missions. Uh-oh.

A E R O S PA C E

AEROS AEROSCR AFT

HEAVY-DUTY AIRSHIP

Bulked up to haul up to 66 tons of cargo, this 400-foot craft can ascend or descend repeatedly via a helium compressor. And it’s not for vineyard tours or marriage proposals—the idea is to carry large amounts of supplies to and from any remote location. There’s no need for an airstrip: the Aeroscraft can lower its payload without having to touch down.

PROX DYNAMICS PD -100 BL ACK HORNET

FROM TOP: COURTESY AEROS ; COURTESY MARTIN AIRCR AF T COMPANY

MICRO UAV In a world of delicate, experimental nanodrones, the Black Hornet is the ﬁrst operational system deployed. A hand-launched observation drone, it can resist gusting winds, ﬂy for 25 minutes, and travel 3,281 feet from its operator. The autopilot can follow GPS coordinates to conduct a preplanned patrol or simply hover and stare. All in a drone that weighs less than 35 ounces.

MARTIN AIRCR AFT COMPANY P12 JETPACK

Personal Flight

In truth, ducted fans, not jets, propel Martin Aircraft’s creation, but who cares? It’s the jetpack dream made real. With computer-assisted flight controls, an autothrottle system, a carbon Kevlar roll cage, and a parachute (it can soar to 8,000 feet at 63 miles per hour), the P12 is the first personal-flight device that a sane human might volunteer to fly. And this year, a test pilot stepped onto the frame, strapped on the harness, and did just that.

KR ATOS DEF E NSE & SEC U RIT Y S O LU TIO NS L A S E R WE A P ON SYS TE M

DRONE KILLER It’s only a matter of time before another country deploys drones against us. Armed with a laser range ﬁnder, the Kratos system will ﬁre directed energy weapons at drone sensors to fry their electronics. Unlike ballistics, the weapon strikes nearly instantly, costs less than a dollar per shot, and doesn’t run the risk of stray bullets. After six years of development, the Navy debuts the system in 2014. DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 5 5

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A E R O S PA C E

ILLUSTR ATION BY PITCH INTER ACTI V E

THE PROBLEM OF SPACE JUNK

Altitude classification LOW EARTH ORBIT Most space activity happens at low altitude, which is cheapest to reach.

Pieces of debris 14,838 Debris 210

Active satellites 1,134* High Earth orbit 37,500–50,000 km

Satellites 23

MEDIUM EARTH ORBIT This relatively empty zone is a sweet spot for navigation satellites. GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBIT The 24-hour orbit fixes satellites above one longitude on Earth. HIGH EARTH ORBIT Satellites here can monitor the solar wind or large areas of the planet.

Phoenix payloads would target functional but hobbled satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

Debris 1,879

Geosynchronous orbit 35,786 km

Satellites 450

Medium Earth orbit 2,000–34,500 km

Satellites 87

All GPS satellites sit in a 12-hour orbit— high enough to cross the sky slowly but low enough for signals to remain strong.

U.S.

445

Russia China

115 110

Luxembourg

Japan

Types of satellites

Communication Imaging Science Navigation Technology tests Signals intelligence Other Weather

CleanSpace One will nudge debris in low Earth orbit into the planet’s atmosphere.

Countries with most pieces of debris Russia and U.S.S.R. U.S. China France Japan

Hubble 560 km International Space Station 420 km

2,449 Low Earth orbit 0–2,000 km

Earth

Satellites 554

Rocket body Satellite

10,680 Other

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 56 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

6,063 3,886 3,644 481 147

Types of debris 1,709

Debris 11,435

627 137 93 92 72 48 35 30

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. — K AT E B A G G A L E Y

*Total s i ncl u de 20 active satel l i tes and 48 p i e ces of deb ri s ab ove 50, 000 km, w hi ch are not p i ctured.

SO UR C ES : T H E DATA US ED TO B U I LD T HIS G R APHIC WA S PR OV IDED BY T H E UN IT E D STAT ES J OIN T S PACE OPER AT IO N S C EN T E R (J S P O C ) V IA W W W.S PAC E-T R ACK.O R G. ACT IV E S AT EL LIT E DATA COUR T ESY J ON AT HA N M c D OW EL L, H AR VARD - SM IT H SON I AN C E N T ER FO R A ST R OPH YS IC S. DATA CURRE N T A S OF OCTOB E R 2013.

Debris 1,266

Countries with most active satellites

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los al amos n ation al l a bor atory minim a x

X-Ray eveRywheRe 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 fve pounds. It can be whisked to accidents, crime scenes, battlefelds, airports, sidelines, and any other place that could beneft 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 develop a handheld prototype.

