Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2012 i Popular Science

PopSci Innovators The brilliant minds behind the year's best technology Two guys with the goal of opening ocean exploration to everyone Why the success of the Curiosity rover depended on NASA's sky crane team The group that created a pill that reports when swallowed 23 The 100 Greatest Innovations of the Year 24 Software 29 Auto 36 Gadgets 40 Green 44 Engineering 48 Home 53 Aerospace 58 Security 62 Hardware 68 Recreation 71 Health 76 Entertainment 04 From the Editor 06 Peer Review 08 Megapixels: A damselfly close-up 97 FYI: What makes hair curly? 108 From the PopSci archives 11 The unbreakable password 14 Elephant eye surgery 16 An ocean lab in the coral reef 17 How to recycle satellites in space 18 Kites that generate electricity 20 Adventurers team…

In the cool of the early morning, insects like this dew-covered blue damselfly move slowly, making it the perfect time to capture them on film. Ondrej Pakan, a photographer fascinated by insects—he describes them as inhabitants of “a world of small monsters”—snapped this shot at Lake Dubnik in Slovakia. Damselflies, often mistaken for dragonflies, spend most of their lives underwater. They live anywhere from a few weeks up to a year as gilled larvae. Even after transforming into air-breathing, winged adults, several species of female damselflies return to the water to lay eggs. While they descend, their hairs trap oxygen bubbles that serve as miniature air tanks; their mates wait at the surface to pull them out when they reemerge.…

People around the world waste millions of tons of food every year. Carol Lin, a biochemical engineer at the City University of Hong Kong, is making something useful out of their leftovers: plastic. In a collaboration with Starbucks, she blends roughly two pounds of stale pastries with water into a milkshake-like consistency and then adds two types of Aspergillus fungi, which process the starch and protein into sugar. She pours that slurry into a vat of Actinobacillus succinogenes bacteria, which eat the sugar and create succinic acid—a key ingredient in biodegradable plastics used in cups, car dashboards, and bubble wrap.…

Highest recorded flightKite 15,000 ft Bird 37,000 ft “You know how a kite can pull its string from your hands? Airborne wind-energy systems like ours work on the same principle—the pull of the kite turns a generator and creates electricity. Kites are promising because they can go higher than a regular wind turbine, to altitudes where wind speeds are faster and more consistent. In our experimental system, we use an off-the-shelf kite about 20 square feet in area. We've flown it about 300 feet. As the wind blows the kite higher, it unspools the kite's tethers, turning the motors and generating power. The motors use regenerative braking (the same kind of system that recaptures braking energy in a hybrid car) to control the length of the tethers and steer the…

Eighty-eight percent of tablet owners use their devices while watching TV. IntoNow, an Android and iOS app, is the best way to sync the two screens. The app continuously samples TV audio, determines what's on by way of its 200-million-hour database, and then displays related news and posts, clips, screenshots, and soundtrack info on the tablet. The database is so vast that the app can recognize archived video—including Netflix and a DVR library—and the algorithm is so accurate it can distinguish between similar live content (i.e., it won't spit out Giants stats during a Jets game). Free…

The Tesla Model S sets the standard by which all future electric vehicles will be measured. It's faster than any other street-legal EV: The Performance edition, propelled by motors that generate a peak 416 horsepower, darts from 0 to 60 mph in a Porsche-rivaling 4.4 seconds and hits a top speed of 130 mph. The family-size sedan also travels farther on a charge than any electric car in history—up to 300 miles on the optional 85-kilowatt-hour battery—and recharges three times as fast as the industry standard. It's not clear how many Americans will pay the Model S's $59,000 to $107,000 price tag, but Tesla thinks so highly of the car that it's betting the company on it: The carmaker has stopped building its famed Roadster and now produces only the…

The 2013 Fusion is the only car to be offered in standard, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid versions—and all three are the most efficient models in their classes. The electrified versions get particularly good mileage. The 185-horsepower hybrid achieves 47 mpg overall, 4 mpg better than the competing Toyota Camry hybrid. The plug-in hybrid Energi, on sale in early 2013, has a range of 20 all-electric miles and will surpass 100 mpg equivalent, eclipsing the vaunted Chevy Volt's federal efficiency rating. From $22,495…

Moisture destroys 82 million phones annually, yet manufacturers do little to safeguard against it. In January, California-based Liquipel launched the first aftermarket service that waterproofs phones and media players. Engineers place the phone in a vacuum-sealed chamber and inject a carbon-based hydrophobic gas. The gas particles bond to the phone in a layer one thousandth the thickness of human hair. Because the particles are so small, they also slip through seams to coat internal components, such as the processor and battery. The waterproofing takes less than 30 minutes, and has no noticeable effect on the phone's look or feel. Liquipel then mails the device back to the customer, better than new. COMPATIBLE DEVICES Apple iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X, and 25 more TURNAROUND TIME 2 days…

