Gamers are tough to shop for. You can bet they've already got the big ticket items, and you don't want to end up buying a first-person shooter for the person who only enjoys artsy games (or vice versa). Luckily, there are at least a few items that show thoughtfulness and that the person will actually use. Some are good gifts for the gaming friend whose habits you know, while others are safe bets for gift-givers who aren't sure where to start.

Click here to enter the gallery

Today in mind-bendingly cool stuff that nanoparticles can do: A team of researchers at Rice University in Texas has demonstrated a mechanism by which they can create steam in just seconds by focusing sunlight on a mixture of water and nanoparticles. This isn't just some artificial means of lowering boiling point either; this solar powered "boiler" can produce steam before the water even gets warm to the touch, without ever bringing the aggregate water to a boil.

Right now this research is very much still in the lab, and the researchers aren't yet sure exactly how far they can push it. But it doesn't take much to imagine the possibilities for a steam generator that runs solely on water and sunlight.

The technology works by mixing a small amount of either carbon or gold-coated silicon dioxide nanoparticles, each just one-tenth the diameter of a single human hair, with water in a glass vessel. Their small diameters--smaller than the wavelength of visible light--means that they can absorb most of a light wave's energy rather than scattering it. So when sunlight is focused on the vessel with a lens, the particles quickly become quite hot--hot enough to vaporize the water directly surrounding it.

This creates a bubble of steam that envelopes the nanoparticle, which is now insulated from the cooler liquid water by the steam, which allows it to grow hotter still, vaporizing more of the water immediately around it. At some point the nanoparticle and its steam envelope become large enough to grow buoyant, at which point the whole steam bubble--particle and all--floats to the surface. The steam is released into the air, the particle falls back into the cooler water and sinks back down until it begins to absorb sunlight and heat again, at which point the process starts all over.

Multiply that by the number of nanoparticles in the mixture, and you have something of a simulated boil, but one that doesn't require the entire pot of water to reach boiling point before the first steam bubbles head to the surface. You can think of it as a way of micromanaging the boiling process, specifically heating some parts of the water (where it touches the nanoparticles) while leaving the rest of the water cool. And the particles themselves are completely durable--they keep absorbing, heating, cooling, and absorbing again, with no need to replace them.

Pretty nuts, no? It spells an interesting future for solar power in general, but more specifically it's easy to see how a cheap and abundant source of steam, even in low specific volumes, could be used to do anything from generate electricity and heat to lower the energy intensive nature of certain processes like water desalinization. As the WaPo points out, the last time someone came up with a cheap and easy way to generate and harness abundant steam it completely changed the world. So there's that.

[Washington Post]

Ah, Thanksgiving. That gluttonous annual tribute to post-colonial greed. To celebrate, many of us are going to be drinking beer -- a lot of it -- before, during and after the main event. This helps one tolerate one's insane relatives and of course there are games to be watched -- NFL and NCAA football and, for those of a more international bent, the second Australia-South Africa Test will be in its second day. (Yes, Team BeerSci likes Test cricket. Don't judge.)

But when discussing beers appropriate for Thanksgiving with the PopSci.com editorial team, we hit upon a better idea. Drink Your Turkey-Day Dinner. It sounds implausible -- and it's certainly not advisable -- but it is possible to have a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner in beer form. Pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce are two very obvious dishes that have clear beer counterparts: google "pumpkin ale" or "cranberry beer" and you'll find a large array of commercially available beers such as Southern Tier's Pumking and Sam Adams' Cranberry Lambic.

But what about the poultry? Or stuffing? Or green-bean casserole? Well, for those you'll have to be creative.

Turkey

(sort of)
To get the obvious question out of the way: Yes, there is an extant recipe for "cock ale." It has shown up in different homebrew books, was mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys and was included in the first cookbook published in the then-colonies,The Compleat Housewife from 1727.

Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must gut him when you flay him). Then, put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun - stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves. Put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together in vessel. In a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottle just above the neck and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.

Basically, you're dry-hopping your beer with a gutted, flayed, boiled smashed capon that has been soaked in sherry, and then adding some raisins and spices. Yum! The entire recipe is on the next page.

Commercial examples of poultry beer:
Hahahahaha.

Stuffing

Beer is, as the saying goes, "liquid bread," so making a stuffing beer means putting the herbs into beer. Digging around the internet, I found recipes for garlic beer and I found at least one brewery, The Maui Brewing Company, who makes an Onion Mild for the annual Maui Onion Festival. Reading more into the onion beer, it looks like the brewers take sweet Maui onions and caramelize them (or otherwise bring on the Maillard reaction), then add those to the boil and at flameout. Be sure to add some fresh thyme and oregano at flameout as well to get an herby character in there. You can use the recipe for the Marathon Mild as your base.

Creamed onions

In New England, having creamed pearl onion side dish is customary, so we came up with an Onion Cream Ale recipe.
Cream ales are an indigenous American style of beer: light, typically brewed with American six-row barley and a corn adjunct. Cream ales are fermented cool or cold, using a neutral ale yeast strain (you don't want too many esters). The most well-known example of this style is probably Genesee Cream Ale from upstate New York.