Weight 5 pounds Detector Cesium bromide Housing Carbon fber

58 / P oPu l a r SC i e nC e / dec emb er 2 0 1 3

CourteSy tribogeniCS

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B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

BOUNCE IMAGING EXPLORER

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 360degree 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

ENH A NC E D CO MBAT HELME T

BulletProof Helmet

The military’s Enhanced Combat Helmet can deflect rifle shots even at close range, yet it weighs the same as standard-issue Kevlar ones. The new helmet is made from a mesh of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene fibers. When woven and layered together in a specific way, they form a featherweight bulletproof material. The Marine Corps and Army started to distribute the new helmet this year. The Navy will follow suit in 2015.

AEROV IRONMENT PUM A AE

THE FIRST HAND-LAUNCHED COMMERCIAL DRONE About the size of an adult golden eagle, the Puma AE aircraft assembles in minutes and launches nearly as easily as a paper airplane. Upon takeoﬀ, a swivel cam drops from its cargo bay, giving the operator a 360-degree view. The craft is also equipped with infrared night vision and a laser illuminator to outline objects of interest. After a mission, the Puma can then land in water, mud, sand, or moving vehicles or even on a pile of rocks.

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FROM TOP: COURTESY U.S. MARINE CORPS; COURTESY AEROVIRONEMT

LOWCOST RECON

SECURITY

SANDIA NATIONAL L ABOR ATORIES NON-DETONABLE FERTILIZER CANARY

SECURE HOME IN A CINCH The Canary home security system is the ﬁrst that can adapt to one’s daily habits. It integrates data from a wide-angle HD camera, infrared motion sensor, temperature and humidity sensors, and microphone to distinguish an intruder from your excitable dog. The whole thing packs into a sleek shell the size of a Morton salt container. $199

BOOM BUSTER

S AMSUNG ROBOR AY

In 2012, ammonium nitrate fertilizer was used in about 65 percent of the 16,300 IEDs found in Afghanistan. Engineer Kevin Fleming developed a fertilizer that uses iron sulﬁte in the mixture to suppress detonation. Sandia chose to keep the forumula open-source so that it could more quickly be adopted in developing countries.

Roboray maps its surroundings in real time.

MOST AGILE BIPED

Roboray, developed by the University of Bristol and Samsung, brings engineers a step closer to a robotic SWAT team. The 4.6-foot-tall biped uses mapping software to help it get its bearings, and a suite of 53 actuators provides unprecedented agility. Roboray can 3-D–map its surroundings on the ﬂy, enabling it to quickly navigate through an environment and around obstacles without GPS.

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO SK YSWEEPER

S TAT S Height 4.6 feet Weight 110 pounds Vision Headmounted stereo camera

FROM TOP: COURTESY SAMSUNG ; SAM K APL AN

HIGHWIRE SNOOP Skysweeper inches along live power lines scouting for bad splices, frays, tangled branches, and other trouble spots. Developed by engineers at the University of California at San Diego, it will be the most aﬀordable and versatile power-line monitoring tool. Production versions of this will have induction coils to grab power from the lines and cameras and sensors to beam information to an inspection crew.

CA B EL A’S COLORPH A SE CAMOUFL AGE

BETTER BLENDER

Cabela’s new ColorPhase Camouflage gives hunters chameleonlike powers. Depending on the ambient conditions, the dyes in the fabric’s foliage pattern will change colors—becoming greener during the early fall, when temperatures are above approximately 65oF, and dull browns in late fall and winter. The camo could also be valuable on the battlefield, reducing the number of fatigue variations needed to conceal troops in different terrains. From $20 DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 6 1

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GADGETS

H E A LT H ENTER TAINMENT HOME HARDWARE ENGINEERING AUTO AEROSPACE SECURIT Y GADGETS SOFTWARE RECRE ATION GREEN

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S TAT S Apparent screen size 25 inches Weight 1.4 ounces Price $1,500 (Explorer edition)

GOOGLE GL ASS

TOTAL VISION

PHOTOGR APH BY SAM K APL AN

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

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just above eye level. It also has a videocamera, turn-byturn 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 Glass oﬀ as a novel accessory, but the fact is that we’ve only just begun to tap into its potential. About 2,000 developers are working to broaden its uses before the ﬁnal consumer version arrives next year. Glass—like the PC and the smartphone before it—represents a new way to display and transmit information. How we’ll use it from here is anyone’s guess.

ICONOCLASTIC. The world’s first F1.8 zoom. An F1.8 zoom, the 18-35mm lens is designed for APS-C format cameras. Allowing greater creative possibilities by setting new standards in photographic history.

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A DA PT

NSE IV E L E

H THROUG S E R EY YOU TEST TO CON PHO

See life, and Mount Moran, in the best light with TransitionsÂŽ adaptive lensesâ&#x201E;˘, which seamlessly adapt to the different lighting conditions from sunrise to sunset. Find out which Transitions lens is right for you by visiting Transitions.com/PopSci. To see all the entries, visit popsci.com/transitionscontest2013.

Winning Image! by Nicholas Barnhart

This sunrise photo was taken at Mount Moran in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, overlooking the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River. Mount Moran is one of my our favorite places to visit and photograph in the summer. My wife and I visit the national parks as often as possible and always make it a point to visit Grand Teton for its majestic beauty.