Camera makers regularly claim to have built a pocket-size camera that shoots DSLR-quality images. Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-RX1 actually does. The RX1 is the first compact digital camera whose image sensor—a 24.3-megapixel one, in this case—fills a full 35-millimeter frame, just like a film camera. Engineers also included a fixed-focal-length f/2 lens with a macro setting, which shifts some of the lens's eight glass elements to allow the RX1 to focus on subjects as little as 5.5 inches away. $2,800…

The Best Ways to Save Water 1 System 2000 hexagonal washing machine halves water use (1994) 2 Alberta Sustainable Home recycles wastewater for reuse (1996) 3 The Aqus System flows sink water to toilets (2007) H2O SAVINGS 100% CO2 SAVINGS Up to 60% less emissions COST SAVINGS 30–50% It takes between 25 and 40 gallons of water to dye 2.2 pounds of fabric. Multiply that by the millions of T-shirts, track pants, and other textiles made each year, and you get two huge environmental problems: millions of tons of chemical-laden waste-water and depletion of freshwater. Instead of H2O, DyeCoo's process uses supercritical carbon dioxide, which has fluidlike properties. The fabric absorbs nearly all the dye while generating no wastewater, and 95 percent of the CO2 is recycled into the next…

ERIC STACKPOLE'S passion for discovery was originally directed toward outer space. As a mechanical engineering student at San Jose State University in 2007, he founded a campus club devoted to building mini satellites. That landed him a job at NASA's Ames Research Center, which led to an emphasis on robotics in graduate school. One day in 2010, Stackpole's shoe squeaked on a tile floor, reminding him of the “ping” made by sonar; in his mind's eye he saw the lights of a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) vanishing into deep, dark water. Inspired, he began to develop a cheap, camera-enabled mini submersible. He soon realized that Earth has an environment as strange as anything beyond the atmosphere. “There's this mysterious underwater world, a lot like space,” he says. “You can move in…

A thermostat has tremendous power: It controls heating and cooling, the most expensive, energy-guzzling system in a house. Until the Nest, thermostats wielded that power blindly. The Nest learns a household's schedule and preferences after just one week and programs itself (and if those preferences change, the Nest adapts accordingly). It uses activity, humidity, and temperature sensors to monitor the indoor climate and adjust it for maximum efficiency. The Nest can also shut down the air conditioner's compressor a few minutes early to make the most of the cool air still available after it cycles off. The homeowner can always adjust the device from home or the road, but will rarely need to—which makes this the first thermostat truly compatible with people's lives. POWER Rechargeable lithium-ion battery COMPATIBILITY 95% of…

Since 2008, roadside bombs and other IEDs have accounted for the deaths of more than half the U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Moving cargo in large convoys put many of those soldiers at risk. The Kaman K-Max autonomous helicopter removes the people from those supply lines. The pilotless copter can haul 6,000 pounds up to 250 miles, with its load suspended from a 75-foot tether. The only human intervention comes when a Marine with a laptop and an Xbox-like controller presses the start button; after that, K-Max's autonomous flight controls take over, using data collected by onboard altitude and orientation sensors to fly along preprogrammed GPS routes, day or night. Since last December, the two pilotless K-Max choppers deployed in Afghanistan have carried more than 2 million pounds of cargo.…

A team led by engineer Aaron Parness at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has solved one of the biggest challenges for future space expeditions: How to attach to a zero-gravity surface without drilling permanent anchors. Parness developed a set of robotic feet that grab uneven, rocky surfaces using hundreds of tiny hooks known as microspines. Modeled after the grasping spines on cockroach legs, the polyurethane microspines grip tightly yet can quickly release when it's time to move to a new target.…

“EVERYONE KNOWS the rover is named Curiosity,” says Adam Steltzner. “But we had our own name for the descent stage. We called it Audacity.” As the lead engineer for entry, descent, and landing on NASA's most recent mission to Mars, Steltzner was responsible for getting Curiosity through the Martian atmosphere and onto the surface in one piece. Over seven years, he and his team developed a number of interdependent systems to do just that, but their success hinged on one especially ambitious feature: a new and unproven descent-stage component called the sky crane. The idea for a sky crane first surfaced in 1999, following the crash of the Mars Polar Lander. The device would lower a rover on tethers and place it directly onto a planet's surface. The dynamics were…

Most fingerprint readers require physical contact. AIRprint can scan a print at a resolution of 500 pixels per inch—enough to accurately identify an individual from six feet away. Engineers based the software on satellite image-processing programs; resolving the ridges of a fingerprint at six feet is actually quite similar to resolving a car or building from orbit. With AIRprint, people could move throughout secure facilities and sterile labs without touching a pad or surface for access. $5,000…