Commercial examples of allium beers:
Maui Brewing Company Onion Mild
Yates Brewery Garlic Beer

Fakin' it:
Drink Genny Cream Ale. It's cheap and cheery.

Cranberry Sauce

Awhile ago, I had an excellent cherry stout made by Bell's Brewery. It had enough roast character to offset the cloying sweetness that most non-lambic fruit beers (and especially most American fruit beers) suffer from, but one could still catch a definite cherry character to the brew. Because of this, I think that a Cranberry Stout would be an excellent way to get cranberries in. I found an interesting recipe for a cranberry stout, but really all you need to do is brew a stout and throw some sanitized cranberries into the secondary.

Commercial examples of cranberry beer:
Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic
Odells Cranberry Oatmeal Porter
Cascade Brewing Cranberry Sour
Harpoon Brewery Grateful Harvest Cranberry Ale

Sweet Potatoes

Recipes I've seen use pureed canned sweet potato and a period of caramelization in the oven before putting it in the mash tun with your grains. Really, as long as you convert the starches in the tuber into fermentable sugars, you'll be fine. Or steam 'em (this pasteurizes the sweet potato) and put them in the secondary.

Commercial examples of sweet potato beer:
Bell's Sweet Potato Stout
Bent River Brewing Company Sweet Potato Ale

Pumpkin Pie

Some pumpkin ales are just a regular ale with pumpkin pie spices. Others use pureed pumpkin at various points of the brewing process (usually in the mash or boil). There are many, many recipes out there for this style of beer. For those who love lagers, I've found a few examples of pumpkin lager out there as well.

Commercial examples of pumpkin beer:
Lakefront Brewery Pumpkin Lager
Southern Tier Pumking
About one zillion others.

Green Bean Casserole

Sorry folks. You are on your own.

If you have suggestions for any of the beer varieties listed -- especially commercial varieties, but also brewing tips -- add them in the comments. Team BeerSci will be posting increasingly surly updates to the Twitter feed on Thanksgiving, so if you're bored, hit us up there @BeerSci!

If you want to see sample recipes for the above beers, click on through to page two!

/>

Recipes For Turkey Day

Cock Ale

Take ten gallons of ale, and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flay him); then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put it to three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together into a vessel; in a week or nine days time bottle it up; fill the bottle but just above the neck, and give the same time to ripen as other ale.

According to a couple of sources, including an ancient PRNewswire release, Boston Beer Company once made a version of this recipe back in 1996. Contrary to the above directions, they put the cockerel whole in the boil, not in the fermenter. That's probably better for keeping out gnarly bacteria, but I can't imagine that the beer would have much chicken character after that.

Onion Ale

**To either of the following recipes, add caramelized onions in the boil and at flameout. Unfortunately, I never heard back from Maui Brewing Company about what the ratio of grain to onions is. You'll want to use a sweeter variety, such as Vidalia or Maui, if you can get them.

Marathon Mild (5-gallon all-grain batch):

6 lbs Maris Otter malt

1 lb Crystal 120

8 oz brown malt

2 oz chocolate malt

0.4 oz Centennial Hops (whole hops - 10.5% alpha acids)

1. Mashed the grains in 9.75 quarts of water at 150F for an hour. Efficiency was around 65%.
2. Sparged with 168F water in two steps: 1.88 gal and 3.39 gal. 
3. Boiled with Centennial hops for 60 minutes. No aroma hops. Pretty sure we used Whirlfloc.
OG: 1.039 FG: 1.010 ABV: 3.8%.

Cream Ale
Skotrat's "Gennesee My Butt"
Brewing Method: All Grain
Yeast: WYEAST 2035
Batch Size: 15.5 US Gallons
Original Gravity: 1.049
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 4.5-5.0 %
Extract Efficiency: 75 %
Hop IBU's: 22.9
Boiling Time: 70 minutes
Primary Fermentation: 7 days at 62f
Secondary Fermentation: 7 days at 58f
Additional Fermentation: lagered in corny keg

Grain Bill:
17.00 lbs. Lager Malt(6-row) Canada 1.031 1
6.00 lbs. Flaked Corn (Maize) America 1.040 1
3.00 lbs. Vienna Malt America 1.035 4
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt(light) America 1.033 10
2.00 lbs. Crystal 10L America 1.035 10

Hop Bill:
4.00 oz. Liberty Whole 3.40 60 min.
4.00 oz. Liberty Whole 3.40 5 min.

