Mr. Coffee 10-Cup Smart Optimal Brew Coffeemaker with WeMo

Belkin

We've all been in that catch-22 where we're just too tired to roll out of bed to brew that hot beverage that will wake us up enough to get out of bed. Fortunately, technology's here to help: Belkin has teamed up with Mr. Coffee to create a Wi-Fi-enabled coffee maker that you can control from your smartphone—which, presumably, is never more than an arm's length away.

The $150 Mr. Coffee 10-Cup Smart Optimal Brew Coffeemaker with WeMo—which requires at least a cup of coffee before you can even try and say the entire name—lets you program brewing times in advance, up to a week's worth, and allows you to monitor the process from afar via Belkin's WeMo app. The monitoring lets you know just how far along in the brewing process your pot is, avoiding the risk of getting out of bed before the coffee's ready, as well as letting you know when the filter or carafe need changing. You can even remotely adjust scheduling or brewing times from your smartphone, no matter where you are. Truly the era of technology-induced laziness is quickly approaching.

Home automation technology is nothing new, but Wi-Fi-enabled appliances—often grouped under the rubric of "the Internet of Things"—have only recently begun to hit the consumer mainstream in products like smart lightbulbs. Research firm Gartner estimates that there will be 4.9 billion connected "things" in use in 2015. 

That said, bugs with Nest's thermostat also show the danger of relying on too much "smart" technology. That's one reason I think the Wi-Fi-enabled coffee maker hits the sweet spot—despite what coffee drinkers might tell you, going without your morning cup is not a life-threatening condition, unlike a thermostat that fails to turn on the heat in your home.

WeMo App

Belkin

Now, I must confess my dirty little secret: I'm not a coffee drinker. But I root for the Wi-Fi-enabled coffee maker for two reasons: first, because it will make those in my life who love coffee happy; and second, because its success could encourage Belkin to team up with a company to make a Wi-Fi-enabled tea-brewer. (I've long had my eye on Breville's One-Touch Tea Maker, a clever gadget that can lower and raise a basket containing loose tea to get the perfect cuppa. But now I may have to hold out for a model with Wi-Fi.)

If only technology could perfect the robot butler, to bring us our cup of Wi-Fi-brewed coffee once it's made, we might never leave bed again.

A Power Plant and Its Water Supply

The Mount Storm Power Station in West Virginia

Photo in the public domain

In 2010, the U.S. used less water than it has in a generation, according to a new announcement from the U.S. Geological Survey.

American power plants, factories, farms, and homes used a total of 355 billion gallons of fresh and salt water a day in 2010. If you divide that amount by the U.S. population in 2010, it comes out to 1,150 gallons per person, per day. The last time the country used so little water was before 1970.

The U.S. Geological Survey credits advancements in the designs of power plants, factories, and farms' irrigation systems for the water-use drop. Since 1970, new thermoelectric power plants have been built with more efficient cooling systems, while older plants received water-saving retrofits. Factories became more efficient and now reuse more water. Some factories also closed in the wake of the 2008 recession.

Other reasons for the water-use decline include new laws that forbid factories from drawing water from certain marine and freshwater environments, to protect the plants and animals there. Also people are much more cognizant of water-saving at home. In 2005, the average public water user went through 100 gallons of fresh water a day at home and at the office. Now he or she consumes (or flushes, or pours down the drain) 89 gallons a day. This is the first time in U.S. history that home water use has fallen. In addition to better habits, buying lower-flow shower heads, faucets, and washing machines is a big help. 

So overall, it looks like a combination of new technology, new behaviors, and the United States' shrinking economy that has made the difference.

Since 1950, U.S. water use rose consistently until 1980, after which it plateaued. (It's notable that the U.S. underwent a severe recession in 1980, too.) Then, after 2005, water use began dropping. As you can see, the biggest water users in the U.S. have always been thermoelectric power plants and cropland. Compared to 2005, however, thermoelectric power plants in 2010 used 20 percent less water, while farms used, on average, 11 percent less water per acre of land:

Water Use in the U.S. over Time

Click here to see the graph larger.

U.S. Geological Survey

Chilly Shake

The following is excerpted from Liquid Intelligence, a new book by (friend of Popular Science) Dave Arnold. The book is a canonical manual to a better way of understanding and making cocktails. "Think like a scientist and you will make better drinks," Arnold says in the introduction, and then shows how. The balance of sugar and acidity in a cocktail is critical to its taste, so Arnold compiled a chart, below, showing the balance of sugar and acid in 55 popular cocktails.

Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold

buy it now!

courtesy W.W. Norton

I recently constructed a database of cocktail recipes, including both classics and my own, so I could analyze them for ethanol content, sugar, acidity, and dilution. Each drink category--built, stirred, shaken, blended, and carbonated--has clear, well-defined relationships between the characteristics, regardless of the flavors in a particular recipe. This might seem obvious, but the implications are not. I discovered that given a set of ingredients and a style of drink, I can write a decent recipe without tasting along the way at all. I have tested this process dozens of times, and I am shocked at how close I can get to the desired result strictly through applying the math. Bitterness is a bit of a wild card--very hard to quantify. Thank God something is.

