“Spitting death from machine guns,” we wrote, motorcyclists in the “first mile-a-minute army” were part of a mechanized force that replaced the cavalry when it became clear that horses were no longer fast enough to compete in modern warfare. Sparsely used in direct fighting, motorcycles yielded to jeeps by World War II as the versatile vehicles of choice for operations in rough terrain. By then, though, motorcycles already had three decades of history with the military—Gen.

Cartoonist Scott Adams first built the Ultimate Cubicle for Dilbert the office drone. Now Adams is designing Dilbert’s Ultimate House (DUH)—virtual proof that a home can be green without compromising on cushiness.


Irritated by the inefficiencies of supposedly modern homes, Adams
enlisted the help of tech-savvy fans, architects and energy experts to design an innovative, environmentally friendly abode for America’s most

Yes, CDs sometimes disintegrate within a decade or two, but with proper handling and the use of higher-quality discs, your digital photo album should last a century. The breakdown of discs, known as CD rot, begins with poor care: scratches, bending the disc as you remove it from its case, damage to the edges. But these slight nicks and fractures don’t make rot inevitable. You can avoid it by using CDs coated with gold rather than the more common silver. The science involved here is simple.

Until recently, it might have seemed impossible. Some scientists estimate that 90 percent of Earth’s species have not yet been identified; you’d need an enormous army of well-equipped biologists working night and day to even make a dent in that figure. But evolutionary biologist Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph in Ontario believes that he has found a way of accelerating the process. He has discovered a “bar code” embedded in the DNA of all animal life, from bacteria to monkeys, that functions like a fingerprint.

Beware: A ridiculous new science movie is coming to a theater near you. What the #$*!

[SlingBox Personal Broadcaster]
[Samsung HP-P5091]
[Onkyo TX-NR1000]
[HP x5400]
[Sony DAV-LF1]

"Plot and plan, scheme and engineer as he may, the crooked ward-heeler cannot discover a way of cheating the machine," PopSci wrote in 1920, urging the widespread adoption of mechanized voting as an antidote to Tammany Hallstyle election fraud. The gear-and-lever voting machine seemed to ensure a fair and scientific tally. Although it had debuted two decades before we featured it on our cover, in 1920 it was used in only 17 states. By the 1960s the machine predominated in U.S. elections.

The EX-S100 features the thinnest 2.8x optical zoom you can get, by using an entirely new lens material: ceramic. It can be formulated with fewer defects than glass, reducing color aberrations. And because ceramic is harder than glass, it’ll make a skinnier lens that won’t flex as it extends and retracts. A thinner stack of lenses allows more light to reach the sensor. The zoom has the power for close-ups, and the CCD is good enough for 8x10 prints—these are the requirements for a well-rounded camera. The EX-S100 is the slimmest pocket shooter to meet them.

Slideshow:
1. Electrolux Trilobite
2. Sharper Image eVac
3. Friendly Robotics Friendly Vac RV400
4. iRobot Roomba Discovery
5. Karcher RC3000 RoboCleaner

A light shines under the closed door of a radiology suite, down a darkened hallway deep inside the University Medical Center in Bern, Switzerland. Outside the building, under the glow of a fluorescent street lamp, an empty hearse waits in the loading dock. Tonight the local undertaker is earning some extra money making a special delivery. Entering the radiology room through a back door, he gently deposits a body—double-wrapped inside a blue bag—on the sliding bed of a full-body scanner.