2,500 mph: the speed attained this year by the six-passenger Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites Spaceship Two, the first commercial spacecraft to exceed Mach 1
99 percent: the portion of American exterminators that have encountered bed bug infestations in the past year, up from only 11 percent more than 10 years ago
2015: the year Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota plan to offer a small number of hydrogen fuel-cell cars to consumers
15 gigawatt-hours: the amount of electric energy—nearly a day's output for a mid-size nuclear power plant—that has been lost since 2012 to the Tesla Model S's "vampire" power drain problem
$71 million: the amount Michelin is investing in plant-based tires
90 percent: the portion of drugs that pass animal testing, then fail in human trials (scientists are developing alternatives that equal or surpass animal-based methods)
1 foot: the length of a plug of whale earwax
4.6 feet: the height of the Samsung Roboray, an agile, bipedal robot that can 3-D-map its surroundings in real time, and thus navigate an environment without GPS
5 pounds: the weight of the MiniMAX, a portable x-ray machine that can be whisked to accidents, crime scenes, battlefields, airports, sidelines, and any other place that could benefit from on-the-spot x-ray vision
1944: the year the United States built its last battleship (check out this "How A Battleship Works" infographic from the October 1943 issue of Popular Science)
$225: the price of a tennis racquet made from the world's strongest material
70 percent: the portion of America's silent films that have been lost since the arrival of "talkies," according to a recent Library of Congress study
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