I'm not talking about swapping rum for gin or lemon for lime. I'm talking about this: Given apple juice, bourbon, Cointreau, and lemons, can I make a recipe with the same basic profle as a daiquiri by plugging in a few numbers? Yes, I can. It won't taste like a daiquiri, but it will have the same feel. I developed several recipes in my book mathematically, but I won't tell you which ones for fear you'll be prejudiced against them.

I don't really know how I feel about this ability. It's a little disconcerting. I tell myself that I still need to understand how flavors work together, I still need a brain and a palate--and that's true. All the math in the world won't help you if you can't put good flavors together. And the math isn't always right, either. Some drinks are better with more than average sugar or acid, some with less. The math will only give you the backbone of the drink--its structure. The soul of the drink will be the aromatics and flavors you choose. But the math has been incredibly useful to me for judging existing cocktail recipes and for developing my own.

Roll your mouse over the cocktails to see alcohol content, acidity, sugar, and a recipe for each.

Interactive implemented by Katie Peek

SpaceShipTwo

Virgin Galactic

NASA has been launching astronauts into low Earth orbit for over fifty years, so the technology is mature and we clearly know how to do it. Letting private companies do the job is the next logical step. The question is, can the risks be adequately controlled? And can private human spaceflight be jumpstarted and maintained at a profit? I think that the answer to both of these questions is “yes” -- using tested hardware and an honest communication of risk.

At NASA, we were extensively trained on all contingency and emergency scenarios, and we were well aware of the “black zones” where, realistically, there was not much we could do if something went wrong.

Moving forward, companies need to make sure customers understand the risks of spaceflight. Potential passengers will need to give their informed consent, not unlike agreeing to participate in a new drug trial. This means they’ll need to understand the sequence of events that will take place during their trip to space, and the associated risks at each point. They'll also need to be trained on personal safety and emergency equipment.

Of course, safety will have to be ensured as much as practically possible. New vehicles always need to be thoroughly tested, be they spacecraft or military fighter aircraft. Certainly the Federal Aviation Administration, which is already involved in commercial space development, will regulate the industry and evaluate vehicles. And if NASA astronauts will be involved, the agency would also help to ensure safety.

But mishaps like the recent ones are unfortunately a part of the process. During this early development phase, risks are unavoidably elevated, and sometimes there will be accidents and loss of life. The right steps are being followed. The accident review boards will find root causes, and the lessons learned will help build more robust vehicles in the future.

There are many reasons why we should support the commercialization of human spaceflight. First, commercial operations in any industry have generally been more efficient and less expensive than government ones. Second, commercial factors can drive innovation, so the state-of-the-art will likely move forward at a faster pace.

I dreamed about flying in space after watching the Apollo 11 Moon landing as an eight-year-old boy. What a thrill it was to be accepted by NASA over twenty years later, and to begin preparing for spaceflight. Four years later, it was time to fly! I was well aware of the risks, but I also had great confidence in the vehicle, my training, the processes, and the people who prepared the vehicle. I was excited and enthusiastic. There was never a moment where I considered turning back. The thing I feared most was that doctors would discover I had some kind of disqualifying medical condition, or that I would get into a bad car accident in the days leading up to the flight.

We were suited and strapped into the vehicle about two and a half hours before launch, and throughout most of the countdown, we didn’t have too much to do. It was one of the only quiet times we had had since beginning to train for the mission. I could feel the shuttle, as if she were alive. I felt a part of her and was not nervous. Excited, yes, but not nervous or scared.

People always want to know what I felt and thought about at the moment of my first liftoff. It is always a big surprise to them when I answer “relief.” The big worry was not getting a chance to go. On the shuttle stack, once the solid rocket boosters were lit, there was no turning them off. You were going to get your ride.

Leroy on the ISS

Leroy Chiao

Leroy Chiao served as a NASA astronaut from 1990-2005. During his 15-year career, he flew four missions into space, three times on Space Shuttles and once as the copilot of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station. On that flight, he served as the commander of Expedition 10, a six and a half month mission.  Dr. Chiao has performed six spacewalks, in both US and Russian spacesuits, and has logged nearly 230 days in space.

Computer Programming

Brandon Nguyen via Flickr CC By 2.0

Technology often seems to anticipate our needs: your phone offers to complete your words before you've finished typing it, for example, or Google tries to figure out what you want to search for after just a word or two. It's great if you're writing sentences, but what if you're writing code? An $11 million project at Rice University, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, wants to help software developers by providing "autocomplete" features for programming.

Dubbed PLINY, after the Roman natural philosopher and encyclopedia pioneer, the project's aim is to catalog the corpus of open-source code available online and use it to build a database that can help anticipate the needs of software writers. Thus, when a programmer starts writing code that's been written by perhaps hundreds or thousands of people before—a sorting algorithm, for example, or code that connects to a database—PLINY can search its database and find appropriate code, even adapting it to fit the correct programming language and methodology by scanning the programmer's existing project. The system will even provide a variety of suggested options, in case the programmer doesn't like the first proposed solution.

“We envision a system where the programmer writes a few of lines of code, hits a button and the rest of the code appears. And not only that, the rest of the code should work seamlessly with the code that’s already been written," Swarat Chaudhuri, a computer scientist at Rice University and one of the principal investigators on the project, said in the press release.

