December 2008

Nudge forward out of a garage, and cameras mounted on the grille and under the passenger-side mirror on the 2008 Lexus LX57 see around the corners before you do, sparing pedestrians that cross your path. A second camera provides a view of the ground beside the vehicle, so you don’t scuff those new tires on the curb.

To make a fabric-thin heater that runs for up to six hours—perfect for the insides of gloves, jackets or boots—Energy Integration Technologies did away with thermostats that suck power and take up space. Its system, Aevex, uses a flexible polymer film that automatically regulates its own temperature.

Truck-mounted IED-destroying lasers have already been tested in Iraq, but firing lasers from an airplane is a more difficult proposition. The first successful test of a plane-mounted laser gun came on August 7, when Boeing’s 18-ton chemical laser fired a beam from a C-130H aircraft and destroyed a three-by-three-foot target on the ground.

Intended for novice fliers who have received the FAA’s new, more accessible sport-pilot license, the A5 is a low-cost, seaworthy, easy-to-fly, easy-to-store aircraft that aims to bring personal flight to the masses. This sleek floatplane has folding wings that make it compact enough to tow home and stow in your garage.

Intended for novice fliers who have received the FAA’s new, more accessible sport-pilot license, the A5 is a low-cost, seaworthy, easy-to-fly, easy-to-store aircraft that aims to bring personal flight to the masses. This sleek floatplane has folding wings that make it compact enough to tow home and stow in your garage.

Highways filled with hydrogen cars are still decades away, but that doesn’t diminish the achievement of rolling the first fuel-cell car off a mass-production line. To open up interior space, Honda developed its own fuel cell, a 100-kilowatt stack that packs substantially more energy into a 65 percent smaller space than other designs and squeezes neatly into the tunnel between the front seats. And by working through several generations of concept cars, Honda has gotten the once-experimental FCX to look and drive just like a gas-powered car.

Highways filled with hydrogen cars are still decades away, but that doesn’t diminish the achievement of rolling the first fuel-cell car off a mass-production line. To open up interior space, Honda developed its own fuel cell, a 100-kilowatt stack that packs substantially more energy into a 65 percent smaller space than other designs and squeezes neatly into the tunnel between the front seats. And by working through several generations of concept cars, Honda has gotten the once-experimental FCX to look and drive just like a gas-powered car.

Despite our niftiest holograms and watermarks, counterfeiters still manage to sneak billions of dollars of fake goods onto store shelves. Instead of slapping on authenticity seals, which can be copied, Ingenia Technology’s anti-counterfeit scanner reads the nanoscopic variations that occur naturally on the surface of every object, from documents to a perfume bottle, and no two are ever the same.

For years, the increased accuracy, smoothness and reliability of electronic shifting has been perhaps the ultimate goal for high-performance-bike designers. After several companies’ attempts failed—suffering from breakdowns in bad weather, poor battery life or unbearable complexity—Shimano’s Dura-Ace Di2 has finally delivered it.

Drywall, plasterboard, wallboard—whatever you call it, the substance that covers billions of square feet of American homes hasn’t changed since its invention in 1917. Dry-
wall factories still roast ground-up gypsum rock in 500°F kilns, spewing out 20 billion pounds of greenhouse gases a year. So Serious Materials created EcoRock: a drywall that congeals without heat, uses recycled materials that don’t require mining, and holds up even better.

Tales of Testing Lauren Aaronson, Associate Editor One day I walked into work, and my new Lenovo X301 laptop was gone. Good thing it had Phoenix FailSafe, a program that lets you track and control a missing computer. I borrowed a PC to log onto Phoenix’s Web site, where I reported my laptop lost and asked to retrieve an important document.

Last spring, scientists from the Queensland Museum in South Brisbane, Australia, discovered this new coral species hanging underneath a rocky ledge about 50 feet deep off the northern end of Australia’s Lizard Island. They now hope to classify the coral, along with hundreds of other recently discovered marine invertebrates.

Last spring, scientists from the Queensland Museum in South Brisbane, Australia, discovered this new coral species hanging underneath a rocky ledge about 50 feet deep off the northern end of Australia’s Lizard Island. They now hope to classify the coral, along with hundreds of other recently discovered marine invertebrates.

When lunar astronauts flick on their televisions after a long day of prospecting, they’ll have a trashcan-size nuclear reactor to thank for their nightly dose of prime time. NASA, looking past the already daunting task of simply getting humans to the moon by 2020, recently started considering proposals for ways to power lunar habitats. Batteries and fuel cells provide only short-term solutions. Solar power would be limited where a single night lasts as long as 354 hours. So space-agency officials have started making plans to go nuclear.

When lunar astronauts flick on their televisions after a long day of prospecting, they’ll have a trashcan-size nuclear reactor to thank for their nightly dose of prime time. NASA, looking past the already daunting task of simply getting humans to the moon by 2020, recently started considering proposals for ways to power lunar habitats. Batteries and fuel cells provide only short-term solutions. Solar power would be limited where a single night lasts as long as 354 hours. So space-agency officials have started making plans to go nuclear.