ADAPTIVE LENS ES

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MOTO RO L A MOTO X

A PHONE THAT KNOWS YOU

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 you don’t need to see them or respond to text messages while you’re driving. The more you use it, the better it gets. $200 (with twoyear contract)

CANON EOS 70D

THE SMARTEST VIDEO AUTOFOCUS

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)

B RUNTON H YDROGEN RE ACTOR Output 2 amps Cartridge capacity 8,500 mAh Price $150 (includes two cartridges)

Portable Power Station A single Hydrogen Reactor cartridge carries a week’s worth of smartphone power—more juice than any other portable source. When a user inserts one of the 3-inch cartridges into the Reactor, a catalyst frees electrons from hydrogen. The freed electrons move into a circuit that delivers power to gadgets over USB. The remaining hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce the process’s only byproduct: water vapor.

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FROM TOP: COURTESY MOTOROL A ; SAM K APL AN

S TAT S

GADGETS

BRINNO TLC200 PRO

ONE-STEP TIME LAPSE

Creating a time-lapse video usually involves a D-SLR and pricey imageprocessing software. The TLC200 camera is so simple that anyone can plop it down and end up with a high-quality time-lapse. The image sensor has larger-than-normal 4.2-micron pixels, so images are bright—even at night. The camera takes up to ﬁve images per second for a day, and onboard software stitches them into a 720p video. $300

SONY CYBER- SHOT DSC - QX100

A NEW TAKE ON PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY OCC IPITA L S TRU C T U RE SENSO R

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SAM K APL AN; COURTESY SONY; SAM K APL AN

THE FIRST MOBILE 3-D SCANNER

The Structure is the easiest way to digitize the world. The iPad-mountable 3-D scanner uses diﬀracted laser light to create a depth map, which it can merge with an image from the tablet’s camera to create 3-D renderings of objects. Three apps currently work with the Structure—one scans objects, one maps rooms, and one is an augmented-reality game—but Occipital also released an SDK to developers, so they can make even more applications. $350

No matter how much smartphone engineers manage to shrink image sensors, they haven’t found a good way to downsize a quality lens, so images suﬀer. The QX100 is an entirely new approach to the cameraphone. The f/1.8 Carl Zeiss lens contains all the components of a high-end point-and-shoot—a full-frame 20-megapixel image sensor, a shutter, and an image processor—and attaches onto a smartphone, which serves as its viewﬁnder and memory. $500

QUA LCO M M TO Q

EASY-READ SMARTWATCH 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

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GADGETS ES SAY BY COR INNE IOZ Z IO

T HE INT ERN ET O F YOU 1.

THERE’S A TR ACKER FOR TH AT 1. Measuring how quickly you eat 2. Recording the water you drink 3. Monitoring your meds 4. Checking the quality of your sleep 5. Quantifying your stress level 6. Counting your workout reps

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F R O M TO P : TA S T YA R T LT D R O B W H I T E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; S A WAYA S U T S U J I / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; D R E A M S T I M E . C O M ; JONATHAN K ANTOR/GE T T Y IMAGES ; MALER APA SO/GE T T Y IMAGES ; JOHNN YSCR IV/GE T T Y IMAGES

h n people descr hen describe the Internet of Things, they’re referring to a network of Webenabled devices tha that speak to one another. In the home, that could mean a phone that talks to a garage-d garage-door opener or a thermostat that talks to motion detectors. While these smart de devices might represent someone’s preferences (I want my lights to glow blue), they d don’t necessarily represent needs (I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m drunk). For a heater to kn 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 ftness monitors are gaining in popularity. More than 100 million sensors were sold worldwide in 2012, and that number will rise to more than half a billion within fve years, according to the technology research frm ON World. Nike alone boasts 18 million users on its Nike+ network, which includes the FuelBand tracker and a sneaker line. And there are dozens of other kinds of monitors out there, including bottles that record our water intake and forks that warn us when we’re eating too fast. Wearable screens are proliferating too. The Pebble smartwatch, which displays e-mail and text notifcations, raised more than $10 million from backers on Kickstarter. Samsung recently debuted the Galaxy Gear, a watch that runs on Android and therefore syncs easily with sensors and other accessories. (Apple even hired one of the key engineers behind the Nike FuelBand, so an iOS smartwatch probably isn’t far behind.) And then there’s Google Glass [page 62], which puts information just above eye level. The combination of personal monitors and connected screens will form the backbone of a new system. The next step is to take the user out of the loop and connect our personal data to the world around us. In September, Nissan introduced the NISMO smartwatch concept, which provides a glimpse of the possibilities. The device uses biometric data, such as heart rate, to tell users whether they’re too tired— or too wired—to drive. One day, a car’s internal computer could tap into that same data. Given a driver’s anxiousness, sleepiness, or drunkenness, the car could modify its performance—or disable itself entirely. Rather than ask you to make data-based decisions, your own personal Internet will make them for you; all you will have to do is show up.