PLINY could certainly speed up the development of code, which, as Chaudhuri points out, is still written largely by hand. And it could provide more seamless integration of open-source packages that programmers often use in their projects, potentially helping avoid bugs and security vulnerabilities through the use of its code analysis and adaptation.

Keep in mind that PLINY won't have access to every piece of code ever created. Since it's limited to open-source code, it won't be able to build from proprietary software created by tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and so on. But many of those companies themselves rely upon open-source code, and this could help improve and speed the development of those key underlying projects.

And, of course, à la autocorrect on our phones, it could provide plenty of new opportunities for hilarious malapropisms.

British Soldiers in a Trench, 1916

Photo by Realistic Travels, LOC, LC-USZ62-75152

Unfortunately, documents from World War I don't come with metadata that computers are able to read. But you can help fix that. The U.K.'s Imperial War Museums have set up a website where you can read scanned versions of the original pages of diaries British officers kept. As you're reading, you can tag things on the pages such as dates, places, names, casualties, and unit activities.

We've written about the project, called Operation War Diary, before. In honor of Veteran's Day, however, we thought we'd re-highlight it. As a refresher, here's the ultimate goal: If enough people tag enough pages, it will form a searchable database. Then, if someone is interested in a named person in the diaries, he or she can see all the mentions of that person across the British army in just one click. What if someone is interested in the proportion of time an average WWI British soldier spent resting versus patrolling versus digging trenches? With enough tags and access to the database, anybody could calculate that. You could start asking "big data" questions about some decidedly pre-digital documents. Pretty cool.

In addition, tagged data from Operation War Diary will go to Lives of the First World War, another project of the Imperial War Museums. Lives of the First World War gathers information about 8 million men and women involved in the war, including mentions in official records and anecdotes submitted by friends and family. You can visit any person's webpage and see details about where he or she was born, lived, worked, served, and died.

Cyborg Roach

Eric Whitmire

Roaches to the rescue? When the world crumbles around us (presumably due to nuclear holocaust), popular theory says that cockroaches will still keep going … and going … and going. Now scientists are trying to harness the humble bug's endurance to assist in disasters more immediate than the end of the world. 

Last week, engineers at North Carolina State University presented research on rescue roaches at the IEEE Sensors conference in Valencia, Spain. They have developed a way to locate survivors in collapsed buildings using swarms of cockroaches equipped with microphones. It might look like the cockroach pictured above is simply carrying the highly sensitive microphone on its back, but the array is actually plugged into the cockroach--and it's part of a larger system that lets the researchers control where the cockroach moves. The team refers to these cyborg cockroaches as biobots. 

“The goal is to use the biobots with high-resolution microphones to differentiate between sounds that matter – like people calling for help – from sounds that don’t matter – like a leaking pipe,” co-author of the paper Alper Bozkurt said in a press release. “Once we’ve identified sounds that matter, we can use the biobots equipped with microphone arrays to zero in on where those sounds are coming from.”

The cyborg roaches can be steered toward survivors using the sounds picked up by the backpack, such as a cry for help, as a kind of homing beacon. To prevent the cockroaches from leaving the scene of the disaster the scientists have also developed an invisible fence that keeps the roaches inside the disaster zone. That's nice, because cockroaches are creepy enough without having to worry about whether they're eavesdropping on you. The fence which can also be used to steer the roaches toward sources of light, to recharge the solar-powered microphone backpacks. 

While other groups have created DIY cyborg roach kits before now, those were more for novelty, not disaster recovery.

If they end up being used in the field, cyborg roaches will join an elite company of rescue workers, both biological and robotic. Animals are already used in search and rescue operations, and robots, including some snake-like bots, are being developed to help out. The cockroaches may also have more cyborg companions in the rescue world very soon: Bozkurt has also been working on controlling the flight of moths, using electrodes implanted during the pupal stage. 

POP Awards 2014

Brian Klutch

Gear does not make the photographer, but high quality equipment certainly can help capture the perfect moment. Get ready to geek out over lights, lenses, and accessories galore because Popular Photography has hand selected the best photo gear of 2014. Our sister site's annual POP Awards goes through hundreds of products to bring you the most innovative and consumer-friendly products. Check out a gallery of the winners here.

A Vision Of Tomorrow

Marius Bugge

Every June, the editors at Popular Science gather for the first Best of What’s New meeting. BOWN, as we affectionately call it, has run as our December cover story for more than a quarter century, and in many respects it represents the best of what we do. It is an unabashed celebration of the year’s greatest innovations, a glimpse of the future as it’s unfolding.

Over the decades, we have made some good calls. We covered the Toyota Prius before it reached the U.S., Web browsers before the rise (and fall) of Internet Explorer, protease inhibitors just as they hit the market, and the first-ever digital SLR camera (it was the size of a shoe box and cost $20,000). Pick a recent and monumental innovation and chances are we flagged it in one December issue or another. 

That kind of track record is great for readers, but truth be told, it’s kind of terrifying for editors. I mean, when you nail something for 27 years straight, you kind of have to ask, Can we pull it off again? More to the point: Can we do it even better?

To allay that very particular kind of pressure, we do exactly what science-minded folks do. We plan. We road-map. We set milestones and deadlines—oh, the deadlines—and then we dive in. For those of you who are curious individuals (so, pretty much everyone who reads Popular Science), here’s how BOWN works: Every editor manages a section or two, aided by an independent researcher. Together the teams of two spend about eight weeks assembling a long list of candidates. Prospects may come from company submissions, from past coverage, or from simple boots-on-the-ground reporting.