SIZE 1.5 square inches TRANSISTORS 1.4 billion PRICE From $150 Almost since Moore's Law was proposed in 1965, chipmakers have been wringing their hands over the day when they can no longer keep up—when they can't pack twice the number of transistors onto a square-inch of chip every two years. Transistors are the microscopic switches that make electronics work. Each one contains a gate that stops or releases current running through a silicon channel. In most designs, the gate sits on top of the channel. As engineers designed smaller transistors, though, the gates couldn't completely close, so energy would leak through. To solve the problem, Intel engineers developed a 3-D transistor for the Ivy Bridge microprocessor; they raised the channel so the gate now wraps around it on three sides,…

About 15 million Americans living in rural areas have problems loading media-heavy websites because they can't get access to high-speed Internet. To reach isolated homes—often hundreds of miles from wired connections—the company ViaSat launched ViaSat-1, the highest-capacity satellite in the world, capable of sending data at 140 gigabits per second to ground receivers. With download speeds of 12 megabits per second, the satellite broadband service delivers faster rates than DSL. Engineers increased the satellite's capacity by adding a number of small antennas; the extra hardware can transmit twice the usual amount of data-carrying beams, up to 72. Service from $50/month…

Each year, about 1.5 million people in the U.S. suffer from aortic valve stenosis, a narrowing of the heart's aortic valve that can lead to a heart attack. In severe cases, doctors perform open-heart surgery to replace the valve, but many patients are too frail to undergo such a procedure; fifty percent of those who don't get surgery die within two years. The Sapien Transcatheter Heart Valve, which unlike other replacements can be inserted through an artery, should make it possible to give a new valve to many people who were previously ineligible. The Sapien consists of flaps of cow tissue sewn onto a metal frame. It can collapse from a diameter of about an inch to that of a pencil—thin enough to fit through the femoral artery. Once the…

When inserting a catheter into a vein, doctors can make mistakes that cause serious complications, such as punctured lungs. They often use ultrasound to visualize the body but ultrasound can't clearly pick up a needle. AxoTrack makes catheterization almost foolproof by enabling doctors to see both the vein (with ultrasound) and the needle's location (with magnetic sensors) on one video screen. In tests, the device increased first-attempt success rates from 37 percent to 99 percent. Price not set…

Changing guitar amps can affect sound as much as changing the guitar itself. The Kemper Profiling Amp can learn and mimic the sound of any amp. Musicians connect the Kemper to the input jack on the amplifier they want to imitate; the Kemper then issues a series of test tones (squeals, hisses, buzzes), while an onboard microphone records the feedback. With that data, the amp runs custom algorithms that convert the feedback into a savable setting. The amp can store up to 1,000 of them. $1,900…

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. TWO SUMMERS AGO, Easton LaChappelle thought it would be fun to build a robotic arm controlled wire-lessly using a glove. LaChappelle, then 14, knew nothing about electronics, programming, or robots—but he was bored and desperate for a challenge. So over the next couple of years, the teen, now a high school junior, toiled in his cramped bedroom workshop in Mancos, Colorado, ironing out the details. In time, he emerged with a robo-arm operated by a gaming glove—and his mind. LaChappelle began his bionic quest by scouring online forums and tutorials to glean as much know-how as he could about sensors, motors,…

THEN In 1963, PopSci described how to build a scrappy winter sports vehicle out of plywood, old farming equipment, and a 7.5-horsepower lawn-mower engine: “You're in for a new kind of thrill if you've never plowed through powdery snow or flashed along shimmering ice at 25 to 30 m.p.h. Snow karting, a new wrinkle in winter sports, combines all the excitement of sledding or tobogganing with the added fun of breezing uphill as well as down under the galloping surge of a little gas-eating one-lunger.” NOW Kyle Anderson needed a way to get around Caribou, Maine, during winter, so he built the Phantom: a fully enclosed sled featuring a heater, CD player, and rearview camera. It took about five years and $1,500 in parts ranging from satellite dishes to scavenged…

IHAVE A credo that I've been road testing lately. Let me try it out on you: This is the greatest time in the history of the world to be alive. More discovery and innovation is happening now than ever before, and it's transforming everyday lives—our lives—such that they bear almost no resemblance, in hardship, pain, or danger, to the lives of our grandparents, or even our parents. Every year, it's a better, richer time to be the editor-in-chief of a publication that covers that transformation, and whoever is lucky enough to follow me into this job will be even luckier than I have been. The Best of What's New awards epitomize what I'm talking about. Each December, we choose the most revolutionary innovations of the year in categories from cars…

HHRISTO BOJINOV wants you to forget your password. More precisely, he wants you to never really know it in the first place. Bojinov, a computer scientist at Stanford, and his colleagues have developed a computer program that can implant passwords in a person's subconscious mind—and retrieve them subconsciously too. The technique could make it impossible for, say, a high-security government agent to reveal his password; the agent wouldn't actually know the secret code. Eventually, the use of subconscious passwords could even trickle down to the rest of us. And considering the precarious state of password protection, that probably can't happen soon enough. “The problem with passwords is that they are easy to breach,” says Ram Pemmaraju, the CTO of security company StrikeForce Technologies. The tools for cracking them, such as…