Just one lens for every moment.

18mm

270mm

You’re not just taking pictures — you’re creating memories. The versatile Tamron 15X all-in-one 18-270mm lens effortlessly zooms from wide to telephoto so you’re able to capture all of your favorite people, places, and things without changing lenses. Just 3.8 inches long and weighing an ultra light 15.9 ounces, the compact lens is as easy to carry as it is to use. Vibration Compensation (VC) technology eliminates camera shake, while the Piezo Drive ensures faster, quieter precision autofocus. Don’t get frustrated with a basic kit lens when you’re trying to get closer to the important subjects in your life. Just one lens. For all life’s moments. (Model B008) For Canon, Nikon and Sony* DSLRs. *Sony mount does not include VC as stabilization is built into the Sony camera body.

www.tamron-usa.com

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SOFTWARE

H E A LT H ENTER TAINMENT HOME HARDWARE ENGINEERING AUTO AEROSPACE SECURIT Y GADGETS SOFTWARE RECRE ATION GREEN

NE V E R WA RE J U IC EBOX

NEW LIFE FOR OLD COMPUTERS

RD AWA PO

S TAT S Setup time 1 hour Max terminals per server 50

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R E N N I W PULAR SC

DORLING KINDERSLE Y/GE T T Y IMAGES ; INSE T: COURTESY MICROSOF T

GR AN

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 $70,000. 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 too: IT staff can upgrade an entire bank of workstations at once through a simple Web interface. So far, more than 50 public schools in New York are using the Neverware system—some on machines that date back a decade or more.

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NEXTA TB9001MBU

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Twin Stabilizers VS2 VersoShock™ Sole Exclusive Shock Absorbing System

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The NEXTA is your new extended warranty plan for your body. It’s the gift of life and longevity, and we are backing it up with our risk free guarantee. It’s like nothing you’ve experienced before. Enjoy every step as the NEW VS2 VersoShock® sole absorbs shock and transforms it into forward motion – effortlessly!

Dr. Arnold Ross, DPM National Lecturer Board Certiﬁed in Podiatric Biomechanics. Associate Clinical Professor Western University

Nexta $129.95

The NEW VS2 VersoShock® sole has been completely redesigned by Impact Research Technology Group. Gravity Defyer’s exclusive VersoShock® sole technology was designed to eliminate discomfort and provide maximum energy return; so you will want to walk more, run more, jump higher and stay on your feet longer. The G-Defy Nexta, featuring the NEW VS2 VersoShock® sole, has taken the original to its limits - creating the ultimate in comfort and athletic performance.

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TOY TA LK PU LL S TRING

Character Creator

Winston guides kids through a series of activities, including a free-form ﬁreside chat.

This fall, ToyTalk, a company founded by Pixar alums, released The Winston Show, an app that allows kids to chat with a virtual talkshow host. ToyTalk created Winston using an in-house software suite called PullString, the ﬁrst platform for building interactive characters. Developers can animate and write dialogue within the suite, and an artiﬁcial intelligence engine builds a personality.

THE SOCIAL-VIDEO TIPPING POINT

THE MOST DETAILED MAPS 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

Vine earned the title of top free download in the App Store in less than three months. Why such a splash? It’s the ﬁrst app to make mobile video uploading easy. Vine’s success is more about simplicity than code; users record the quick six-second clips with one tap. Now, the app’s more than 40 million users post tons of videos—including résumés, music videos, ads, and comedy sketches—every day. Free

AU DYS SE Y M EDI A PL AYER

STUDIO SOUND ANYWHERE Headphones have quirks that prevent listeners from hearing music as artists intended. Apple earbuds, for one, produce loud highs that block vocals. The Media Player app corrects those ﬂaws. When users select a pair of headphones, the app skews the frequency response to match a studio model. Next year, the company will expand to TVs, sound bars, and Bluetooth speakers. $0.99 72 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

DISCONNECT 2

ONE-STEP WEB SECURITY And you thought the NSA was bad. There can be thousands of trackers monitoring your browsing. The Disconnect 2 extension blocks more than 2,000 of them. The software prevents ad targeting and stops social networks from snooping. An added bonus: The extension frees up bandwidth, so pages load 27 percent more quickly. Free

C LO CK W I S E F R O M TO P L EF T: C O U R T ESY TOY TA L K ; I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY B R O W N B I R D D ES I G N ( 2 )