Sometime around early August, we start to winnow down the list. We debate and agonize. We vet items with industry experts to better understand their functions and implications. We debate and agonize some more. And then, in early September, we finalize our awardees and begin making a magazine around them.

The process is sort of like a marathon—just with less wheezing. But it’s no less an accomplishment. BOWN has always been a collection of revolutionary stuff. And this year, I’m happy to report, is no different. Our Innovation of the Year, AirCarbon, is plastic fabricated from waste methane gas, not barrels of petroleum. It acts as a carbon sink, not a source. It costs less than standard plastic, and with comparable performance. And it can be produced anywhere with significant methane emissions: landfills, coal mines, and dairy farms. In short, it could completely change how we think about one of the most ubiquitous materials on the planet.  

At the end of the day, that’s exactly what Best of What’s New is all about. In bringing together the 100 greatest innovations of this year, we’re doing more than just producing a great magazine. We’re painting a picture of a better world.

Enjoy the December issue.

Choosing BOWN

Picking the 100 best innovations of the year is no small task. Over several months, 10 researchers and 8 editors weighed 739 serious candidates, pulled from a field of more than a thousand. Each of those contenders is represented as a dot, arranged by category. The gold dots at the center are the winners.

Popular Science

Contact Tracing In A Nutshell

presentation slide from Community Health Care Association Of New York State

During Nigeria's attempts to control the spread of Ebola, officials contact traced nearly 900 people. Ultimately, 20 people fell ill in Nigeria and eight died before the World Health Organization declared the country Ebola-free October 20. Today, New York City—which has one-twentieth the population of Nigeria—is contact tracing 289 people. A recent New York Times article offers a peek into this time-consuming and costly -- but science-proven -- method of containing infectious diseases. The city has not yet had a single case of Ebola transmission.

In principle, contact tracing is simple. For 21 days, tracers must call their contacts twice a day and get a report of the contact's temperature. The contacts are people who may be at risk for developing Ebola because either they recently traveled from Liberia, Guinea, or Sierra Leone, or they interacted with an Ebola patient while he or she was symptomatic. In New York, that means many of the workers who cared for Craig Spencer, a doctor who contracted Ebola while volunteering in Guinea. Spencer has since recovered from the illness.

In regions where healthcare experts are scarce, contact tracers may be your average community member -- perhaps John or Mary next door, who might get a little training to come by with a clipboard twice a day. Foreign Policy reported that about 600 angry contact tracers in Liberia gathered around the Ministry of Health yesterday because they have not been paid since early September:

In New York, tracers are multilingual members of the New York City Department of Health who make phone calls from a glass skyscraper in Queens, the New York Times reports. Their challenges include following people who travel but don't tell their tracers, and people who resent the check-ins. These things happen in every country and culture.

As of last week, various health departments across the U.S. are contact tracing at least 650 people, the New York Times reports. In New York, at least, none of the people traced are in quarantine, which is considered scientifically unnecessary until they report symptoms. The only New Yorker under quarantine now is Spencer's fiancée.

[New York Times, Foreign Policy]

Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in Rancho Mirage, Calif., 2013

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

After a meeting in Beijing, the U.S. and China—the world's top two polluters—have announced goals for reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

The Los Angeles Timescalled the goals "dramatic," noting that it would require the U.S. to move twice as quickly on carbon cuts as it has in the past. This is also the first time Chinese leaders have set a date for when the country's carbon emissions will peak, the BBC reports. China has always been reluctant to promise to cut greenhouse gases because officials knew it would slow economic growth. Together, China and the U.S. account for about a third of the world's carbon emissions.

President Barack Obama said that by 2025, the U.S. will reduce its emissions of Earth-warming gases by at least 26 percent, compared to emissions in 2005. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China's emissions would fall after 2030, but didn't say by how much. Xi also said China would get about 20 percent of its electricity from alternative energy sources by 2030.

If the two countries do meet their goals, how much will it help with global warming? The Chinese environmental news site chinadialogue gathered expert responses to this question. In general, chinadialogue's sources said the agreement would be helpful, but more is needed if the world wants to keep Earth's temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That two-degree target is a scientifically-informed ceiling world leaders agreed to in 2009, during the Copenhagen Accord.

Many experts urged China, the world's top carbon emitter, to cut emissions starting in 2025, not 2030. The day before Obama and Xi made their announcement, University of Manchester climate scientist Kevin Anderson told chinadialogue that to meet the two-degree target, China and other middle-income countries "need to peak their emissions by the mid-2020s."

Meanwhile, Anderson thinks the U.S., Europe, and other developed regions "have to eliminate fossil fuel use from their energy system early in the 2030s." That's an unlikely proposition. Obama's announcement is already facing criticism at home, where the new Republican majority in the senate will likely work against this and other environmentally-minded plans from the Obama Administration.

Chip Reader

Square

The company that turned every smartphone into a potential credit card payment terminal is taking a step into the future. Square's now taking pre-orders for the newest version of its credit-card reader, which plugs into the headphone jack on a smartphone or tablet; the $29 dongle now works with the EMV standard that's soon to become the de facto way we pay with credit cards.