Mash Schedule:

Mash Type: Single Step
Saccharification Rest Temp : 152 Time: 90
Mash-out Rest Temp : 166 Time: 10
Sparge Temp : 170 Time: 70

Cranberry Stout

SWMBO's Stout
Yeast: Wyeast 1338 European Ale
Batch Size (Gallons): 4 USG (15L)
Original Gravity: 1.051
Final Gravity: 1.015
IBU: 25
Boiling Time (Minutes): 60
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 28 (23 w/ cranberries) @ 66-67 degF
Additional Fermentation: Bottle conditioning
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 28 @ 66-67 degF

Grain
2.00kg/4.40lbs (58.0%) Canada Malting Co. 2-row (37PPG) (1.8L)
0.25kg/0.55lbs (7.20%) Maltbroue Caramel 40L (33PPG) (49L)
0.25kg/0.55lbs (7.20%) Maltbroue Caramel 60L (33PPG) (60L)
0.25kg/0.55lbs (7.20%) Bairds Malt Roasted Barley (25PPG) (594L)
0.20kg/0.44lbs (5.80%) Weyermann Carafa Special III (32PPG) (526L)
0.25kg/0.55lbs (7.20%) Weyermann Carafoam (32PPG) (3L)
0.25kg/0.55lbs (7.20%) Gilbertson & Page Flaked Barley (31PPG) (2.2L)

3 teaspoon calcium carbonate (chalk)
Mashing water/grain ratio: 1.25qt/lb (2.6L/kg) = 9.5qt/9.0L
Mash liquor temp: 167F/75.1C
Mash in temp: 154F/67.8C
Mash time: 60 minutes
Sparging water/grain ratio: 1.63qt/lb (3.4L/kg) = 12.4qt/11.7L
Sparging water temp: 176F/80.0C
Sparging time: 45-60 minutes
Yield: 78%

0.5oz Chinook (11.0% AA) for 60 minutes
1 tea spoon Irish moss for 15 minutes

Chill, aerate and pitch yeast (Activator smack pack)
Add 1.6kg (3.5lbs) of sanitized cranberries in primairy bucket when primairy fermentation is done (after 5 days in my case). Let the fruits ferment for a few weeks (~3) then rack to secondary. Let mature and mellow a bit for 3-4 weeks.

Pumpkin Ale

Moon Hill Pumpkin Ale

Style: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 6.47 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.72 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.25 gal
Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal
Estimated OG: 1.064 SG
Estimated Color: 16.5 SRM
Estimated IBU: 20.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 68.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 71.9 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
5 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 34.3 %
3 lbs Munich I (Weyermann) (7.1 SRM) Grain 2 20.6 %
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 3 6.9 %
1 lbs Pale Wheat (Dingemans) (1.6 SRM) Grain 4 6.9 %
12.0 oz Victory Malt (biscuit) (Briess) (28.0 SR Grain 5 5.1 %
8.0 oz Caramunich III (Weyermann) (71.0 SRM) Grain 6 3.4 %
2 lbs 13.0 oz Libby's Canned Pumpkin (baked) (3.5 SRM) Sugar 7 19.3 %
0.75 oz Mt. Hood [6.10 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 8 15.2 IBUs
0.50 oz Hallertauer [4.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 9 5.1 IBUs
8.0 oz Brown Sugar, Light [Boil for 15 min](8.0 Sugar 10 3.4 %
0.50 tsp Ginger (Boil 5.0 mins) Herb 11 -
1.00 tsp Cinnamon Stick (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 12 -
0.50 tsp Nutmeg (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 13 -
0.50 tsp allspice (Boil 5.0 mins) Spice 14 -
1.0 pkg American Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1272) [124 Yeast 15 -
0.50 tsp Cinnamon Stick (Secondary 7.0 days) Spice 16 -
0.25 tsp Nutmeg (Secondary 7.0 days) Spice 17 -
0.25 tsp allspice (Secondary 7.0 days) Spice 18 -

Sweet Potato Ale

by Metal Maniac
Batch Size: 3 gallons
OG estimate: 1.054 (actual 1.061 temp corrected)
FG estimate: 1.013 (actual 1.021 temp corrected)
IBU: 24

29 ounces  Canned Sweet Potatoes

3.00 pounds Amber Dry Malt Extract
0.25 pounds Dark Corn Syrup

2.00 pounds Pale Malt 2-Row
0.50 pounds Crystal 20L
0.25 pounds Cara-Pils
0.25 pounds Vienna
0.25 pounds Special Roast

0.50 ounces Kent Golding 5.8% (14.7 IBU)
0.50 ounces Hallertauer 4.2% (5.8 IBU)
0.50 ounces Kent Golding 5.8% (3.2 IBU)
0.50 ounces Hallertauer 4.2% (0.3 IBU)

0.50 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon (secondary)
0.50 teaspoon Ground Nutmeg (secondary)
0.50 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice (secondary)
1.00 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice (mixed with puree)
1.00 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract (secondary)

1.00 teaspoon Irish Moss

1.00 packet Nottingham Dry Ale Yeast

Puree the sweet potatoes with liquid from the can
along with 1.00 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice. Bake for
25 minutes at 400F or until lightly caramelized.

Steep grains and sweet potato puree (in nylon bag)
with 2.5 gallons water at 150F for 30 minutes. Remove
grains and sparge with one gallon 150F water.

Add Dry Malt Extract and Dark Corn Syrup. Bring to boil.
Add 0.50 ounces Kent Golding hops. Boil for 30 minutes.
Add 0.50 ounces Hallertauer hops and Irish Moss. Boil
for 10 minutes. Add 0.50 ounces Kent Golding hops. Boil
for 5 minutes. Add Add 0.50 ounces Hallertauer hops and
remove from heat.

Primary ferment for seven days at 68F. Rack to secondary
with vanilla and spices. Ferment to completion.

