| January 2010 |
| Anatomy of a plane crash |
| The aviation industry’s safety record has never been better, but the mysterious loss of an airliner is challenging efforts to prevent tragedies before they happen. |
Eleven kilometres above the empty expanse of the South Atlantic Ocean, on 31 May 2009, an Air France A330 passenger jet cut through the midnight darkness. The plane had taken off three hours... |more| |
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| Run silent, run sleek |
| Humans have long explored the ocean at a dirigible’s pace. Graham Hawkes plans to change that with a sub that flies. |
Ten in the morning is a late start for the Super Falcon. For the past two days I’ve strolled down to the pier at dawn, just as the fog begins to roll off Monterey Bay, to watch as... |more| |
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Thinking ahead
The new age machine |
| Futurists say the singularity – when computers overtake humans – is coming. What happens next? |
For some time now, futurists have been talking about a concept called the Singularity, a technological jump so big that society will be transformed. If they’re right, the Industrial... |more| |
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| The new wildcatters |
| Texans’ oil-boom attitude could put the state in a surprising position – leading the charge to alternative energy. |
Driving along Broadway in Sweetwater, Texas, one could justifiably assume the city is on its way down, not its way up. Cobwebs crowd the windows of abandoned storefronts, and peeling signs... |more| |
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| December 2009 |
| Illusions unlimited |
| Horrible monsters to order, prosthetics so real that you’ll shudder, animal make-up that’s the stuff of nightmares... all this (and more) is part of an ordinary working day at The Creature Shop. Meet a creative team with a unique perspective on ‘getting real’ in movies... |
If you find yourself teetering on the edge of your cinema seat, heart pounding and muscles tense with anticipation, or laughing so hard that it hurts, then Graham Press, Jaco Snyman and the dynamic... |more| |
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| Brains on wheels |
| We foresee trouble. South African start-up Robonica has pioneered and launched a robotic gaming system for children. It’s clever, it’s quirky and it’s highly addictive. Our question: once their parents have tried it, will the kids get a look-in? |
Targeted at children aged 13 and up, and equipped with all of 16 sensors, Roboni-i is a fully programmable wheeled robot (video: "|more| |
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| PM’s 2009 Breakthrough Awards |
| Meet the year's best inventions... |
We need innovators. Sure, we need their inventions: the medical tools, the batteries for storing wind power, the efficient engines and agile robots. But we also need their spirit of inquiry to... |more| |
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| November 2009 |
| Ready for anything |
| Why our complex world is more disaster-prone than ever – and what to do about it. |
Here’s a simple truth: it’s better to bend than to break, and it’s best to be prepared for the worst. This age-old wisdom is going by a new name in slide-rule circles – “resilience engineering”. It... |more| |
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| The soul of an old machine |
| Yes, we live in a throwaway society. But a growing band of old-school tinkerers and newschool hackers are rediscovering the joy of fi xing what’s broken. |
How many MIT engineering PhDs does it take to repair a dishwasher? In the case of a balky Maytag at Eric Wilhelm’s house in Oakland, California, one doctorate sufficed. After a plastic wheel on... |more| |
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| The electric cold-beer gadget test |
| PM’s Glenn Derene goes into survival mode – with his favourite tech in tow. |
I’m a different sort of survivaalist. When the electricity fails, the floodwaters begin to rise and the orders for evacuation come, everyone will surely be concerned with stockpiles of food,... |more| |
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