You might know EMV (an acronym derived from its major backers, Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) by its more self-explanatory moniker, chip and PIN. Instead of relying on the magnetic stripes that have been a feature of credit and debit cards for decades, EMV technology instead incorporates an integrated circuit (IC)—essentially a very simple computer—that contains an encrypted version of the data needed for the payment process. EMV chips are the tiny metallic gold squares typically located on the front portion of credit and debit cards. EMV is already in use in many countries throughout the world, including Canada, Australia, Brazil, and most of Europe. However, most U.S. cards don't have the technology yet.

To use a chip-and-PIN card, a customer inserts it into a compatible reader; the card's chip and the reader work together to exchange secure information, which changes on a per-transaction basis, making it nearly impossible to copy or clone. The user is prompted for a PIN, similar to when you retrieve money from an ATM. The PIN confirms your identity, thus in many cases removing the need for a signature—which, let's be honest, most vendors don't bother checking these days anyway. (Some of the cards used in the U.S. will instead operate on a chip-and-signature basis.)

The advantages of chip and PIN are many. The primary one is that the magnetic strip used by all current credit and debit cards is hugely insecure, and there's little difficulty for a thief to steal your pertinent details from them. Many countries that use chip and PIN cards also use wireless card readers, which allows for both greater convenience and security. In Canada, for example, waiters at restaurants will often bring the card reader over to the table when it's time to pay, meaning that your card never leaves your possession.

Chip Card

Ben Watts on Flickr, CC BY 2.0

With all the credit and debit card security breaches over the past several years, it's clear that the United States payment infrastructure is in dire need of an update. Fortunately, just such a transition is in the offing.

Starting in October 2015, the major card issuers—American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and Discover—are all shifting liability of fraudulent transactions on non-EMV capable systems to merchants. That means that past that date, if a retailer can't accept chip-and-PIN payments and charges a customer for a fake purchase, it's the store, not the credit card companies, that will be responsible for refunding the charge. Obviously, that's a big incentive for retailers to adopt the newer, more secure standard. (There's an exception for pay-at-the-pump gas stations, which have until October 2017 to support EMV.)

None of this is to say that chip cards are themselves impossible to crack. For one thing, many of those distributed in the U.S. have both a chip and a magnetic strip, to ensure backwards compatibility. But they are definitely more secure than the U.S.'s existing system, which is pretty flimsy in its current state.

EMV's not the only move afoot towards more secure transactions. Contact-less payments using Near Field Communications (NFC), which includes Apple's recently rolled out Apple Pay system and Google Wallet, also promise to bring better security as well. But the two standards are not mutually exclusive: Most of the chip-and-PIN terminals that are currently being added in retail stores also support NFC payments. (Some merchants, such as retail giant Walmart, are pushing a competing standard based on QR codes, dubbed CurrentC, but that system sidesteps the credit card companies entirely and has become a recent source of controversy.)

Square's chip-and-PIN reader, which ships next year, will cover only a fairly small niche of the market, mainly small and local businesses and merchants. The bigger portion of the transition will be up to the larger retailers, who are also the ones most likely to be targeted by hackers looking to score large hauls of credit card numbers.

Iranian RQ-170 Sentinel Replica

As seen on The Aviationist

Fars news Agency

Years after capturing an American drone, Iran claims to have made its own version.

In December 2011, Iran revealed its possession of an RQ-170 stealth drone. Earlier this week, an Iranian Brigadier General promised that the Iranian replica of the “Beast of Kandahar” has already had a successful test flight. Earlier today, the video footage of this flight aired on Iranian state-owned media.

Here is that footage. (Note, unless you speak Persian, you probably won't be able to understand what the newscaster is saying. But you can still watch the drone fly.) Take special note of the landing at 6:49, which aviation observer David Cenciotti says might indicate it's a smaller prototype and not a full-sized version.

The video definitely proves that Iran has a flying gray wedge of some sort. The grey wedge is a pretty common shape for stealthy drones. Besides the U.S. Air Force’s RQ-170, the Navy’s experimental X-47B and the U.K.’s Taranis drone are both grey wedges, as are several types of commercially available flying wing. A flying wing could be a fully functional stealth drone, but there’s also an abundance of cheap, non-stealth options that at a distance look like stealth drones.

A U.S. government official said they can’t confirm Tehran’s claims, and Iran, it’s worth noting, has a history of hoaxes displayed as major technical breakthroughs. Even taking Iranian state media at its word, a flying reverse-engineered drone body is not quite the same as a working reconstruction of the RQ-170. Stealth technology is part form, part materials, and the specific materials and manufacturing processes needed to turn flying metal invisible will take more than one crashed spy drone to produce.

Update 9, 2:35 p.m.

A press briefing reviews what scientists currently know about Philae's condition:

• It landed, and it landed in the right place.
• The lander has power onboard, and it has been communicating with ESA mission control via radio waves.
• The scientific instruments are working, and they're already sending back data, which scientists need more time to analyze. 
• Philae's harpoons did not fire, "so the lander is not anchored to the surface," said Stephan Ulamec during today's press briefing. ESA isn't sure exactly what the situation is on Comet 67P. "Did we just land in a soft sandbox and everything is fine although we are not anchored ... or is there something else happening?"
• Fluctuations in the radio waves emitted by the lander could indicate that the lander bounced when it touched down. "So maybe today we didn't land once, we landed TWICE!" Ulamec joked. 
• Because of the orientation of the comet and the spacecraft, ESA won't be receiving more data from Philae for several hours. The next updates will come tomorrow at 11:00a.m.

