Ski, anyone? Lockheed's big bruiser takes to ice.



Picture: DoD/US Air Force

In the picture above, taken earlier this month, a ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules aircraft from the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing takes off during an Operation Deep Freeze mission in Antarctica. In the fish-eye picture below, an equally formidable aircraft, the C-17 Globemaster III, carries personnel from the US National Science Foundation to McMurdo Station.


Picture: DoD/US Air Force

The US Air Force, Navy, Army and Coast Guard are lending operational and logistical support to the NSF’s research and exploration efforts in this seriously chilled part of the world through an outfit called Joint Task Force Support Forces Antarctica. Check out some more pictures here.

Many years ago, PM’s editor boarded a different version of the legendary Hercules for a flight from his military camp in Pretoria to the Cape, where he and his SA Air Force platoon were deployed to guard a roadblock and prevent the spread of Newcastle disease, which affects chickens and other birds. This experience was memorable primarily for his introduction to every chicken-based dish imaginable (confiscated birds and eggs were happily consumed by the platoon), but also because of an altercation between a leopard and a baboon just outside his tent. As far as he can recall, the leopard won.

If you’d like to know more about Lockheed’s big bruiser, check out this Wikipedia entry.

Go green... with biodegradable sneakers.

Picture: OAT Shoes

An innovative Dutch team has come up with a startlingly different fashion concept: you buy a pair of cheerful-looking sneakers, bury them in the garden at the end of their useful life, apply water, and watch as flowers bloom from your old footwear.
Meet the Virgin Collection from OAT Shoes, a range of biodegradable sneakers resulting from almost two years of research and development. Say the two guys behind the idea, Christiaan Maats and Dirk-Jan Oudshoorn: “The future of fashion lies in a reconciliation between nature and industry. OAT Shoes strives to lead the way to that future.”

Fine so far, but then it gets a little Earth Motherish. “We have to close the loop, come full circle and realise we’re an integral part of the whole thing. We are nature, we were born from it, live in it and we’ve been playing around with it for a while now, building cities and roads and running around, not minding too much about keeping the place clean. And now, up to our knees in waste and with mother earth losing her temper, it’s time for some spring cleaning. And that starts with making greener choices.”

Plant a sneaker today. Bikini optional.

Anyway, we say good luck to them. The idea of planting a pair of old shoes in the ground after use (these contain seeds, by the way) and watching them sprout flowers is such an off-the-wall concept that it deserves attention. Judging by the state of some old sneakers we’re encountered over the years, no additional compost will be necessary.

Transcendent Man... and Popular Mechanics

Futurist Ray Kurzweil. Picture: Transcendent Man.com

If all goes according to plan, Popular Mechanics will host a series of intimate screenings of Ray Kurzweil’s Transcendent Man, the much-anticipated documentary film that portrays a future very different from one we might have imagined. Filmmaker Barry Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around the globe as the renowned inventor and futurist shares his incredible vision of a world in which humans merge with machines, vastly extending our longevity and our intelligence... all within the next 30 years.

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading futurists, with a 25-year track record of accurate predictions. He was called the “restless genius” by the Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, and selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison”. Inventor of the first CCD flatbed scanner and many other technology firsts, Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and has received the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-MIT Prize (the world’s largest for innovation), 19 honorary doctorates, and awards from three US presidents.

In other words, the man knows his stuff - which explains why we believe his ideas will resonate with Popular Mechanics readers everywhere. We’ll keep you informed about dates, places and times for the screenings of Transcendent Man, a documentary that will leave you breathless.

Watch the Transcendent Man film trailer...

 * Extracted from Transcendentman.com

Yeah, but will it grow hair on a billiard ball?

Row C shows the mice four weeks after treatment.

Stress can turn your hair grey and even cause it to fall out; that’s a scientifically documented fact. The bad news is that of the zillions of “hair-restoration” remedies that have emerged to treat this unfortunate condition, very few have been shown to have any effect whatsoever – and even the best of them won’t turn a bald pate into a forest.

Until now. A team led by researchers from UCLA and the (US) Veterans Administration investigating how stress affects gastrointestinal function appears to have identified a chemical compound that induces hair growth by blocking a stress-related hormone associated with hair loss – and they did it entirely by accident. Okay, their experiment was conducted on mice, but still...

For their experiments, the researchers used mice that had been genetically altered to over-produce a stress hormone called corticotrophin-releasing factor, or CRF. As these mice age, they lose hair and eventually become bald on their backs, making them visually distinct from their unaltered counterparts. Says team spokesman Million Mulugeta: “This could open new venues to treat hair loss in humans through the modulation of the stress hormone receptors; particularly hair loss related to chronic stress and ageing.”
* Source: UCLA

Bio Robot Refrigerator

Four times smaller than the conventional fridge (700 mm wide, 200 mm high and 230 mm deep), the Bio Robot Refrigerator, designed by Yuriy Dmitriev of Russia, was one of the eight finalists in the 2010 edition of the Electrolux Design Lab competition.

Rather than shelves, the non-sticky, odourless biopolymer gel morphs around products to create a separate pod that suspends items for easy access. The fridge doesn't require the expenditure of energy for cooling products.

The fridge can change shape depending on the intensity of its use. The fridge is adaptable – it can be hung vertically, horizontally, and even on the ceiling.

We want one!

Think you can do better? The deadline for the Electrolux Design Lab 2011 competition is 1 May 2011 23:59 CET. The brief: Intelligent Mobility.

Harness the Energy of the Universe!

Picture: NASA

ADVERTISEMENT*
Many people use the word “quantum” without fully understanding its meaning. The highly respected team of scientists working with Bio-Force Feedback Inc are different: they have explored the depths of this sub-microscopic energy resource and come up with a product that is quite literally set to change the world.