Great Barrier Reef 135,000 square miles Italy 116,000 square miles When marine biologist David Kline, of Australia's University of Queensland, set out for Heron Island in the Great Barrier Reef, he and his team were determined to help answer a pressing question: How will rising acidity from climate change affect coral reefs? So they brought along their Coral Proto FOCE, the first device that lets scientists manipulate acidity in a reef's natural environment. The Coral Proto is a three-foot-long plastic box with sliding doors. After embedding it in a reef, researchers select a pH on a computer. A pump then squirts pre-acidified seawater from an onshore tank into the box. The Proto's acidity sensors track levels to maintain the preferred pH. When it's time to measure how the reef is…

“The romance of science lies in its explorations.” —EDWIN HUBBLE MORE AND MORE science takes place on computers, but hard data still comes from the material world. To learn about, say, harmful algae blooms or high-altitude flora, researchers must travel to some of the hardest-to-reach places on Earth. Gregg Treinish, a respected trekker, spent his twenties in such places. National Geographic Adventure hailed him among their Adventurers of the Year in 2008, after he hiked 7,800 miles through the Andes, but Treinish was beginning to feel “selfish” about his adventures. Wasn't there some greater purpose to reaching all that remote beauty? Then, in 2010, inspiration struck: What if scientists could ask athletes like him, “Hey, while you're there, could you grab us some data?” “In November I had the idea,”…

Last year, we praised Apple for integrating tablet aesthetics into OS X Lion, thus starting the inevitable merger of tablet and computer. This year, Microsoft took the idea all the way with Windows 8. In addition to being Microsoft's fastest operating system to date, Windows 8 runs both the new tiled Metro interface for touchscreens and tablets and the familiar desktop for traditional PCs. And because Metro apps go to sleep when not in use, machines could also get bumps in battery life. From $40…

To build the F12 Berlinetta, a road-going car that reaches 60 mph in just over three seconds and tops out at 211 mph, Ferrari engineers mounted a 730-horsepower, 6.3-liter V12 to a chassis made from 12 ultralight, ultrastrong metal alloys. The F12 isn't all brawn, though; several efficiency-boosting tricks, including a stop/start system that cuts the engine at red lights, reduce fuel consumption and emissions by 30 percent compared with the F12's predecessor, the 599 Fiorano. From $325,000…

WEIGHT 1,250 pounds ENGINE Turbocharged, direct-injection 1.6-liter 4-cylinder TOP SPEED Over 200 mph Street cars require more than 600 horsepower to reach 200 mph. The Delta Wing, a 1,250-pound Le Mans prototype, can get there with just 300 horsepower—the same amount of power in high-end family sedans. The Nissan-sponsored racer debuted at France's 24 Hours of Le Mans this summer, competing against cars twice its weight. The Delta Wing didn't finish—six hours in, a Toyota hybrid knocked it off the track, into a wall, and out of the race—but it ran long enough to prove itself the most efficient racecar in history.…

The Swivl video-chat accessory lets the talker pace, cook dinner, or generally move about the room. With a chat app, such as FaceTime, open, the caller snaps a smartphone into the Swivl's rotating stand and clips the mic-equipped marker onto his shirt. The marker emits an infrared beam and Bluetooth signal. A sensor on the stand tracks those signals and prompts the base to follow them. The Swivl can turn in a full 360-degree circle and tilt 10 degrees forward or 20 degrees back. RANGE 30 feet COMPATIBLE DEVICES Phones and cameras less than 11mm thick PRICE $179…

With Samsung TecTiles, smartphones interact with their environment with a simple tap. Each one-inch sticker contains a small amount of memory and a near-field communication (NFC) radio. An Android app assigns the TecTiles any of 15 actions, including opening an app or checking in on Facebook, and owners then place the stickers around their homes. Tap an NFC-enabled phone—about a dozen came out this year—against a TecTile near the front door, for example, and it will automatically join the local Wi-Fi network. $15 for five…

WaterWear is an elegant solution to a problem faced by millions of people: how to transport drinking water. The collapsible backpack, constructed from industrial-grade woven polypropylene, holds 5.3 gallons—slightly more than a typical jerrican, at one seventh the weight and half the carbon footprint. Plus, the pack's clear liner can be removed and set in the sun so that UV light disinfects the contents; a spigot at the bottom eliminates the need for dipping cups, keeping the water clean. $10 donation sponsors one pack…

When a battleship needs repairs in the middle of the ocean, a semisubmersible vessel like the Dockwise Vanguard can provide offshore dry dock. The 902-foot-long and 230-foot-wide bowless Vanguard—the largest craft of its kind by nearly a football field—can submerge its deck below the waterline and move its above-water towers aside, allowing mammoth marine vessels to float aboard before the Vanguard rides back up underneath them. The Vanguard can carry 121,254 tons of cargo and another 7,716 tons of food, fuel, and supplies; that's almost double the payload of any such craft before it. The 27-megawatt engine works with two forward retractable azimuth thrusters and two rear pitch propellers. The Vanguard can make tiny adjustments as it approaches for a lift, and can plow through open ocean at a sustained…