Fancy a round of catch? This Disney robot plays an eerily humanlike game. In a combination of engineering and sorcery, researchers created a robot that follows the ball in the air with its eyes, catches the ball in its hands, and reacts when it misses a catch. Also, it juggles.

They used an external camera system to track the balls and an algorithm to predict where and when the ball would fall. When the robot misses a catch, it looks back or down at where the ball fell, shrugs, or shakes its head. This guy was designed for theme parks, but one day it will be playing catch with our children and fetch with our dogs. Next they should program it to make dad jokes.

It's difficult to manage color when you get to the nanoscale, but researchers from King's College London have found a way to trap light on nanostructures. Based on the shape of the structure, they can capture a rainbow created on gold film that's 100 times smaller than a human hair. Unlike a real rainbow, then, researchers can manipulate the structure to control where the colors show up. Jean-Sebastien Bouillard, a co-author of the study, wrote this in a statement: "The effects demonstrated here will be important to provide 'colour' sensitivity in infrared imaging systems for security and product control. It will also enable the construction of microscale spectrometers for sensing applications."

So this type of research could eventually help us improve a bunch of tools that deal with light, from TV to solar cells. Until that happens, enjoy the beautiful results.

The Nexus 4 is the first Android phone that combines all the disparate parts of a phone--interface, options, ease of use, speed and smoothness, depth of features, quality and number of apps--in the right way. It is the best Android phone I've ever used, sure, but it's the only Android phone I've ever used that feels as intentional as the iPhone. It feels like it was put together with a vision of how this phone should work as a whole--not just "add this feature, add this feature." It's probably the best smartphone on the market, period.

What's New

It's the newest Nexus phone. The Nexus line is the ideal of Android--it's what Google wants Android to look like, without the skins and app bundles and rearranged buttons and all kinds of garbage that, left to their own devices, Samsung and HTC and Motorola and LG just can't stay away from. This particular Nexus is made by LG, a riff on the older Optimus G, with a 4.7-inch screen, a very fast quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, NFC (read more about that here and here), and wireless charging. It also has the newest version of Android, 4.2, which is mostly a refinement in terms of feel rather than a full overhaul. (This is mostly obvious in the smoothness of the OS, the speed, and lots of little touches.) But the camera has been re-done, and Google Now (this year's Innovation of the Year in our Best of What's New package) has some new features.

What's Good

Well, pretty much everything. But most important, I think, is that everything works in concert, and that everything feels right, and that's largely due to the smoothness of the operating system on this obscenely powerful hardware. The Nexus 4 is the very first Android tablet that responds to touch as well as an iPhone. It's kind of crazy it's taken that long, but it was a little shocking when I first used it--no more lag, no more trouble tracking, no more weird swipes or unexpected virtual friction. It is, at long last, correct. This is a huge step forward for Android.

The key Android features are finally ones that I think most people will use, and that are both exciting and totally unmatched on other platforms. Google Maps on Android is so far ahead of the competition it's not even fair; this isn't new, but it bears repeating, because a location app is one of the most important tools on your phone. It has offline caching, public transit, traffic, and bike directions, overlays with information from Wikipedia, turn-by-turn navigation, coupons, and the best search of any maps app (meaning, it hardly ever steers you wrong). It is outrageously good.

Google Now has gotten a little boost as well. I was very excited to name Google Now our Innovation of the Year; it's gone almost completely under the radar, compared to something like Siri, but, here's the comparison. Google Now is more innovative, more capable, and more useful--most importantly, the thing actually works. Tap on the search bar to bring up your "cards," which are little snippets of information tailored specifically to you, what you want to know right now and right here. Right now, mine is telling me the weather, subway closings for the train nearest me, that a thing I bought from Amazon is shipped and in transit to my apartment, and when I need to catch the subway to get to my next appointment. I didn't ask it to do any of that; it looked through my email to snag the tracking number from Amazon, and found weather for my location. The appointment thing is even crazier: it looked through my calendar for the appointment, routed me based on my current location (using the subway schedule), and learned that I take public transit rather than drive. Complicated! But all I see when I go to Google Now is "hey Dan, you should leave in 12 minutes to catch the C train to get to your appointment on time." That is amazing.

The app selection is finally up to par; iOS has better games and some apps will always go to iOS first, but there certainly aren't any major apps available on other platforms that aren't available here. And Android has always had an excellent selection of stuff for tinkerers--power management tools, alternate browsers and media apps, easy ways to take back your data plan by tethering or totally change the way your phone looks and behaves. But that's all expert stuff, not stuff for most people, and Android has finally gotten pretty much everything normal people would want.

I love love love the way Android 4.2 helps you get things done. It makes iOS and Windows Phone seem incredibly inefficient. Switching between apps is done by hitting one of the three permanent "soft" buttons on the screen, which presents you with a list of open apps. Tap on them to go there, or swipe it off the page to close. Same thing for the pull-down notification shade--tap to go, swipe to close. It's such a fast and intuitive way to manage everything that's going on with your phone, especially compared to iOS's tricky little notification shade, with its tiny "clear" buttons and no way to clear individual items. Oh, and the power controls are great, too--pull down the shade, tap one button in the upper right, and there's your key settings (brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplane mode, battery, signal strength, and a link to the full settings). It's a really fast and clean way to change frequently adjusted settings without going into some dumb settings app.