T WIT TER VINE

WA ZE

off

70%

LIM

IM ED T E OF IT

OR D

The World’s Greatest Geological Wonders: 36 Spectacular Sites

BY JA N U

Discover Earth’s Most Spectacular Sites

Taught by Professor Michael E. Wysession washington university in st. louis

lecture titles 1. Santorini—Impact of Volcanic Eruptions 2. Mount Fuji—Sleeping Power 3. Galapagos Rift—Wonders of Mid-Ocean Ridges 4. African Rift Valley—Cracks into the Earth 5. Erta Ale—Compact Fury of Lava Lakes 6. Burgess Shale—Rocks and the Keys to Life 7. The Grand Canyon—Earth’s Layers 8. The Himalayas—Mountains at Earth’s Roof 9. The Ganges Delta—Earth’s Fertile Lands 10. The Amazon Basin—Lungs of the Planet 11. Iguazu Falls—Thundering Waterfalls 12. Mammoth Cave—Worlds Underground 13. Cave of Crystals—Exquisite Caves 14. Great Blue Hole—Coastal Symmetry in Sinkholes 15. Ha Long Bay—Dramatic Karst Landscapes 16. Bryce Canyon—Creative Carvings of Erosion 17. Uluru/Ayers Rock—Sacred Nature of Rocks 18. Devils Tower—Igneous Enigmas 19. Antarctica—A World of Ice 20. Columbia Glacier—Unusual Glacier Cycles 21. Fiordland National Park—Majestic Fjords 22. Rock of Gibraltar—Catastrophic Floods 23. Bay of Fundy—Inexorable Cycle of Tides 24. Hawaii—Volcanic Island Beauty 25. Yellowstone—Geysers and Hot Springs 26. Kawah Ijen—World’s Most Acid Lake 27. Iceland—Where Fire Meets Ice 28. The Maldives—Geologic Paradox 29. The Dead Sea—Sinking and Salinity 30. Salar de Uyuni—Flattest Place on Earth 31. Namib/Kalahari Deserts—Sand Mountains 32. Siwa Oasis—Paradise amidst Desolation 33. Auroras—Light Shows on the Edge of Space 34. Arizona Meteor Crater—Visitors from Outer Space 35. A Montage of Geologic Mini-Wonders 36. Planetary Wonders—Out of This World

Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Mount Fuji. These natural wonders make many people’s short lists of geologically fascinating, must-see attractions. But what about Ha Long Bay, the Columbia Glacier, or Erta Ale lava lake? They also belong on the list, as do scores of other sites featuring breathtaking vistas that showcase the grandeur of geological forces in action.

The World’s Greatest Geological Wonders: 36 Spectacular Sites

Whether you’re planning your next vacation or exploring the world from home, The World’s Greatest Geological Wonders is your gateway to an unrivaled adventure. In these 36 lavishly illustrated lectures, award-winning Professor Michael E. Wysession of Washington University in St. Louis introduces you to more than 200 of the world’s most outstanding geological destinations located in nearly 120 countries—and even some geological wonders found on other planets.

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RECREATION D

GR aN

RD aWa

R E N N I W

H e a lt H enter tainment Home Hardware engineering auto aerospace securit y gadgets software recre ation green

pular sc

S TAT S * Weight 3.95 pounds Production time of spikes 2 hours Number of seams 1

ne w ba l a nc e 3 - d – printe d tr ack spikes

ShoeS for a New era

PhoTogr APh BY Sam K aPl aN

74 / P oPu l a r Sc i e nc e / dec ember 2 0 1 3

Since the dawn of the mechanical age, there’s been a tension between standardization, which keeps costs low, and customization, which ofers 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 are now the bleeding edge of innovation—and therefore expensive and limited—what they represent is revolutionary: a day when anyone can scan their feet and receive a custom pair of shoes in return. It’s a bold step toward a world of mass-customized everything.

**Based on shoes produced for four-time All-American runner Jack Bolas

ONE LENS, ALL OCCASIONS 18-250MM F3.5-6.3 DC (OS)* MACRO HSM | 18-200MM F3.5-6.3 II DC (OS)* HSM

Be ready for anything with Sigma’s 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS* MACRO HSM and 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 II DC OS* HSM. Both multipurpose lenses satisfy the need to capture all things for all occasions. No one can offer the same convenience, quality and price point. Compact and lightweight, easy to carry and will always deliver amazing images at an incredible price. Don’t compromise quality; choose Sigma.

This adorable close-up by Jared Ivy was shot with the new Sigma 18-250mm DC Macro OS HSM lens.

18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC (OS)* Macro HSM

18-200mm F3.5-6.3 II DC (OS)* HSM

• High performance & compact with great zoom ratio

• Compact multi-purpose with 11x zoom ratio

• Made with Thermally Stable Composite material

• FLD glass with performance equal to ﬂuorite

• Perfect for scenic, landscape, sports action and macro

• Perfect for scenic, landscape, portraits and sports action

The Sigma 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS* HSM Macro is a compact, versatile all-in-one lens. It offers amazing reach and range–it’s a 13.8X wide angle to telephoto to macro – in a three inch long totally compact package complete with Optical Stabilizer for camera shake compensation. The macro capability offers a maximum magniﬁcation ratio of 1:2.9, and the use of Thermally Stable Composite (TSC) material, technology only used by Sigma, make it more compact compared to similar lenses.