The Switch75 is the most convincing proof that LED technology can replace the traditional lightbulb. The LED bulb provides the same warm light as a 75-watt incandescent while consuming 75 percent less energy—and it can be used with dimmers and in recessed fixtures. The secret to its efficiency is a liquid-silicone cooling system that transfers heat across the entire bulb's surface. The Switch 75 is only available to commercial users now, but the company will release a consumer bulb by the end of the year. $40-$60…

The Best Ways to Explore Space at Home 1 SETI©home crowdsources the search for aliens (1999) 2 Ikonos satellite delivers to-order aerial images (2000) 3 The Celestron SkyScout telescope guides stargazers (2006) What do you wear to dive from the edge of space? Four years ago, daredevil Felix Baumgartner put that question to designers at the David Clark Company, which made the pressure suits worn by the U.S. Air Force's high-altitude U-2 pilots. The designers responded by building the most advanced pressure suit ever created, with a powered heating system, a stable aerodynamic profile, and a face mask embedded with heated wires to prevent freezing in the -70°F air. On October 14, Baumgartner put on his suit and rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 128,100 feet. With millions…

The Army's Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) is the U.S. military's first successful hybrid airship. Helium-filled nylon balloons give the LEMV the ultra-long flight time of a blimp. But its aerodynamic hull, fixed wings, and vectored-thrust engines provide additional lift and maneuverability, allowing it to take off with heavier payloads, stay in the air longer, and land safely at the end of the mission without taking on ballast to compensate for burned fuel. The football-field-size, pilot-optional airship, scheduled to go to Afghanistan next year, provides an unrivaled 21 days of “unblinking stare” surveillance from an altitude of 20,000 feet.…

Reconnaissance robots have typically required elaborate engineering to overcome the challenges of urban surveillance; models based on hummingbirds, flies, and cockroaches are all in development. The engineers behind the Sand Flea, from Boston Dynamics, took the opposite approach. They created a simple, rugged, four-wheeled robot that tackles obstacles—whether walls or stairs or windows—by launching itself over and, in some cases, through them. The 11-pound, camera-equipped Sand Flea drives like an R/C car, but when faced with a hurdle it can jump up to 26 feet. The robot uses a laser range finder to measure the distance to its landing target and calculate trajectory. It then angles itself skyward and fires a launch piston powered with compressed air. A gyroscope within the Sand Flea generates enough inertial force to keep the…

Most wide-area radar systems detect objects as blips on a screen. The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) sensor array is sensitive enough to determine the actual shape of the vessel, allowing operators to distinguish between container ship, oil tanker, and surfacing Russian submarine. BAMS debuted in June aboard the MQ-4C Triton, a maritime version of the Global Hawk UAV. From 50,000 feet up, the BAMS-equipped drone can scan 2,000 nautical miles of ocean, and then fly in for a closer look when it sees a vessel of interest.…

The Raspberry Pi is the cheapest computer out there. The bare, unprogrammed circuit board comes with a 700-megahertz processor, graphics processing unit, and 512 megabytes of RAM. To begin customizing the Pi, users connect a screen and keyboard and install the operating system Linux. Once set up, they can program it to do just about anything, from operating robotics, like Arduino can, to running Internet browsers and word processing programs, like a desktop computer can. And with a price tag just more than a moderate dinner out, experimentation is open to everyone. $35…

DIMENSIONS 26 by 30 by 10 inches PRICE $8,500 fully loaded An overheated computer can defeat even the best gamer. When hardware gets hot, processors and graphics cards respond more slowly to commands, costing a player the competitive edge that top-shelf components provide. To keep the game moving at critical moments, PC manufacturer Digital Storm adapted automotive technology, including radiators and an exhaust chamber, to build the Aventum, the coolest—and therefore quietest and fastest—gaming PC to date. All components generate heat: The CPU alone can reach 150ÐF in seconds. The Aventum has a six-core Intel processor, three graphics cards, and a 1,200-watt power supply. Next to the CPU, designers installed a thermoelectric plate, which has a current running through it. The far side of the plate is made from a…

25 Years of Genome Mapping 1989 First direct images of a DNA strand 1995 First complete genome of an organism The Icelandic firm Össur changed medicine several years ago with its bionic prosthetic knee and ankle, both of which use force sensors and accelerometers to monitor the environment and the body. Now, the company has combined the knee and the ankle Into one prosthetic leg. With two intelligent joints cooperating together, users can navigate stairs and inclines with fewer trips and falls. The leg also allows wearers to walk with a better gait, reducing the back and hip pain commonly associated with prostheses. WEIGHT LIMIT 275 pounds BATTERY LIFE 16–24 hours PRICE Not set…