The camera's been overhauled, too: the camera on the Nexus 4 I found to be pretty decent in low-light and very bright and colorful and detailed with good light. And the way you control it is new, too--you tap and hold your finger on the screen, and a ring of options (HDR, flash toggle, white balance, ISO) blossoms around your finger. It's super convenient and smart; I wonder why nobody's ever thought of it before. The coolest other new feature of the camera is called "Photo Sphere," which is like a hyper-panorama. You move your phone not just in a straight line in front of you, but above you as well, like you're moving it along an invisible giant hamster ball. It's great for showing your parents your new apartment.

What's Bad

The hardware is not attractive. I don't mean it's unattractive, I just mean it is not attractive. It is blah. It's a rounded black rectangle of, mostly, cheap plastic. (It is nicely thin and light, though.) The back is some kind of clear panel that has a slight glitter to it in the right light--it is, thankfully, not gaudy, but I also am not particularly enamored of it. Worse is that it's kind of slippery.

The Nexus does not have an SD slot. That wouldn't normally be a big deal, but it's only available in 8GB and 16GB models, so you might find yourself wanting some extra space.

The screen is really bright and clear and crisp, but only indoors--I found it much too reflective in direct sunlight. I've tested worse screens; the Nexus 4 isn't unreadable outside, but I'd prefer it was less reflective.

Battery life is only adequate. It'll make it through a day with light use, at most. Others have been reporting that extensive use of the camera will slaughter battery life, which is too bad, because the camera's very nice.

And it's curious that battery life is a problem, because it lacks 4G LTE, which is typically the feature that kills battery life fastest. The Verge said a modern LTE-less phone is like a "muscle car with no wheels," but I think that's an overreaction. The Nexus still supports T-Mobile's very fast HSPA+ network, and it worked fine on 3G with an AT&T SIM card. Like, yes, 4G would be good, and I am not really sure why it was left out, but not one time did I ever find myself demanding a webpage load 0.75 seconds faster. Not a dealbreaker for me, at least.

The Price

Here's something interesting: phones are typically sold subsidized, with a contract. Your $199 iPhone actually costs a whopping $700; you're just getting a deal because you've agreed to pay Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint a few thousand bucks for the next two years. But the Nexus 4 is being sold contract-free: the 8GB model costs $300, and the 16GB costs $350. That's surprisingly cheap, considering you're not locked into a contract, though you may not care about being locked into a contract. Or you can grab it for the usual $200 at T-Mobile.

The Verdict

If the Nexus 4 worked on Verizon, I'd probably drop my iPhone and grab it. That's how good this phone is. Android has never been so put-together, so thoughtful. Many of its best points are completely unmatched on any other platform--the one-two punch of Google Maps and Google Now is unbeatable. The hardware is above average--I like the inclusion of wireless charging and NFC, and it's a nice size for your pocket (unlike some phones). If you're in the market for a new phone, and looking for something on T-Mobile or AT&T, this is pretty much the tops.

Want to win this cruisin' Baarbarian illustration on a T-shirt? It's easy! The rules: Follow us on Twitter (we're @PopSci) and retweet our This Week in the Future tweet. One of those lucky retweeters will be chosen to receive a custom T-shirt with this week's Baarbarian illustration on it, thus making the winner the envy of friends, coworkers and everyone else with eyes. (Those who would rather not leave things to chance and just pony up some cash for the T-shirt can do that here.) The stories pictured herein:

• Great Apes Might Experience Mid-Life Crises Just Like Humans
• Grand Award Winner: Tesla Model S
• FYI: Can You Make An Authentic Twinkie At Home?

And don't forget to check out our other favorite stories of the week:

• How Israel's ‘Iron Dome' Knocks Almost Every Incoming Missile Out Of The Sky
• Are People Getting Dumber? One Geneticist Thinks So
• The Deep-Space Suit
• Nintendo Wii U Review: Sounds Gimmicky, But Makes Good Games More Good
• BeerSci: How To Drink Your Thanksgiving Meal
• FYI: How Much Weight Can You Gain From Thanksgiving Dinner?
• What 'Earth-Shaking' Evidence Did The Mars Rover Curiosity Just Find?
• 7 Tiny Gifts For The Undersized (But Not Underloved) Person In Your Life
• Could A Sonic Weapon Make Your Head Explode?
• How Not To Deep-Fry A Turkey

We have posted severalgift guides over the past few days, in anticipation of Black Friday, that most holy of days for those who love shopping and trampling people. But maybe you're a little overwhelmed by all the new technology out there. Maybe you yearn for a simpler time when kids played with model trains and not iPads, when the concept of a machine pouring your drink instead of a person was novel.

Click here to launch the gallery.

Never you fret. We've got you covered. We went back 60 years into the Popular Science archive and found the most exciting gadgets from 1952. There's options for any budget--from the lightest car available (at the time) to a vintage GPS that's basically just a map-holder. We also found one gadget, the last slide in the gallery, that would make the perfect present for just about anybody. You're welcome.