The 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 II DC OS* HSM lens has been updated with FLD glass, which provides performance equal to ﬂuorite glass, and SLD glass; both provide excellent correction of color aberration. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced photographer, the Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 II DC OS* HSM is an all-purpose lens and offers convenience and features on all levels. Its versatility allows the photographer to capture wide angle photos such as scenic, landscape or group photography, its mid-telephoto range takes exceptional portraits and the telephoto end is great for sports action.

Wide-angle landscapes, sports action, family portraits and close-ups of even the tiniest details are what this lens is all about! *OS not available for Sony and Pentax cameras

*OS not available for Sony and Pentax cameras of operation.

18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC (OS)* Macro HSM

18-200mm F3.5-6.3 II DC (OS)* HSM

For more information, visit sigmaphoto.com

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

S TAT S

ORU K AYA K

The Five-Minute Folding Kayak

Length 12 feet Weight 26 pounds Size when folded 33 by 29 by 13 inches Price $1,095

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 easyto-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.

ROBOT GUITAR TUNER Automatic guitar tuners are expensive, hard to install, and overly complex. Or at least they used to be. The Tronical Tune uses an off-the-shelf microprocessor, custom algorithms, and six small motors to create the first affordable self-tuner. The device can retrofit onto almost any guitar without drilling, soldering, or wiring—and once installed, it can tune a guitar in about five seconds. $329

TR ACKINGP O INT X AC T SYS TE M

THE CAN’T-MISS HUNTING RIFLE 76 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

PAT’S BACKCOUNTRY B E V ER AGES PALE R AIL

A PACKABLE BREW Much to the lament of most hikers, beer is too heavy to schlep into the backcountry. Pat’s beer concentrate solves this problem adeptly. Instead of evaporating a ﬁnished beer’s water, the company quadruple brews its concentrate, preserving the hops and other aromatics that impart ﬂavor. When paired with seltzer (the company sells a $30 CO2 bottle that carbonates any potable water), a 1.7-ounce packet makes a pint of refreshing pale ale. $9.95 for four packets

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

FROM TOP: COURTESY ORU (2); SAM K APL AN

TRO N ICA L T U NE

R E C R E AT I O N

E A S TON SYCLONE

AN INDESTRUCTIBLE TENT POLE Mountaineering is an unpredictable endeavor. Storms, high winds, and human clumsiness can bend or break tent poles, stranding hikers without shelter. Easton Syclone poles, made from an aerospace-grade S-glass composite, are 80 percent less likely to fail than aluminum ones. They can also bend farther than carbon-ﬁber poles while still returning to form. $299, sold with tent

HE AD YOUTEK GR APHENE SPEED PRO

FROM TOP: SAM K APL AN; COURTESY BL ACK DIAMOND

The Most Balanced Racquet

By the gram, graphene is the world’s strongest material, but its commercial applications have remained few. Head is the first sporting goods company to integrate it into a product. By reinforcing the Speed Pro racquet with graphene, Head stiffened the frame without adding weight, so players get more power without sacrificing control. $225 BL ACK D I A M OND H A LO 28 JE TFO RCE PACK

SAFEST AVALANCHE PACK 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.

DECEMBER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE / 7 7

B E S T O F W H AT ’ S N E W 2 0 1 3

GREEN

H E A LT H ENTER TAINMENT HOME HARDWARE ENGINEERING AUTO AEROSPACE SECURIT Y GADGETS SOFTWARE RECRE ATION GREEN

S TAT S Eggs produced annually 1.18 trillion Plants screened for egg-like function 1,550 Plants identifed 11

H AM P TO N C REEK FO O D S BE YO ND EGGS

NO HARM, NO FOWL PHOTOGR APH BY SAM K APL AN

78 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMB ER 2 0 1 3

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 product, Just Mayo, at select Whole Foods.) Next up: cookie dough that everyone can eat—raw.

GREEN

ECOVATIVE MUSHROOM INSUL ATION

Natural Buﬀer

GE 2.5-120 TURBINE

NETWORKED WIND 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.

FAIRPHONE

A SOUNDER SMARTPHONE

Ecovative makes its Mushroom Insulation by fusing fungal mycelium with corn stalks. The resultant material has the upsides of foam board insulation—an R-value of 3.8, Class-A ﬁre rating, and competitive price—but none of the petrochemicals, VOCs, or ﬁre retardants. Upon demolition, it can simply be composted. $0.25 per board foot

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY GE; SAM K APL AN; C O U R T E SY FA I R P H O N E

Amsterdam-based Fairphone engineered its device to have a clean start and a long afterlife. The phone is assembled using conﬂict-free metals and fair labor practices, and it ships unlocked, with replaceable parts and open-source Android OS. It also has 16 GB of memory, 8-megapixel cameras, and a quad-core CPU. Fairphone currently ships only to Europe, but it’s working on U.S. distribution for next year. $440

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A 3-D–printed punch-card computer PAGE 84

POPSCI.COM

PLUS:

Build wireless holiday lights with pennies PAGE 91

DECEMBER

2013

HOW 2.0 H20@POPSCI.COM

YOU BUILT WHAT?!