As A doctor, George Savage had the power to save lives, but part of his job still made him feel helpless: After patients left the hospital, he had no way of knowing if they were taking their medications. According to the World Health Organization, patients fail to use their prescriptions properly at least half the time. It was a former grad-school housemate, Andrew Thompson, who brought Savage a solution. While perusing vendors at an American Heart Association meeting in 2004, Thompson noticed a glut of technology demonstrations on the device side, but a dearth on the drug side. “The only tech on display was a cappuccino machine,” he says. Inspired, the pair set to work with electrical engineer Mark Zdeblick to digitize medicine. Their Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, a…

When music transmits from a stereo to wireless headphones, file compression shrinks the dynamic range, the difference between the highest and the lowest volumes in a track. Engineers at Sennheiser employed a compressionless standard, called direct-sequence spectrum spread, to create a pair of wireless headphones that sound as good as wired ones. The RS220 consists of a base, which users attach to their stereo, and a pair of headphones. Instead of downsizing a file, a radio in the base spreads it across several wireless frequencies, and then a receiver in the headphones recomposes it. $600…

LaChappelle built a skeletal frame out of scrap metal with industrial chain for a spine. A custom-built robotic arm rotates the hand at the wrist and bends at the elbow and shoulder. Two battery-powered, geared DC motors can lift the arm 90 degrees and lower it down. Our minds emit faint frequencies of electrical energy called brainwaves, which doctors use to analyze everything from seizures and coma to sleep and focus. LaChappelle hacked Mattel's focus-measuring Mindflex headset by writing software to convert the device's data for his robo-hand. As a wearer's brainwaves shift above or below a set frequency, the hand opens or closes. When he's not using the headset, LaChappelle controls his robotic limb with a 1989 Nintendo Power Glove. Flex sensors in the glove provide data for the…

Winter gloves and gadgets don't mix. Most touchscreens use capacitive sensing to complete a weak electrical circuit through skin and locate our tapping. And while wool, cotton, and leather gloves insulate hands from the cold, they block the body's ability to shuttle electrons. Strategic stitching with conductive thread, however, can prevent essential electronics from becoming unresponsive bricks the moment you bundle up. Order silver-plated nylon thread (silver conducts electricity). This can be difficult to find in stores, but major online retailers carry it Pick a pair of gloves to modify. Although leather works, it's harder to push a needle through. Stitch the figure of a star or other solid shape onto the glove's index finger with the thread, making sure it will contact both the touchscreen and your skin. Bundle…

In “Walk Like a Man” [October], Theresa Klein describes her Achilles robot, which moves like a human leg. As a soldier wounded in Afghanistan, I face a partial leg amputation because of a bone infection. Robotic limbs for amputee patients have been pursued for some time. In addition to legs for a robot, might Achilles be a potential prosthesis to help patients achieve more biologically accurate walking and running? Colorado Springs, Colo. Theresa Klein, engineer at Orbital Sciences Corporation responds: Our research could help engineers develop prosthetic limbs that respond with the right reflexes at the right times. For example, our Achilles robot uses load sensors to help generate propulsive force. Similarly, a prosthetic limb could be designed to detect a load and then push off to complete the step,…

Duchess, a 4.4-ton, 45-year-old African elephant at the Paignton Zoo in Devon, England, had already lost her right eye to glaucoma, and cataracts threatened to blind the other. So in September, veterinarians put Duchess under the knife for the second cataract operation ever performed on an elephant. The surgery was similar to the one that 1.8 million Americans undergo each year. First, vet Jim Carter made two incisions in the cornea to access the lens. Next he used a machine with a needle that vibrates at an ultrasonic frequency to break up and suck out the diseased tissue. But to operate on one of the largest land animals on Earth, Duchess's nine-person team needed elephant-sized equipment. Carter ordered custom tools just for the procedure, including a six-inch-long speculum to hold…

2,000 mph The typical speed of a piece of space junk Approximately 1,300 nonfunctional satellites sit in a graveyard orbit 22,000 miles above Earth—and Darpa has plans for them. Recycling dead satellite parts in space could be 10 times cheaper than building and sending up new satellites, says Darpa program manager Dave Barnhart. Earlier this year, the agency started the Phoenix project, which will use robots to salvage parts from decommissioned satellites as soon as 2015. First step: figuring out how to recycle parabolic antennas, which have no moving parts or electronics and thus tend to outlive the satellites they're attached to. Eventually robots could scavenge solar-power arrays and internal components, too. A semiautonomous servicer satellite grabs a container of satlets—satellites the size of a mailbox or smaller—which has been…

It seems innocent at first: Fire up the search app on a new Android phone, and the interface asks if you'd like to activate Google Now. “Sure,” you think, “Google already has my calendar, location, and contacts; what's one more thing?” Here's what: Google Now draws a distinct technological line. On the side you're on now, you tell your devices what you want to do. On the far side, the devices do the telling. Google Now is waiting for you over there. It's the first virtual assistant that truly anticipates your needs. All you have to do is opt in. Google Now runs in the background of the latest Android operating system (Jelly Bean 4.1) and quietly keeps track of searches, calendar events, locations, and travel patterns. It then synthesizes…

