Entertainment & Gaming

Culinary Questions Explored

This weekend, an electromagnetic signal will transmit data and images directly into your home


This Sunday at 11 pm, catch a sneak peek at the debut of Food Detectives, the new prime-time television series created as a collaboration between Popular Science and the Food Network. Your charismatic and learned PopSci editors--Megan Miller, Jake Ward and others--join host Ted Allen to investigate, test, and debunk common beliefs and myths about food.

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How It Works

How it Works: The Pole Vault

A fast run and a carbon-fiber pole create 20 feet of vertical

The pole vault is all about energy conversion. The kinetic energy built up during the vaulter’s run turns into potential energy stored in the pole as the vaulter bends it nearly 90 degrees. When the pole recoils, it unleashes that energy to help propel the vaulter up and over the bar. Of these stages, Peter McGinnis, a professor of kinesiology at the State University of New York at Cortland, has found that the most important is the speed of the vaulter just before he plants his pole. The energy built up during the run accounts for almost 60 percent of the vault’s height.

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The Score

A New Shoe Feeds Microbes Sole Food

Sneakers' burden on landfills may be reduced by a biodegrading sole material

You've ditched your Hummer, recycle with a vengeance, and read your Hemingway by candlelight. But what kind of shoes are you wearing? Brooks Running launched a shoe this week containing its new midsole, called BioMoGo, which degrades 50 times faster than a normal one. According to Brooks, a standard shoe can last 1000 years in landfill, while BioMoGo will be gone in just 20. Brooks estimates it will save 30 million pounds of landfill waste over a 20-year period.

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The Score

Shooting In Rhythm

A new audio profiling system helps Olympic shooters perfect their timing

In Olympic shooting, athletes have to think fast and shoot faster. The double trap event involves two clay targets fired simultaneously at 50 miles per hour at different angles, so getting off both shots quickly, and in the proper rhythm, is incredibly important. But how fast is fast enough? The British Shooting Team brought that question to the scientists at BAE Systems.

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Gaming Improves Social Skills

Interactive technology may actually aid in everything from basic interactions to treatment for addiction

New research by Eryn Grant, a Ph.D. student at Queensland University, says the virtual reality game, Second Life, boosts people’s ability to socially interact. The game, according to Grant, improves social connections between complete strangers by making it easier for people to find common interests.

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The Score

A Stick-Free Sensor

Scientists develop a biofeedback electrolyte sensor that works well above an athlete's skin

Real time biofeedback from athletes is popping up everywhere. From heart rate monitors to electrolyte sensors, there’s a push to know what’s happening inside the body. For each sensor, a good ‘connection’ to the body is critical for obtaining accurate data but that often requires that something be stuck to the athlete. Now, a new technology developed by ConText, a European research collaboration, hopes to monitor EMG signals without attaching to, or getting under, an athlete’s skin.

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The Making of a Olympian

An unorthodox, highly scientific training regimen made Andy Potts the top triathlete in the country

At the starting dock of the Olympic triathlon trials, the expression on Andy Potts’s face seems to say I will kill you with my eyes. As the starting gun fires, he plunges into the Black Warrior River in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and, in a burst of white foam, quickly pulls ahead of nine rivals. The second-ranked Hunter Kemper manages to hold pace with Potts for a few minutes, then drifts back into third place.

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Xbox 360 To Show Netflix Movies

Microsoft announces that its popular game console will stream Netflix movies in the fall

Just when you thought you couldn't waste enough time on your Xbox 360, Microsoft has decided to add another way to get you to stare at your tube for longer, by streaming movies and TV shows through its popular game console. The tech giant announced its partnership with the movie-rental company Netflix this week at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles. While video-gamers were leaping for joy at the convention when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, avid movie fans were leaping even higher to hear about Microsoft's movie deal.

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Sweatin' For The Planet

If the idea of getting fitter doesn't motivate you to go to the gym, how about trimming your electric bill?

No two fads are growing faster than getting fit and going green. Is it possible that by achieving the former, one could also accomplish the latter? Harnessing human movement has long been a holy grail of renewable energy, but real-life implementations have been relegated to advertising stunts and commercially impractical gadgets. But ReRev.com, a startup company from St. Petersburg, Florida, thinks its technology can let us improve our own health, and that of our planet, by working up a sweat.

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The Score

Are Drug Testers Finally Beating Dopers?

Authorities bust top Tour de France cyclist for a new drug few knew existed

After years of trying, and often failing, to play catch-up with drug cheats, anti-doping authorities signaled Thursday that they may actually be pulling ahead, with reports that a high-profile cyclist at the Tour de France has been busted for a drug so new few people had even heard of it.

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How It Works

How it Works: The Fastball

The biomechanics behind throwing 100 mph without ripping your elbow apart

The slingshot move of a pro pitcher’s shoulder is the fastest recorded action in sports. A pitch’s power, however, is generated by his entire body. For a right-handed pitcher, the chain of kinetic energy starts as soon as he lifts his left leg and faces third base. The energy of that foot landing transfers into the rotation of the trunk and then finally unleashes in the arm whipping around at the elbow.

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The Stadium of Tomorrow

Check out the cutting-edge features that might just make tomorrow’s stadiums worth the outrageous price of admission with our animated fly through

Frankenstein's Dome: We combined the best design and technology features from a dozen cutting-edge stadium plans to create the ultimate Stadium of the Future, seen on these pages. Photo by Graham Murdoch
Now that fans can enjoy high-def sports action from their living rooms, stadium owners need to offer more to potential patrons than $8 beer. What can you expect from the stadium of the future? Comfortable seats close to the action, interactive screens that provide real-time game stats, sustainable design, and architecture that directs the roar of the home crowd onto the field.

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The Score

Summer Fun With Rotary-Wing Projectiles

CopterDarts provide much of the fun of lawn darts, without the risk of impalement

From horseshoes to cornhole to bocce ball, every red-blooded American enjoys some form of lawn game during a summer barbecue. Each generation, innovators and entrepreneurs attempt to capitalize on a family's desire to relax outside, with a cold beverage in one hand, while competing in a game that doesn't require breaking a sweat. There is perhaps no more notorious failure in fulfilling these requirements than lawn darts. While the foot-long spears satisfied our need to compete, they ignored the fact that flying sharp objects, running kids, and that aforementioned beverage don't mix well.

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The Score

Tour de France Introduces Radio Delay

A change in protocol may shift the coaching dynamics of the race

The Tour de France has made a critical change in protocol that could greatly alter race strategy, regarding how it provides real-time updates. For a decade, attacks by specific riders were immediately broadcast over an official communication channel, Radio Tour, and directly into the follow cars where directors for each team were listening. Depending on the specific rider(s), the specific team, and the size of the lead, directors in each car would instruct their team through helmet-mounted radios on whether to give chase or lay back.

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Introducing Your Google Life

The search giant takes on virtual reality with its new Second Life-like animated application.

Google added its own version of life to the Web this week with its launch of the animated program "Lively." A "20 percent project"—one borne from Google's policy of allowing its staff to spend 20 percent of their work time on their own projects—Lively is much like another Second Life. Its users can enter 3-D worlds, engage in real-time avatar interactions and express their thoughts and feelings all in a virtual community. What distinguishes it, though, from its competition is that it can be controlled from any Web page.

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