Update 8, 1:29 p.m.

BusinessInsideris reporting that at least some of the screws on Philae's feet have dug into the soft surface of the comet. 

ESA is about to begin a media briefing on the live webcast. Check back here for more updates!

Update 7, 12:58 p.m.

Here's what Philae saw on its approach, from about two miles above the comet's surface. The lander appears to have been right on target. 

.@ESA_Rosetta See for yourself! ROLIS imaged #67P when we were just 3km away! Glad I can share. #CometLandingpic.twitter.com/b6mcid2fsn

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014

To learn more about Philae's landing site, check out this awesome 3D visualization by Sketchfab.

Update 6: 11:50 a.m.

Uh oh. Though ESA confirmed that Philae has touched the comet's surface, now they're saying that the harpoons may not have fired to anchor it to the surface. Says ESA: "Without this anchor we cannot with 100 percent certainty state that we are landed on the comet and that we’re fixed on the comet... Everything is proceeding normally." Now mission scientists are determining what their options are to re-fire the harpoons.

I’m on the surface but my harpoons did not fire. My team is hard at work now trying to determine why. #CometLanding

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014

The thrusters that would have pushed Philae toward the surface, to help out in the anchoring process, were also found to be broken yesterday. If the harpoons can't be re-fired, the lander may have to rely on its screw-tipped feet to try to dig into the surface. 

Update 5: 11:40 a.m. 

NASA planetary director James Green comments on the Rosetta mission's success:

Update 4: 11:29 a.m 

ESA solutes Star Trek's Captain Kirk.

.@WilliamShatner touchdown confirmed for away team @philae2014, captain!

— ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014

Update 3: 11:04 a.m. 

Touch doooooown! Mission control confirms that the lander has reached the surface. ESA scientist: "Philae is talking to us ... We are on the surface."

Touchdown! My new address: 67P! #CometLanding

— Philae Lander (@Philae2014) November 12, 2014

Hugs all around at ESA mission control.

Update 2: 10:54 a.m. 

As ESA stands around wringing its hands and wondering whether the 10-year, $1.7 billion journey was worth it, we are playing this song in the background:

T-minus five minutes (approximately) until we know for sure whether Philae landed safely!

Update 1: 10:35 a.m. on November 12

Philae has probably landed already, but we won't know for sure for another half-an-hour or so -- because that's how long it takes for feedback from Philae, which is 31 million miles away, to reach ESA headquarters. This xkcd comic aptly illustrates the intensity as mission control waits with bated breath.

Original Post:

Rosetta's 220-pound lander is on its way to the "rubber ducky" comet -- right now.

Since August, the Rosetta mission has been dancing around a comet that's 31 million miles away from Earth, preparing to land. Finally, at 4 a.m. this morning, the orbiter and the lander separated. Philae is now dropping toward the comet, and it is expected to settle on the comet's surface at 11 a.m. EST. If the landing is successful, it'll be the first manmade object to ever touch down on a comet. Once there, it'll study the composition of this space-traveling rock to learn more about the early solar system and whether comets could have seeded life on Earth.

As it drops, Philae is taking some initial measurements of the comet's dust and gas, and it's also snapping some photos. Here's the first one that was tweeted from the European Space Agency's Philae Twitter account, of the orbiter's underside:

.@philae2014’s first postcard just after separation – it’s of me! #CometLanding Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA pic.twitter.com/OXJwGunL3V

— ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014

Meanwhile, the view from the orbiter shows that Philae's legs have deployed successfully.

I see you too @philae2014! Here you are in my OSIRIS camera - legs out! #CometLandingpic.twitter.com/hmnfe2AkN2

— ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014

It could be a rough landing, and the BBC reports that Philae's thrusters, which were meant to help anchor it on the comet's surface, were yesterday discovered to have malfunctioned. Fortunately, ESA thinks they can pull off the landing anyway. We'll keep you posted as we learn more about this epic landing! Meanwhile, you can watch the ESA's livefeed of the event here:

Go Further With Interstellar

Paramount Pictures

One of the best parts of the new film Interstellar is the crazy science permeating the movie’s plot. Wormholes, gravitational forces, relativity, and warped space-time are just a few of the scientific phenomena that play important roles in the astronauts’ deep space journey. Even though the moviemakers take a few liberties with these complicated theories (as some critics have deigned to point out), there is still a plethora of knowledge and research backing up the film’s science and physics.

And for the extra curious student, there’s a way to learn more about it.

Google has teamed up with the creators of Interstellar to launch a program for students excited about the science surrounding the epic space odyssey. And if you’ve seen the movie, you know that the film touches upon a ton of different science topics. To transform the movie’s plot elements into creative learning experiences, Google representatives worked with numerous Google Certified Teachers -- teachers who have attended the Google Teacher Academy, a two-day seminar which trains educators on how to use innovative technologies (namely Google products) in the classroom. Together, they came up with 20 lesson plans based on the film -- and the lessons aren’t all about science. “We wanted to give a wide variety of teachers ways to get involved with the film,” Devin Sandoz, the product marketing manager for the program, tells Popular Science. “We had a Latin teacher, a cinema studies teacher, along with physics and science teachers, and we worked with them to create lesson plans that ran the gamut.”