According to a recent e-commerce survey, one of online shoppers' biggest complaints is that checking out takes too long. Dashlane, a browser plug-in and mobile app, offers them an express lane. Users enter a master password, and the secure software imports existing account information, creates and auto-fills passwords for new accounts, and learns a user's habits for frequently visited sites. The app fills in password, payment, and shipping specs with nearly twice the accuracy of its competitors. Free…

As stricter emissions standards kick in, auto manufacturers are downsizing engines, which typically means less power. But the 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder in the new 328i—the first four-cylinder engine to go into a 3-Series since 1999—produces 10 more horses and 55 more pound-feet than the six-cylinder it replaces. That's 240 horses and 255 pound-feet of torque, enough to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds while achieving 34 mpg on the highway. From $37,395…

Hybrids and plug-ins are ideal for saving gas around town. For long highway trips, however, a turbocharged diesel engine may be a more efficient approach, as the Cayenne Diesel shows. Porsche engineers squeezed 240 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque from a 3.0-liter turbo diesel engine using electronically controlled direct injection and dual turbochargers. It's enough to push this SUV from 0 to 60 mph in 7.2 seconds—and we still got 33 mpg on the highway and 800 miles on a tank of fuel. From $56,725…

Conventional cellphone speakers are easily drowned out in loud rooms. Kyocera has developed an alternative: a system that passes sound waves directly to the middle and inner ear. Instead of a speaker, Tissue-Conduction Audio uses an actuator in the phone to send vibrations keyed to the audio signal into the soft tissues of the face, such as skin and cartilage, and then on to the eardrum. The company debuted the system in January and plans to roll it out in U.S. phones in 2013.…

The Nokia 808 PureView is the only smartphone able to match the image quality of a camera. Engineers adapted a technique known as oversampling to get higher-quality shots from the phone's one-inch, 41-megapixel sensor. To get a 5-megapixel image, for instance, the processor divides the sensor's 38 million pixels into groups of seven; each group becomes one pixel in the final photo. With seven data inputs per pixel, the processor can increase the final image's overall sharpness, contrast, and color accuracy. $560…

To optimize solar collection for both time of day and season of year, the QBotix Solbot slides along a monorail between pole-mounted photovoltaics, adjusting the tilt of each panel along two axes every 40 minutes. A pair of Solbots can replace up to 400 motors on conventional tracking systems, slashing the cost-per-energy-unit of ground-mounted solar by up to 20 percent. In 2013, the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California, will install the first 50-kilowatt system, with two bots managing 160 panels. Price depends on project…

The Best Quakeproof Structures1 Taipei 101, 1,666 feet (2004) 2 Bay Bridge, 2.2 miles (2006) 3 Sabiha Gökçen Airport, 2 million square feet (2010) At 1,353 feet, the Al Hamra Firdous Tower in Kuwait is the tallest building in the world with one side made of stone. Before the advent of steel frames, which made glass curtain walls possible, masonry helped buildings stand tall. Instead of choosing stone for its strength, though, engineers and architects at SOM chose it to help keep the building cool. The tower's monolithic facade faces south, where stone helps mitigate heat loading from the broiling sun. The rest of the building is covered entirely in glass, maximizing views across Kuwait City.…

With its residential Haiku model, Big Ass Fans changed every convention established by a century of ceiling-fan design. That hot, loud, electromagnet-driven AC motor is now a cool, quiet, permanently magnetized DC drive that's 80 percent more efficient. Instead of flat blades, three airfoils slice through the air. Whoosh mode, one of 10 settings, mimics nature to increase the cooling effect: It varies wind speed by precisely 0.47 hertz, so that it feels more like a breeze on the skin. From $825…

With its inaugural test flight this year, Boeing's Phantom Eye surveillance drone proved that hydrogen could power aircraft capable of extremely long flight times. Phantom Eye's engineers modified its two Ford internal combustion engines to burn liquid hydrogen, which has a much higher energy-to-weight ratio than fossil fuels. When testing and development is complete, 1,900 pounds of liquid hydrogen should keep the propeller-driven Phantom Eye at 65,000 feet for up to four days—three times as long as its closest competitor.…

Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center have built the most affordable satellite to date, a $3,500 device the size of a coffee cup that uses an off-the-shelf HTC Nexus One smartphone as a central processor. (A cheap off-the-shelf radio antenna handles communication with the ground.) PhoneSat 1.0, scheduled to launch by the end of this year, will beam back photos of Earth on an amateur radio band for 10 days, or until the battery dies. Subsequent iterations will be capable of much more: PhoneSat 2.0 will have a two-way S-band radio antenna (which most satellites use to communicate with the ground) and solar panels for extended power.…

