In each issue of Popular Science, our renowned What's New section keeps you up to date with the most innovative consumer products currently on the market. Here on PopSci.com, we bring you a special expanded and eco-conscious edition of "The Goods."

Helping the environment shouldn't always demand a sacrifice. Click "View Photos" at left to launch the gallery and see our picks for the computers, phones and even barbecues that will ease your conscience in style.

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In each issue of Popular Science, our renowned What's New section keeps you up to date with the most innovative consumer products currently on the market. Here on PopSci.com, we bring you a special expanded edition of "The Goods," college-style. Click "View Photos" at left to launch the gallery.

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The world is full of mysteries, and we at Popular Science strive to
do our part to help you make sense of them. What do animals dream about? Is there any way to ensure a blink-free photo? And what is the worst sound on Earth?

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We’ve always known that “popular” and “science” belong together. Even so, we were surprised to learn that they are, respectively, the 956th and 957th most frequently used words in the English language. We found the complete rankings of the 86,800 most common words at WordCount

WordCount currently gets its data from the British National Corpus, a 100-million-word collection of written and spoken texts. Eventually, WordCount’s creators plan to track word usage at many levels, ranging from a single document to the entire Internet.

According to WordCount, each word in its current archive “is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance.” So what comes before and after “popular science”? “Products” and “notes,” appropriately enough.—Dawn Stover

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When PopSci published Will Snyder's article on terraforming Mars, we opined that the Mars Society's colonial flag could use some sprucing up, so we asked readers to submit their own designs. The week the article appeared, 42 Martian-flag mockups turned up in our inbox. Some featured elaborate designs and detailed explanations (which we've printed in their entirety in the slideshow), while others simply included a name. A couple flags were even sent anonymously.

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You've reached the new online blog companion to How 2.0, Popular Science's award-winning section that each month is chock-full of tips, tricks, hacks and do-it-yourself projects. We know it's a wild world out there in tech land, but never fear, for our crack How 2.0 staff will be here to keep you stocked with all the latest DIY goodness, including weekly projects by our resident hacker Dave Prochnow, handy how-to guides to help you use your tech gear better, and the best DIY tips from around the Web.

We've also partnered with Instructables—the Web's premier community for step-by-step illustrated guides to anything from cooking and cleaning a Dungeness crab to fitting a working PC into the shell of an old Nintendo. We'll be bringing you our favorite projects direct from our Instructables group, along with regular contests and special features. Watch for details of our kickoff contest in the coming days—you're not going to want to miss it.

Oh, and one more thing. This blog will have another very important feature: you. Know of a better way to tweak one of our projects? Jump in on the comments section found on each post. Or submit an Instructables project to our group—we'll be featuring our favorites here regularly. We look forward to seeing what you guys can cook up. Happy hacking! —John Mahoney

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The world is full of mysteries, and we at Popular Science strive to
do our part to help you make sense of them. What causes Slurpee-induced
brain freeze? Will junior1s piano lessons make him smarter? Can men produce
breast milk?

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Forgot your wallet? You’ll need a better excuse than that for passing on the check. By next year, you’ll be able to pay simply by swiping your cellphone a few inches from a cash register, with a new wireless standard called Near Field Communication. An NFC chip in your phone will send your credit-card number—stored on your phone or on the chip—by way of short-distance radio waves. An electronic reader at the checkout will decode the number and ring up your purchase.

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Sleek, wall-mounted plasma screens might seem like viewing nirvana now, but what if a picture window could double as a flat-screen TV? Or what if your car’s GPS system could be displayed on your windshield? Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have invented a transparent OLED (organic light-emitting diode) that will allow just that, transforming any clear surface into a see-through display.

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The annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference covers arguably the greatest variety of subjects of any science conference in the world. This year's gathering, held in St. Louis, Missouri, hosted symposia on everything from astrobiology to veterinary ethics. And although it's impossible for one reporter to cover more than a small fraction of the 200-plus scientific sessions held over five days, here are a few highlights of the most exciting research happening now.

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