A thermostat has tremendous power: It controls heating and cooling, the most expensive, energy-guzzling system in a house. Until the Nest, thermostats wielded that power blindly. The Nest learns a household's schedule and preferences after just one week and programs itself (and if those preferences change, the Nest adapts accordingly). It uses activity, humidity, and temperature sensors to monitor the indoor climate and adjust it for maximum efficiency.

The Nest can also shut down the air conditioner's compressor a few minutes early to make the most of the cool air still available after it cycles off. The homeowner can always adjust the device from home or the road, but will rarely need to-which makes this the first thermostat truly compatible with people's lives.

Power: Rechargeable lithium-ion battery
Compatibility: 95% of 24-volt systems
Price: $249

Screen quality follows a simple rule: The larger the screen, the more pixels necessary to fill it. A high-def image is 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. On a 60-inch LCD TV, the image is flawless, but go any larger-say, 80 inches or a wall-sized projection-and the individual pixels become visible, degrading image quality. The Sony VPL-VW1000ES is the first home-theater projector to produce 4,096-by-2,160-pixel, or 4K, images, which allows it to produce pictures up to 200 inches across. The company's engineers based the VPL's 8.8-million-pixel projection chip on those used in Sony's 4K theater projectors. Though 4K content is limited now, directors, including Peter Jackson, have already shot about 75 movies at the standard. As those movies reach homes, viewers will have the means to experience full, cinematic quality in their living rooms.

Projection: Up to 200 inches
Weight: 44 pounds
Price: $25,000

In 2012, buildings, bridges and ocean vessels got bigger, greener, stronger and longer than ever. Check out our annual Best Of What's New awards in engineering below.

Click here to enter the gallery.

As a doctor, George Savage had the power to save lives, but part of his job still made him feel helpless: After patients left the hospital, he had no way of knowing if they were taking their medications. According to the World Health Organization, patients fail to use their prescriptions properly at least half the time.

It was a former grad-school housemate, Andrew Thompson, who brought Savage a solution. While perusing vendors at an American Heart Association meeting in 2004, Thompson noticed a glut of technology demonstrations on the device side, but a dearth on the drug side. "The only tech on display was a cappuccino machine," he says. Inspired, the pair set to work with electrical engineer Mark Zdeblick to digitize medicine. Their Proteus Digital Health Feedback System, a blend of MEMS and wireless data transfer, could take the guesswork out of drug delivery for good.

It took the team seven years to create the centerpiece of the Feedback System, a pill that doubles as a radio. "The biggest question was, What types of materials would the FDA allow us to use?" Zdeblick says. "So we decided to use [ones from] a vitamin." Small amounts of copper and magnesium conduct enough electricity (1.5 volts) to power a one-millimeter chip. When a pill containing the chip hits the stomach, the metals interact with stomach fluid to generate a current. The current transmits to a 2.5-inch patch on the patient's torso, which relays the signal as binary code to his phone over Bluetooth. An app will determine the pill's serial number, manufacturer, and ingredients, and saves that data to the cloud. Doctors will eventually be able to set up automatic alerts when adherence problems arise.

The FDA approved a placebo-based version of the Feedback System in July, and the partners now plan to sell it to drugmakers. Savage, who's worked in medical technology for more than 20 years, says the best applications will be conditions where missing a few doses can have dangerous consequences, such as schizophrenia and congestive heart failure. Several companies have already invested in the Feedback System, including Novartis, maker of Ritalin and breast-cancer drug Femara. The FDA will need to approve drugs with the chip on a case-by-case basis, so the first ones probably won't be available for another two years.

But once the system is out, it will also help families better monitor loved ones. Savage says he could have used it this summer; while traveling in Europe after his mother's knee-replacement surgery, he worried continually about her painkillers. "That's the kind of thing that a feedback system could hopefully address," he says. "I'd still be calling her up, but we could spend time talking about what she's doing in the garden, rather than what she's doing with her medications."
--Rebecca Boyle

Can you cure a bed bug infestation just by downing drugs? While the idea has appeal, particularly for people afflicted with nightly bites and for scientists dealing with a pest that is increasingly difficult to kill, the short answer is probably no. But before we get to the long answer, some background.

Bloomberg recently reported on research from the Eastern Virginia Medical School which showed that ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug, was fatal to bed bugs (specifically, they used Merck's brand Stromectol. Merck was not involved in the study). The researchers presented the work at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and it is under review for formal publication in a medical journal.

For now, here are the basics. The researchers ran three experiments on groups of bed bugs that included adults as well as young'uns in the third and fourth of the bugs' five growth stages (third and fourth instar nymphs). Different groups of bugs were fed ivermectin-laced mouse blood through an artificial membrane, directly from mice that had been injected with ivermectin, and on four people that had taken the drug orally.

In all cases, to varying degrees, the drug killed most of the bed bugs. And, in both the mouse and the human studies, most of the instars that didn't die weren't able to molt, which they have to do in order to reach reproductive age. In the human trials, the mortality rate was 67 percent three hours after dosing, and fell to 42 percent after 54 hours.

