Popular Science

Illustration of a Generic Flu Virus Centers for Disease Control and Prevention A synthetic biology method proves its chops. A copy of the genetic code of an H7N9 avian flu-similar to, but not exactly the same as the flu that has killed 36 people in China-arrived in a lab in Boston Easter Sunday, 2011. By Saturday, scientists had made a vaccine against it, the Boston Globe reported. That turnaround time is weeks faster than the current best vaccine-making methods. The new shot-making strategy […]

'Joe's' multi-round-ready 3-D printed Lulz Liberator For $25, a Wisconsin engineer has produced a more durable version of Defense Distributed's 3-D printed pistol on an inexpensive, consumer-grade printer. Defense Distributed's plastic, 3-D printed "Liberator" single-shot handgun was here for a moment and then it was gone in more than one sense. For one, the news cycle turned over. Moreover, the State Department came down on Defense Distributed asking it to pull the CAD file for […]

foc.us Headset foc.us For when you just HAVE to beat everyone at Call of Duty. Foc.us is a company that makes headsets for gamers. Those headsets, starting to ship in July, send electricity through your brain. This is their pitch: Overclock your brain using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) to increase the plasticity of your brain. Make your synapses fire faster. Faster Processor, Faster Graphics, Faster Brain! If that sounds a little sketchy to you, that's because it probably […]

A Waffle House in Fort Worth, under sunnier skies Billy Hathorn via Wikimedia No we're not kidding, and yes that's a good thing. Moore, Okla., is currently running at Waffle House Index Level Yellow, and that's not a joke. Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has created his own informal system of rating disasters in a humanizing way, using the status of the local Waffle House as a measure of the impact of a natural disaster on a region or neighborhood. And if that […]

Twister OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) A warming world pulls the two factors of tornado formation in opposite directions. Scientists generally agree that climate change will increase the likelihood of extreme weather events, but the jury is still out on how tornadoes will fare in a warming world. Tornadoes are fickle beasts, and it remains tough to predict a tornado a week from now, much less what they might be like over the next few years. "The most common finding is a […]