Brainicane

Your family might be sharing more than turkey and pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. Swine flu may also be on the table — and at crowded airports and shopping malls.

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Health and Medicine. Comments: None

A gene known to shield the body from harmful chemicals may also protect against bowel cancer, a study suggests.

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Health and Medicine. Comments: None

This is downright infuriating. Perhaps you recall this story: while driving down the road one day, Charles Diaz grew upset at seeing a man riding his bike on a busy street with his 3 year-old son. So he shot him in the head. Thankfully, the bullet narrowly missed his skull, instead getting lodged in the […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Cars and Transportation. Comments: None

Roadside bombings are, unfortunately, a part of daily life for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and almost every day the military captures surveillance footage of improvised explosive devices being set and detonated. Rather than letting the footage languish, a joint team of counter-IED experts is quickly flipping the footage into video game-like simulations that make […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None

Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards a program of robotic exploration. To that end, NASA now wants a rocket-powered UAV to fly around the Red Planet, photographing the […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None

The Plymouth Rock project could be a stepping stone to Mars

Cue the Aerosmith soundtrack; a plan to send a manned space mission to land on an asteroid is gaining traction within both NASA and the aerospace industry as experts look to bridge the feasibility gap between lunar missions and an eventual rendezvous with Mars. Of […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None

A Mumbai engineer’s “violent elephant control gear” will safeguard against beasts run amok

Who you gonna call when a normally placid pachyderm decides to act out? Enter Zachariah Matthew, a Mumbai engineer who created a remote-controlled immobilizing device to handle elephants on a rampage.

The “Violent Elephant Control Gear” takes the form of a 16-pound box fitted […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None

Like strapping a concert to your ears

Think of the HD800 as the largest speaker you can stick on your head. The sound-producing driver on each side measures 2.2 inches wide, compared with 1.6 for conventional headphones, which gives them the deepest bass of any pair we’ve ever heard. But they can also handle the rest […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None

What the “future” of supersonic air travel looked like in 1975

Here at PopSci, we spend our fair share of time marveling at fantastic visions of the future. So as a result, we know better than anyone how fun it can be looking back a few decades at the visions that flew a bit too close […]

Posted on November 24th, 2009 under Science and Technology. Comments: None