Johnathan Sheele, an emergency room doctor and the lead author on the study, stresses that bed bug sufferers shouldn't experiment with ivermectin at home. Still, he adds, the drug "could potentially be used alongside, concurrently, with professional exterminators" for infestations, or as a standalone treatment for smaller introductions. Future tests, he says, may explore the drug's effectiveness in such real-world situations.

Bed bugs were fed ivermectin-laced mouse blood. The bugs died. It may sound promising. But, the idea for a systemic bed bug drug isn't new. A series of patents published in the 1980s and 1990s covered the approach, albeit with a different drug, a later patent application suggested it for ivermectin, and the general idea has been floated at entomology conferences, by medical doctors, and in online forums ever since. And, there are several reasons why it has never gained traction.

Ivermectin was originally used to deworm animals and is still a common active ingredient in heartworm preventatives for dogs. Starting in the 1980s and continuing today, it's been used in humans to treat strongyloidiasis (threadworm) and onchocerciasis (river blindness), which are caused by different species of roundworms, as well as head lice, pubic lice, and scabies.

The drug is successful against these parasites, in part, because of their preferred milieus, says Michael Potter, an entomologist and bed bug specialist at the University of Kentucky (and also, coincidentally, a co-inventor on those early patents listed above, which never were used to treat bed bugs). Roundworms are endoparasites, meaning they live inside the body. Treating said body with ivermectin hits the worms because they have nowhere else to go. Similarly, while lice and scabies are ectoparasites, meaning they live outside the body, they are also generally concentrated in a specific area and can be relatively easily dosed with a drug.

Bed bugs are trickier, says Potter, While bed bugs are also ectoparasites, they only come to the body to feed around once a week and then scurry back to refuges in cracks and holes.

So, to guarantee a dose of ivermectin, the user would likely have to take the drug for a couple of weeks, which still might not expose all the bugs in an infestation (although Sheele points out that ivermectin's metabolites, which stick around after the drug is gone, also seem to kill the bugs). While ivermectin is generally considered safe, it is almost always prescribed as a single dose and, like any drug, there is a point at which it will no longer be therapeutic, but a health risk.

There is also the potential for resistance, although this is a constant problem for pest control no matter what tactic is used. Some parasites have already shown resistance to ivermectin, and bed bugs have grown resistant to insecticides from DDT to pyrethroids.

And, finally, registering a pharmaceutical for human use with the FDA requires a huge amount of data, including proof that the drug is safe for human use, which means years of animal studies and clinical trial. Bed bugs, Potter says, "are going to have to bring society to its knees before people start entertaining that approach."

Brooke Borel is a contributing editor at Popular Science and is writing a book about bed bugs for the University of Chicago Press. Follow her on Twitter @brookeborel

A new eye prosthetic can download electrical data right into a blind person's retina, bypassing a camera and placing digital information right onto the nerve cells. A blind patient who used the device could read Braille patterns in less than a second, according to Swiss researchers.

The study used an ocular prosthetic called the Argus II, which is approved for commercial use in Europe and has been implanted into about 50 people, according to researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The implant uses a glasses-mounted camera, a wearable computer processor to translate camera data into electrical pulses, and a grid of 60 electrodes implanted directly onto the retina. The device uses the camera to collect visual info and translates it into signals the retina can interpret. It's basically the same technique as a more familiar cochlear implant, which sends electrical pulses into the auditory nerves so that deaf people can hear.

In this new study, the researchers didn't use the camera. Instead, they used the electrodes to stimulate patterns of activity onto the retina. They narrowed the experiment down to six out of the 60 electrodes and pulsed them to create visual approximations of individual Braille letters. Instead of feeling raised dots with his fingers, the patient perceived the letters with his retina.

Led by Lauritzen Thomas Zaccarin of Second Sight, the device developer, the researchers came up with short two to four-letter words, stimulated one letter at a time. The patient identified 89 percent of single letters, 80 percent of two-letter words and 70 percent of four-letter words, the team says in a new paper. "This work suggests that text can successfully be stimulated and read as visual braille in retinal prosthesis patients," the researchers say.

More work needs to be done to refine the device, but the researchers think it could work as a "sensory substitute" for reading written language. Their paper is published in Frontiers In Neuroprosthetics.

[Frontiers]

Every time the sun lashes out with another beautiful but potentially threatening solar flare or coronal mass ejection, we are reminded that the naturally occurring solar cycle is approaching a "solar maximum" in 2013 and that solar activity is on the ascent. But what does that mean? If you're having a hard time picturing an active ball of flaming nuclear fusion versus a less-active ball of flaming nuclear fusion, simply see above.

Solar maximum (and minimum) are terms that describe whether we are at a peak or a trough in the sun's natural 11-year cycle, and they are determined by counting the number of sunspots visible on the surface of the sun during a given cycle. The most recent minimum occurred in 2008 and the sun is now building toward another maximum--a shift in activity that is very clearly visible here.

[NASA]

Every year, the Design Challenge--formulated by and for the LA Auto Show--asks the automotive industry's most advanced design labs to speculate on possible futures as they pertain to the continuing evolution of the automobile. This year's theme: highway patrol 2025. Entries from the likes of GM, Subaru, BMW, and Honda naturally show a lot of imagination, but more than that they show a degree of agreement between the industry's brightest creatives that the future is going to be crowded, full of traffic jams, and above all very, very automated.

