The small airplane is too dirty for an environmentally threatened world. That’s not the view from eco-activists, but from some of the leading lights in general aviation—the category encompassing small planes such as Cessnas flown by citizen pilots. “At some point, some environmental group is going to figure out that small aircraft fly leaded fuel,” said Mark Moore, NASA’s personal air vehicle program manager, to a meeting of engineers, aviation advocates and a billionaire corporate titan with his own private jet. Their goal, however, is not to bury private aviation, but to remake it as the greenest form of personal transit.

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Soon you’ll be able to ditch your game pad and Wiimote. A new camera system for computers and consoles will track your movements in three dimensions—essentially turning your body into the game controller. For example, play Rock Band by waving your hands at imaginary drums, or dodge punches in a fighting game.

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Silicon Valley is mostly a world of practical technology—applying principles from pure science to create handy gadgets. But today, Hewlett Packard announced a new electrical component born of theoretical physics. The device, a nanoscale component called a "memristor," requires no power to retain data, which it can store more densely than a hard drive and access about as fast as a computer’s RAM memory—potentially allowing it to replace both components in the future.

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If technology were a religion, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center would be one of the holiest shrines on any pilgrimage. So much of our modern computer world was invented at this freewheeling innovation lab (and largely given away). Prefer your mouse and point-and-click graphical interface to a UNIX-style command line? Thanks PARC. Think laser prints look better than dot-matrix scrawl? Thanks again.

Some say the glory days have passed. PARC today is a more-focused operation that has to turn quick profits (no more open funding from it’s owner Xerox). But it’s still a well-staffed corporate research lab in an era with ever-fewer of those creatures. On Monday, its staff opened the doors to the press to show off the latest gizmos.

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Hmmm...What's this? Looks like a Web-based remote control for your TV. We happened upon this randomly today, and it raises lots of interesting questions. The URL sonyathome.com brings up a Web page that sure looks like it belongs to Pioneer Electronics -- what with the big "Pioneer" badge in the corner and an email function that sends a message from "elite@pioneer.com" ("Elite" is Pioneer's premium brand of A/V gear).

Is Pioneer developing software for Sony? Is Pioneer merging with Sony? Seems unlikely, since Pioneer just formally announced a joint venture to get plasma panels from Panasonic, and already have a deal to get LCDs from Sharp. But then again, Sony also gets LCDs from Sharp. Hmmm.

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OK, they are not the most objective source, but graphics processor manufacturer nVidia does make a pretty convincing argument for spending more money on a computer’s graphics card and less on the main processor—in certain conditions.

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"Be there and be square." That’s the apt motto of Nerd Nite—a monthly barroom science and history lecture series in New York City and Boston. PopSci grabbed a beer for last week’s gathering at Angels and Kingsin New York’s East Village to learn about dinosaurs, the history of drunkenness in Gotham and more.

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There is no single measure of autofocus ability, so we did two main tests to judge the cameras’ chops. The first was to see how well each camera performed in difficult situations: low light and subjects with very little detail. In the second, we picked subjects that are easy to get in focus and simply measured how fast each camera could do it.

This was our setup:

Lenses

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