Lesson Plans

A few of the lesson plans associated with the film

Interstellar for Educators

Teachers and students alike can access these lesson plans on the Interstellar website, in a special section just for educators. There’s even an option for teachers to schedule a school field trip to see the movie (umm, awesome!) before they get into all the learning.

The subsequent lessons are structured for different educational levels, ranging from grades 6 to 12, and they aren’t exactly conventional. For example, there’s an option for middle school students to simulate the higher gravitational forces felt on Miller’s planet -- the planet closest to the black hole Gargantua in the film. To do this, the students pick one of their classmates, measure his or her weight, and then add extra bags of weight onto them to mimic how it would feel walking on the planet.

There’s also a way for juniors and seniors to recreate the dying Earth depicted in the film by constructing their own biospheres. They can then observe the various effects of nitrogen and oxygen on plant life inside their miniature greenhouses. And in the realm of literature, teachers can instruct students on how to map out comparisons between Matthew McConaughey's character, Cooper, and the classical Homeric Greek hero. You can check out the other lesson plans here.

So far, Sandoz says that teacher feedback on the program has been quite positive. He believes that there’s something about seeing a science-fiction movie that inspires audiences to learn more about the science that backs it up. “I think back to an experience I had when Jurassic Park came out,” Sandoz says. “Suddenly I was learning about all these species of dinosaur I never know about before. It’s a hunger to know more when you see a movie that awakens in you.”

You don’t have to be a teacher or a student to download the lesson plans on the Interstellar website. But if you’re an ambitious student, you can always grab a copy of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne’s latest book, The Science Of Interstellar, which goes through all of the scientific plot points of the movie in great detail.

DNA

Richard Wheeler via Wikimedia Commons

Maybe you have a fitness tracker. Maybe you've gotten your genome sequenced before. Probably your medical records are kept in electronic, instead of paper, form. Now some companies are seeking to combine all those things and more into a talking, personalized, health-advice app. Not sure when to give yourself your next insulin shot after having a croissant for breakfast? You can ask the app. How much exercise should someone with your genetic makeup be getting? The app will give you suggestions.

At least, that's the goal of the app-makers, who include developers from IBM and a startup called Pathway Genomics. If the app, called Pathway Panorama, works as expected, it will be one of the most detailed and personalized health-advice apps we've ever heard of. It will bring an unprecedented amount of information to bear on the advice it gives you.

Pathway Genomics can sequence your DNA and provide an analysis as to what what those jumbled letters mean. Meanwhile, IBM's artificial intelligence engine, Watson, will make it possible for the app to understand what users are asking it. Watson also is able to read and understand information online, so it will be able to do things like "read" published medical literature to help answer users' questions. After all, that's how Watson won Jeopardy, when IBM first introduced it.

Pathway expects to have the Panorama app ready by mid-2015, according to a blog post by Pathway chief medical officer Michael Nova. Nova didn't offer any pricing details, but said that it would entail a "small monthly fee." The app effort is being funded by IBM, which invested an "undisclosed amount" in Pathway Genomics, Wired reports. The funding is part of IBM's efforts to sell Watson as a multipurpose engine for apps and software.

When Pathway Panorama comes out, it will be interesting to see just how detailed it is. The job of combining genetic test results and a patient's history into health advice has traditionally fallen to highly-trained humans, such as doctors and genetic counselors. Even then, it's a hard job because the science linking genes and health isn't always easy to interpret. How well can a computer program do that? Even if a program is pretty savvy at that task, how much, legally, can it do?

Around this time last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration forced the direct-to-consumer genetics-reading company 23andMe to stop giving out health diagnoses. Pathway Genomics' tests are still legal because they require a doctor to order them; it's pretty indisputable that a doctor's office should have the power to order genetics tests. The upcoming app is a different beast, however. The FDA regulates some health apps—ones it considers as offering diagnoses or treatment advice—but it's unclear whether Panorama will fall under the FDA's purview… or what the company may leave out, if it tries to design the app not to require FDA clearance. 

Gear VR

Samsung

Virtual reality—almost as good as actual reality, but without those pesky smells. Okay, that may not be quite Samsung's message, but the company is making a hard push for VR with two announcements out of its 2014 developer conference.

The first is that its Gear VR headset, announced earlier this year, will ship in early December. Developed in partnership with virtual-reality-headset darling (and pending Facebook acquisition) Oculus, the Gear VR connects to Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, which the company says creates "an entirely new mobile category."

Marketing hyperbole off the starboard bow! First of all, the Gear VR—which will be sold for an unspecified price—uses the Galaxy Note 4's 5.7-inch high-res screen for its VR capabilities, requiring you to actually snap the smartphone into the headset. That's all well and good, but as soon as you upgrade your phone the Gear VR seems like it'll just be another piece of expensive plastic that no longer fits the latest and greatest.