Mini Mars Rover

A museum-quality robot built by a family of tinkerers

hen 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 later. Today, the Beattys’ garage in Asheville, North Carolina, is a veritable bot factory. “We’ve built robots that crawl, robots that fly, robots that shoot BBs, and robots that can autonomously move around the house,” says Camille, who handles machining and mechanical assembly while Genevieve does the soldering and wiring. One of their projects has even made it into the New York Hall of Science, where nearly 500,000 annual visitors can see it and drive it around a faux Martian landscape. The family’s museum collaboration began with a robot they named Spirit II, a 500-part, six-wheeled, remotely operated machine built in the likeness of NASA’s solar-powered Spirit rover.

@POPSCI

WAR NING 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.

EDITED BY DAVE MOSHER

HEAT SEEKER An infrared camera in the rover’s chest helps visitors detect hidden hot rocks. The twin masthead cameras, however, are just for looks. “A requirement of all our robots is personality and eyes,” Camille says.

CONTI N U E D ON PAGE 8 2

STOR Y BY DAV E MOSHER PHOTOS BY M AT THE W S AL ACUSE

DECEM BER 2013 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE /8 1

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H2 CO NTINUED FR O M PAG E 81

They re-created the rover’s complex rocker-bogie suspension system, which can clear tall obstacles, and studied patents to replicate the unique gearing that turns Spirit in place 360 degrees. Samuel Litt, the museum’s director of information technology, was looking to replace a three-wheeled “mousebot” in a Mars exhibit when he stumbled upon photos of Spirit II on the Beattys’ workshop blog. “It looked like some really impressive technology,” Litt says. “Meanwhile, our old robot just crept along and didn’t even look like anything you’d put in space.” At Litt’s request, the Beattys agreed to build another—this time with a few modifications. The museum wanted a durable bot that could last nine hours on one charge. It also needed to display infrared video revealing a heated rock (a crude but effective simulation of discovering water-containing Martian minerals, which reflect infrared). To fit comfortably within the exhibit’s 250-squarefoot enclosure, the girls and their dad also designed the new version to be about a third smaller than Spirit II. The Beattys installed eight rangefinding sonar sensors on the wheels to prevent anyone from driving the robot into a wall. They also added a green laser to show the location being measured by a temperature sensor. In June, the Beattys donated the robot to the museum, which named it Camille. The family also built and donated a second unit, called Genevieve, with streamlined electronics and an upgraded camera. Since the robots’ debut, project requests have poured into the Beattys’ home from around the world. These days, the family is handcrafting a half-dozen likenesses of space robots, including Russia’s Lunokhod moon rover, for a museum in Prague. “It’s sometimes irritating when the girls have to do homework,” Robert says. “I’d rather be building robots with them.”

82 / P OPUL AR SCIENCE

Stop Wasting Your Money Throwing Away Disposable Air Filters

H O W 2 . 0 / YO U B U I LT W H AT ?!

HOW IT WORKS

POWER 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.

CLO CK WISE FR OM BOT TOM LEF T: COUR TESY R OBER T BE AT T Y ( 2 ) ; MAT THE W S AL ACUSE ( 3 )

MOBILITY 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.

COMMUNICATION 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.

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CUSTOM C NC MI LL 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.

W IR ELES S TELEGR APH 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.

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C Get instructions and 3-D–printing ﬁles for Fenton’s computer at popsci.com/ turboentabulator.

Planned Obsolescence

What a 3-D–printed mechanical computer can teach us about modern machines

hen 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

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 numbers on the counters. The cards are tied together with loops of embroidery ﬂoss to run continuously.

84 / P OPU L A R SC I E NC E / DEC EMBER 2 0 1 3

MEMORY: Similar to RAM, three counter wheels store numbers generated by the punch-card software. Each pull of a lever steps a counter either up or down. When the right counter hits zero, a fourth card advances and a bell rings as the next Fibonacci-sequence number appears.

PROCESSING: A hand crank acts like a modern CPU. It reads the punch-card instructions for which levers to pull, executes them by pulling those levers, and stores the results in memory via the strings that turn each counter. The faster it’s cranked, the quicker it computes.

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STORY BY DAVE MOSHER

Crowdfunded Creations

Hits from the POPULAR SCIENCE #CrowdGrant Challenge

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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.

REACH FOR THE STARS 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 balloons were the perfect way to put it all together,” he says. Kaup helped a few schools in Illinois launch kids’ experiments into the upper atmosphere using weather balloons. The kids couldn’t get enough, so he and a fellow pilot turned to #CrowdGrant for help. The money they earned will support 15 to 21 launches—among other projects—next year. EARNED $6,045 GOAL $5,000 120.9% FUNDED

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ELCANO 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.