Everyday police work in 2025 will be autonomous and remotely controlled.

As in the defense sector, robotics potentially offer law enforcement agencies a force multiplier--something that allows fewer officers to be more productive at a lower cost--and this year's Design Challenge entrants clearly understand that. Some of the proposals are pretty straightforward; Mercedes Benz offers up an advanced, fuel-efficient SUV for police forces trying to own the road with sheer size, while General Motors introduces the "Volt Squad," a three-vehicle manned system based on the electric propulsion technology pioneered for the Chevy Volt.

But the proposals put forth by Honda and BMW perhaps speak to the most likely future of routine traffic patrolling. Honda Advanced Design's CHP Drone Squad is an optionally manned system that makes highway patrol work more like the routine intelligence-gathering conducted by the U.S. military. That is to say, everyday police work in 2025 will be increasingly autonomous as well as remotely controlled. Honda's Drone squad is composed of a larger optionally manned Auto-Drone that functions like a mobile forward operating base capable of deploying smaller unmanned two-wheeled motorcycles called Moto-Drones. Both cruiser and its deployed robots can work together to chase down and corral offenders or participate in various interception, intercession, or other first-response missions, like a technology-heavy police cruiser with its own small fleet of helper robots.

BMW's concept is similar. Created by BMW Group DesignworksUSA, E-Patrol is the manned police cruiser of the future. The team's research predicted that Los Angeles 2025 will host a traffic-filled yet fast-moving transit atmosphere, and for the car chases of the future the officers driving E-Patrol will be able to deploy both aerial drones or single-wheeled unmanned ground vehicles to pursue other vehicles or gather information and report back to the hub. Essentially, a couple of officers on patrol could do the work of multiple cruisers and an aerial helicopter unit today--assuming someone pioneers a user interface that would allow said officers to manage the entire system simultaneously.

That last part might be the biggest design challenge of all, and it will require lots of robotic autonomy. But if the concepts put forth by the auto industry's most forward-thinking creatives is any indication, highway policing by autopilot could become the norm. And while this future won't necessarily come to pass in the next 15 years, there's a strong chance that at some point we will find ourselves receiving moving violations from autonomous systems, from some kind of RoboCop (minus the cyborg element). So don't bother crying--your pitiful human emotions won't get you off the hook this time.

[Autoblog via NYT]

Working for the famously bureaucratic federal government can feel like a major drag--unless, that is, you work for NASA. The US Office of Personnel Management conducted the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, a yearly questionnaire for employees of federal government agencies, and NASA workers reported having the highest job satisfaction.

The survey questions addressed various aspects of job satisfaction, including how much pleasure employees derive from their work and how happy they are with logistics like pay, pension and working hours.

Though NASA scored high in job satisfaction, it only got second place in leadership and knowledge management, results-oriented performance culture (a system that promotes a diverse, high-performing workforce) and talent management. Of course if astro-mohawks were a category, NASA would have that one in the bag.

[NASAWatch]

Scientists often spread themselves too thin trying to gather and monitor vast amounts of data, so why not outsource some of that work to non-scientists? It's only getting easier to collaborate with citizen scientists. Volunteers can enlist through social media, gather field data through a smartphone app, then put all of that into an organized web database fresh for the analyzing.

A review commissioned by the UK Environmental Observation Framework (UK-EOF) highlights some of the work that citizen scientists have done. A team looked at 234 projects and determined that pro bono volunteers offered a cost-effective way of collecting data whether they were nature fans or kids. The researchers also found that volunteer contributions could have immediate effects outside academia: With more data than usual collected from a small army of volunteer researchers, the environment can be monitored like never before, and that mountain of data can help better inform environmental policy. (Researchers simultaneously published a handy explainer on the whole process.)

Citizen science projects aren't being used as frequently as they could be, the researchers write. But that could change as amateurs sign up to help with everything from the online game EteRNA, which lets people mess with bits of digital RNA so researchers behind the curtain can understand it better, to orchestrated data-hunting expeditions in the wilderness. Citizen science, the researchers say, has the potential to completely change one of the most fundamental aspects of science: how we collect data.

[via BBC]

Our science fiction isn't always on the nose. 1984 didn't look exactly like 1984, and 2001 didn't bring us the kind of Space Odysseys we envisioned. So forgive us for being skeptical about predictions pegged to dates that haven't been reached yet--the subject of this terrific visualization by Italian designer Giorgia Lupi.

The infographic, illustrated for Brain Pickings, shows predictions for the future, built around science fiction novels, stories, and comics. It's organized by year of publication on one axis and year of the work's prediction on the other. Predictions start at 2012 and go all the way to 802,701.

It also marks the author's age at the time of publication and classifies stories by subgenres (is this environmental sci-fi or political sci-fi?). The works are color-coded to show what kind of an impact the prediction had on the fictional world: Brave New World was, you know, bad, so it gets shaded in black; William Gibson's Neuromancer is relatively neutral, so it's represented with a brownish color.

A lot fits into the infographic, so you'll want to take a closer look. See a zoomable version at Brain Pickings.

[Brain Pickings]