The iRobot 110 FirstLook is the toughest, most maneuverable reconnaissance robot made. The five-pound robot is light enough to be thrown into action and sturdy enough to survive a downpour and a 16-foot fall onto concrete. Its tanklike treads allow it to roll smoothly over even the roughest terrain, and four ruggedized cameras provide operators with a 360-degree view. The robot also has two flipper arms, which it can use to hoist itself up steps and over obstacles, or right itself if it lands upside down. DIMENSIONS 4 by 10 by 9 inches ZOOM 8x PRICE $20,000…

Home-monitoring cameras are a multimillion-dollar industry, yet most are not consumer-friendly. They force users to deal with IP addresses or tweak a complex series of computer settings, and then subscribe to a paid monitoring service separately. Dropcam is easier and cheaper. To set it up, users need only plug the camera into a USB port once; the Dropcam automatically figures out network settings from there. Users also get a free account from which they can view a live feed from any computer, tablet, or mobile device. $140…

Most gesture-controlled devices sense large movements—a swinging arm, for example. The Leap, a three-inch USB device, is sensitive enough to track individual fingertips. Within an eight-cubic-foot area, infrared LEDs and 1.3-megapixel camera sensors detect motion at one one-hundredth of a millimeter—200 times the sensitivity of the Microsoft Kinect. In September, Leap Motion sent units to hundreds of independent developers, who are now creating applications for all types of onscreen manipulation. $70…

For better or for worse, electronics such as GPS devices, cellphones, and LED lights have become de rigueur in the backcountry. But keeping them charged isn't easy. Solar panels don't work well in heavily wooded areas, and spare batteries add weight to a pack. The coffee-can-size BioLite CampStove solves that problem—and cooks meals at the same time. Campers put fuel, such as sticks, pinecones, and brush, into the stove's combustion chamber. Waste heat radiates into a thermoelectric generator, which channels electrons into usable current. Some of that current powers a small fan, which boosts airflow within the burn chambers for more efficient combustion; the BioLite burns as hot as propane and can boil water in five minutes. The remaining current, a steady stream of about two watts, runs to a…

Boiling water isn't enough to sterilize medical instruments, which is part of the reason that a quarter of surgery patients in rural clinics in developing countries end up with infections. What's really needed is an autoclave, which blasts tools with 250°F steam under pressure. MIT researchers figured out how to build an autoclave that requires only inexpensive, commonly available materials—a pressure cooker, small mirrors, and buckets—which together concentrate solar rays and produce microbe-killing conditions in 90 minutes. Price not set…

Screen quality follows a simple rule: The larger the screen, the more pixels necessary to fill it. A high-def image is 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. On a 60-inch LCD TV, the image is flawless, but go any larger ray, 80 inches or a wall-sized projection—and the individual pixels become visible, degrading image quality. The Sony VPL-VW1000ES is the first home-theater projector to produce 4,096-by-2,160-pixel, or 4K, images, which allows it to produce pictures up to 200 inches across. The company's engineers based the VPL's 8.8-million-pixel projection chip on those used in Sony's 4K theater projectors. Though 4K content is limited now, directors, including Peter Jackson, have already shot about 75 movies at the standard. As those movies reach homes, viewers will have the means to experience full, cinematic quality in…

Before now, the best camera an amateur filmmaker could get for under $5,000 was a video-capable DSLR. But using a still camera for video has some major trade-offs: Shots must be short to keep the camera from overheating, slow encoding degrades colors, and DSLRs don't accept standard cinema lenses. By automating production—an unusual approach for high-end video cameras—engineers at Blackmagic Design cut their costs without sacrificing professional features, such as solid-state memory, RAW recording, an EF lens mount, and a 2.5-million-pixel sensor. From $2,995…

Every loaf of wheat bread contains a seeming contradiction: gluten, a gel-like protein that's fluid when cool and solid when hot. Gluten forms elastic scaffolding around air bubbles when bread rises (bread is technically a foam) and traps moisture during baking to yield a soft and chewy end product. Too bad millions of people with celiac disease suffer adverse reactions from eating even small amounts of gluten. To replace the protein, food chemists need an edible molecule that forms strong, mesh-like structures that can trap water as a solid at high temperatures, and then release it back as a liquid as the bread cools. To put it another way, you need something that melts in reverse. Scientists at Dow approached the challenge by starting with plant cellulose, a long and…

SHORT ANSWER Asymmetry in the strand. LONG ANSWER Why a strand of hair bends or falls the way it does may sound like a simple question, but the answer is rather convoluted. On one level, the texture of a person's hair derives from his or her genes. A 2009 study looked at the genetics of waves and curls and reported a heritability of between 85 and 95 percent. (That means about nine tenths of the variation in hair texture within the sample could be ascribed to DNA.) How does this play out at the level of a single hair? Research shows that the curvature of a strand depends on the nature of its follicle. When a follicle is asymmetrical, the hair that it produces is oval in shape and tends…