8 8 / P OPU L A R SCIENCE / DECEMBER 2013 These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

BIOBULB A living light source EARNED $3,020 GOAL $15,000 20.1% FUNDED

Students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison are designing a colony of glowing, self-sustaining bacteria. The goal: Make a bioluminescent lighting kit that shows the promise of genetic engineering.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COURTESY PAUL K AUP; COURTESY ANAELISE BECKMAN, ALEX ANDR A COHN, AND MICHAEL Z AIKEN; COURTESY BR ANDYN L ACOURSE

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kip the tangled strings of holiday lights this year and go wireless using a few coppercoated 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. M AT E R I A L S 1. 1 lemon 2. One 3mm LED 3. 150-grit aluminum oxide sandpaper 4. Electrical tape 5. Duct tape 6. 5 to 10 pennies 7. Cardboard

TIME 20 minutes COST About $5 DIFFICULTY ▯●●●●

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COULD A VIRGIN BIR TH E VER HAPPEN? SHORT ANSWER

If you’re a mammal, no.

DE AGOSTINI/A. DE GREGORIO/GETTY IMAGES

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 development. If there isn’t any sperm, the embryo will end up with only half the DNA it needs to survive. Both of those barriers could potentially be overcome in the lab or through random mutation, but there is a third obstacle that probably can’t be. Under normal conditions, the DNA

in both egg and sperm cells is altered such that some genes will be more active while others are suppressed. When the egg and sperm join to form an embryo, these imprints work in tandem, ensuring that all the necessary proteins are produced in the right amounts. If an egg cell starts reproducing on its own, without the sperm-cell imprint, the offspring won’t survive for very long. Scientists estimate that imprinting affects about 200 different genes. For parthenogenesis to occur, many of these changes would have to occur through random mutation. “I just think it’s too complex and you’d need too many things to happen accidentally,” says Marisa Bartolomei, a molecular geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. While highly unlikely, it’s still theoretically possible that scientists could one day induce the necessary changes in the lab. “Is there a mutation that could eliminate all imprinting, so we would see that we didn’t need Dad or Mom in order to have normal development?” Bartolomei asks. “This is a question that people have asked a lot, and we don’t know the answer.” P OPU L A R SCIENCE / DECEM BER 2013 / 95

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FYI QUESTION

W H AT ’S T HE MOS T DUR A BL E WAY T O S T ORE INF ORM AT ION? 1. Engrave it on a piece of platinum. 2. Bury the platinum in the desert.

LONG 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 regularly or you’re not going to be able to play it,” says Besser. “It’s kind

of like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.” At a 1998 conference, Besser and 12 others worked out a plan for the perfect long-term storage device: They would etch images into platinum with a laser and bury the platinum in the desert. “Ideally, we would put a nuclearwaste facility next to it,” Besser adds, “so people will never forget where it is.” But even the most indestructible data storage won’t be of any use if no one can decode the contents. Archivists also need to preserve the languages or programs used to save information, whether that’s ancient Greek or Word for Windows 95. Besser and his colleagues worry that this decoding issue will be the real bottleneck. “The durability of something is a far smaller problem than the other problems that we have,” he says.

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Chicago Doctor Invents

Affordable Hearing Aid Amazing new digital hearing aid breaks price barrier in affordability Reported by J. Page Chicago: Board-certifed physician Dr. S. Cherukuri has done it once again with his newest invention of a medical grade ALL DIGITAL affordable hearing aid. This new digital hearing aid is packed with all the features of $3,000 competitors at a mere fraction of the cost. Now, most people with hearing loss are able to enjoy crystal clear, natural sound— in a crowd, on the phone, in the wind— without suffering through “whistling” and annoying background noise.

New Digital Hearing Aid Outperforms the Expensive Ones This sleek, lightweight, fully programmed

hearing aid is the outgrowth of the digital

revolution that is changing our world. While demand for “all things digital” caused most prices to plunge (consider DVD players and computers, which originally sold for upwards of $3,000 and today can be purchased for less then $100), yet the cost of all digital medical hearing aids remained out of reach. Dr. Cherukuri knew that many of his patients would beneft but couldn’t afford the expense of these new digital hearing aids, which are generally not covered by Medicare and most private health insurance.

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He evaluated all the high priced digital hearing aids on the market, broke them down to their base components, and then created his own affordable version—called the AIR for its virtually invisible, lightweight appearance.

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From the Archives POPULAR SCIENCE / DECEMBER 2013

STOR Y BY K ATE BAGG ALE Y

Launch Plan W

ith help from scientists on the U.S. 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.

GREATEST HITS 1950

October 1957: Sputnik 1 becomes the first manmade satellite in space. August 1959: Explorer 6 beams the first satellite picture of Earth. July 1972: Landsat 1 monitors Earth’s surface to study geology, land use, and droughts. November 1998: The International Space Station becomes the largest satellite in Earth’s orbit. February 2013: The first satellite to be operated by a smartphone, STRaND-1 enters space.

2014

July 2014: NASA plans to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 to monitor CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere.

P OPUL AR SCIENCE JANUARY 1956

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1 0 4 / P OPU L A R SC IE NC E / DECE M B E R 2013

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