Samsung's also attempting to woo consumers to the virtual side by partnering with a number of major names in software and entertainment to provide VR content. The list includes Cirque du Soleil, DreamWorks, Harmonix, Vevo, and Marvel, which will let Gear VR users explore Tony Stark's lab ahead of next year's sure-to-be-blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron. But most of the partners' ventures sound more like marketing gimmicks or proofs of concept than actual, useful applications.

That said, Samsung is also making available an Oculus Mobile software development kit, letting developers create their own apps that take advantage of the interface. But the limited availability of hardware and small market niche means that there probably won't be rampant development in that space quite yet.

To demonstrate its commitment to VR, Samsung also gave a sneak peek at a second device, called Project Beyond. It's a disc about the size of a medium-sized plate that contains "16+1" HD cameras that can capture a 360-degree view of a location and either store it or stream it live to someone wearing a Gear VR. It doesn't, however, record audio, which may lessen the feeling of actually "being there" and Gizmodo's Sean Hollister, who got to try it out at Samsung's conference, called it "abnormally grainy and ... a little bit awkward."

Project Beyond

Samsung

Project Beyond is even less far along than Gear VR: Samsung says it's "not a product, but one of our many exciting projects currently under development." But if you snag a Gear VR, you'll be able to use it to view footage Samsung has captured with the 360-degree camera.

Despite these announcements, virtual reality seems like it's still rooted strongly in the stuff of science-fiction rather than the practicality of the here and now. A headset linked to a specific smartphone and a prototype camera don't seem likely to catapult the technology into the mainstream, no matter how much Samsung might like them to.

The Fonz.

Jason Schneider

That logic still holds with today’s machines. A good smack can temporarily fix an intermittent connection, but it’s risky. Whacking a platter-based hard drive, for example, could damage the head. That’s why “percussive maintenance” is best left to professionals. A few well-placed taps may identify a weak connection on a printed circuit board, says Blakely, who has been an electrical technician for almost 50 years. “The word ‘tap’ is important,” he adds. “It’s not ‘hit;’ it’s ‘tap.’”

The same approach is used in emergency medicine, too. When paramedics apply the “precordial thump” to the chest of a person in cardiac arrest, they’re not unlike old-school repairmen, smacking the heart to start it up. But, as with electronics, many studies say the thump can often do more harm than good.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science under the title, "Can you fix a machine by smacking it?"

You Don't Have to Be Super-Healthy to Be a Supercentenarian

But you do have to have the right genes.

U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office (PIO)

Is the secret to long life in a gene? We don't know, for now. A recent project to read the entire DNA sequence of 17 people aged 110 or older has found… there's nothing particularly different from ordinary folks.

It is known that super-longevity is inheritable. It runs in families. An analysis of twins suggests human lifespan is 20 to 30 percent genetic. In super-long-lived people, that proportion is higher. Supercentenarians, or those that live past 110, don't have different smoking, drinking, eating, or exercising habits than the rest of us. It's in their genes. But where?

One team of geneticists from California and Washington State tried to find out by seeking a single gene variant in their 17 supercentenarians. They wanted a variant that would appear in all the supercentenarians, but not in other folks. That's when they didn't find anything.

It's possible this variant doesn't exist. Maybe it's certain combinations of genes that do the trick. Or perhaps every family with members that reach 110 and over does it with different, family-specific genes, Stuart Kim, the study's lead researcher and a biologist at Stanford University, told Live Science. If that's the case, there would not be a common thread to be found among all supercentenarians.

Tantalizingly, it's also possible that the team simply didn't have enough people in their study to find what they sought. The team members are making their gene data publicly available, so other researchers may continue the search, Kim told Live Science. 

Kim and his colleagues published their work today in the journal PLOS One. 

Tsunami aftermath

U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Garry Welch

Barrier islands can be good protection for the mainland in the face of strong storms and hurricanes. But in the event of a tsunami, small barrier islands may actually do more harm than good. 

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, scientists found that when a tsunami approaches a coastline protected by a small barrier island, the wave can be amplified, increasing flooding by as much as 70 percent compared to a similar coastline not buffered by the same kind of island.

"Our study shows that some areas that were supposed to be at low risk are at higher risk than anticipated," study co-author Frederic Dias told LiveScience.

Because there is little warning before a tsunami strikes, it's difficult for scientists to study them in action. In order to gather data about how tsunamis would behave around an island, the scientists used both data collected from previous tsunamis and computer simulations. They found that when a tsunami approaches a small island (smaller than six miles long) the island can amplify the wave.

A tsunami is usually caused when a geologic event like an earthquake, landslide or volcanic eruption displaces large amounts of seawater, sending waves across the ocean basin. While the wave isn't usually large in deep water, but when it encounters shallower water along a coastline, the buildup of water can create the huge wave iconic of a tsunami, flooding coastlines.

When a small island is in the path of a tsunami, the wave can be disrupted, bending around the island. When the wave reconnects on the other side of the island, it can become amplified, creating larger waves (and more flooding) on the mainland. 

The researchers emphasize that it's the small barrier islands that experience this effect. Larger, more substantial islands can afford the mainland some protection. But this study shows that just because there's a protective-looking island offshore doesn't mean that your community is safe, as some communities are realizing. 

“This is where many fishing villages are located, behind offshore islands, in the belief that they will be protected from wind waves,” co-author Costas Synolakis said in a press release. Hopefully, the study can help those communities prepare for the worst-case disaster.