july 2009

The wind may be restless, but the fastest air-powered ground vehicle is surprisingly steady as it sails over the dusty ground. Called Greenbird, it was developed by English engineer Richard Jenkins and the U.K.'s largest private green electricity supplier, Ecotricity.

On March 26 in a dry lakebed in California, the craft broke the world land-speed record for wind-powered vehicles by more than 10 miles an hour, setting the new record at 126.2 mph.

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This month marks the 40th anniversary of humankind's first steps on the moon. Auspiciously timed is Craig Nelson's new book, Rocket Men--one of the most detailed accounts of the period leading up to the first manned moon mission. Here, we have ten little-known Apollo 11 facts unearthed by Nelson during his research.

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This is not your typical light show. The neon light piping into the brain of a mouse with Parkinson's disease stops the animal's tremors instantly. Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford University believe the laser light can "turn on" damaged or inactive brain cells.

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Play the latest videogames without investing in an ultra-fast computer, a pricey console or even a disc from the local game store. Just log onto OnLive, a Web service that runs processor-hogging games on its own computers and zaps them over the Internet to almost any screen, including your cheap laptop or TV.

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In the movies, entrusting human life to robot helpers and sophisticated machines inevitable ends in fire, destruction and death. But in reality, the automatons are actually saving lives. We featured six Machines that Heal in our July issue, one of which is Twendy-One, a Japanese robot nurse straight out of the comic books built to assists the elderly.

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Lemur IIa is a robot designed to autonomously inspect and maintain in-orbit space equipment such as the Orion crew exploration vehicle. Shown below on a model space telescope, the Lemur IIa was envisioned as an orbital Swiss Army knife. Each limb has four degrees of freedom and a "quick connect” feature, allowing astronauts to swap in different repair tools as needed.

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After a motorcycle crash, Nic Case found a safer, but still thrilling, hobby: building radio-controlled cars. At 161 mph, his latest just smashed the world record.

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Jonathan Coulton, PopSci's contributing troubadour and longtime friend, has a new DVD/CD set out titled "Best. Concert. Ever." Leave a question or comment below for a chance to win the goods. We'll announce our ten lucky winners on July 17th. Good luck!

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