Meet the Quantum Energy Bracelet, a stylish and extraordinarily effective wristband that is already improving the performance of sportsmen and women across the world. Endorsed by a host of celebrities, including Area 54 star Todd Halkett and superhero Black Rider from Saving the World, this wristband has rapidly become a must-have fashion accessory as well as an essential health enhancer. The good news is that it’s now available in South Africa – at a price that sounds too good to be true!

Are you listless? Have you lost interest in life and love? Do your muscles lack tone? Does your brain feel fuzzy when it should be alert? Worry no longer – this amazing bracelet, which exploits the well-documented scientific phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling, is about to change your life. What makes our product better than those “holographic” and “bio-antenna” bracelets? Simple – it’s a question of real science versus pseudoscience.

How does our bracelet work? Here’s an easy scientific explanation. As we all know, the subatomic world is filled with an invisible “quantum foam” of virtual particles that continually pop in and out of existence. One of the field interactions associated with virtual particles is the Coulomb force (static electric force) between electric charges, caused by the exchange of virtual photons. In symmetric three-dimensional space, this exchange results in the inverse square law for electric force. Since the photon has no mass, the Coulomb potential has an infinite range. The key is to contain and redirect that valuable energy.

This is where the Quantum Energy Bracelet comes in. Employing a unique amalgam of rare metals with zero-rated gravitational effects (worldwide patent pending) combined with two graphene-impregnated spheres, it effectively channels the virtual photons throughout the wearer’s body. Since the amalgam is zero-rated, there is minimal loss through electromagnetic leakage, allowing the skin to contain and maximise the beneficial effects throughout the body and brain.

Picture: Bio-Force Feedback Inc.

We’re proud to announce that our bracelet is being tested by leading science and technology journal Popular Mechanics, which has undertaken to pass on expressions of interest from potential customers. If you’d be interested in purchasing a Quantum Energy Bracelet for the low introductory price of R299,95, please send an e-mail to our retail consultants at Popularmechanics@ramsaymedia.co.za with the words “Quantum Energy Bracelet” in the subject line.

Go on – change your life!

(* Not really. Credulity is a dangerous thing.)

All-electric green machine.

It has a slightly weird name, and the design is way, way out. But hey, it’s green and it’s rather mean. Meet the Agility Saietta, an all-electric British-designed motorcycle that breaks all the moulds. Although we have yet to see the machine in the figurative flesh, this rendering is enough to rev our engines. We’re told it accelerates from standstill to 100 km/h in under 4 seconds, which isn’t half bad, and it has a range of 80 to 160 km, depending on the model.

The people behind the bike are rather excited about it. We quote: “Sculptural, visceral, emotional, it engages you with feral grace and strength that envelops and encourages, then delivers a riding experience that is intuitive beyond anything before.”

Exactly.

Run, robot, run.

A Japanese tech firm called Vstone is organising what’s claimed to be the world’s first marathon for robots (hey, someone had to do it). The teensy mechanical athletes will complete the full 42 km distance, running 422 laps of a 100-metre track in anything up to three days. The starting gun fires at 10 am (Japanese time) this Thursday.

HTC Flyer takes wing. Android rules...

If you thought we had quite enough tablets to choose from, you were wrong. In fact, this is only the beginning, as evidenced by the launch of HTC’s Android-powered Flyer at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (and yes, we know it’s pronounced with a lithp). The HTC Flyer gives you “natural” touch and pen interaction plus an innovation called HTC Watch, a connected video service that represents the first cloud-based mobile gaming service on a tablet.

It comes in a sleek and light aluminium unibody and features a seven-inch 3D display, a lightning-fast 1,5 Ghz processor, plus high-speed HSPA+ wireless capabilities. Web browsing becomes a pleasure.

Pop Mech's Electric Sheep: Oh, the excitement...

In keeping with our policy of er... lifting the veil and bringing you closer to the PM Team, we'd like to introduce the Electric Sheep, a rather unusual floating trophy inspired by Philip K Dick's almost-eponymous story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It's presented irregularly - that is, we generally forget - to staff members who excel in various fields, or alternatively, manage to stay out of trouble for at least a month.

Our sheep started out as a scruffy but utterly sincere-looking animal (Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertibrata, Class Mammalia, Order Ungulata) with red LED eyes. We then made the mistake of awarding him to a member of the marketing department, who turned him into an outrageously tasteless trans-gender thing with false eyelashes, painted toenails and worse... the Liberace of the pastures. In the final humiliation, this time courtesy of our HR Executive, he gained two fairy wings and a tiara.

It's worth noting that competition for this award has since fallen off sharply. Previous recipients would like it known that they at no point actively solicited recognition in the sheep category.
* Your comments are invited.

PM's Sean Woods on Expresso breakfast TV show.

Sean Woods, associate editor at Popular Mechanics, introduces energetic "Expresso" presenter Katlego Maboe (pictured below) to a GPS "child-finder" device that offers peace of mind to parents everywhere.

PM makes a regular Monday morning appearance on the breakfast show, demonstrating all manner of gadgets. Check out the show's Web site at http://www.expressoshow.com/

Presenter Liezel van der Westhuizen
Picture courtesy of Expresso

Presenter Katlego Maboe
Picture courtesy of Expresso

   
                                                                                                                 

We're testing the Jaguar XJ... and it's true love.

                                                                 Picture: Jaguar

Our journalists have been playing with a rather delicious Jaguar XJ for the past few days, and will be reporting back on their experience soon. First impressions suggest that they rather like it, as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to give up the keys.

Welcome to the new Popular Mechanics blog site.

You are cordially invited to visit us often for a wildly eclectic mix of news about science, technology, cars, bikes and a whole lot of other stuff. Please don't forget to visit the Popular Mechanics Web site. Oh, and tell your friends.