Table of contents for September - October 2016 in Popular Science

OVER THE COURSE OF HIS 50-YEAR FILMMAKING CAREER, DIRECTOR and documentarian Werner Herzog has often explored humanity’s complicated relationship with nature. His newest release, funded by an internet security company —Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World—examines the changing roles technology plays in our lives. Herzog says he rarely uses the Internet himself, and didn’t make his first phone call until the age of 17. It’s this outsider’s perspective that imbues the film with both curiosity and concern: Here Herzog muses that artificial intelligence has the potential to enhance society, but that a consequence could be losing touch with the very things that makes us human. THE FIELD OF ARTIFICIAL intelligence research is a beautiful one. I’m not surprised by how far it has come, but I am surprised…

Surgeon Steven Zeitels saves the voices of singers like Adele (left). But mere mortals also endure vocal-cord stiffness that can lead to strain and voice loss. Instead of treating it with costly surgery, Zeitels—director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center—is creating a 45-cubic-millimeter gel implant that will be injected under the vocal membranes to restore pliability. It’ll be ready for human trials in 2018. “This is a way to bring back what had been thought of as lost forever,” Zeitels says.…

Amy Karle The artist aims to connect the body and technology. NEW-MEDIA ARTIST AMY KARLE HAS always been enthralled by science. She grew up around her mother’s medical research lab and studied genetic engineering in college. Now Karle, who previously performed an art piece where a computer mapped her biofeedback as she meditated, is growing a skeletal human hand. In the first step of the creative process, Karle and a team of experts scanned the bones of a female hand as the basis for a digital model. Then they gave the model pores and other microstructures that make it mimic bone. Karle 3-D-printed this scaffolding out of a biodegradable, nontoxic hydrogel. Finally, the team seeded the hydrogel with human stem cells and placed it in a bioreactor—a container to keep…

Have a burning question? Email it to askanything@popsci.com or tweet it to @PopSci #AskAnything Q IS THERE A CURE FOR COLORBLINDNESS? Short answer It could be in sight. A THE COLORBLIND DON’T just suffer limited career choices (pilot is out). They also miss some of life’s biggest pleasures— vibrant sunsets, autumn foliage, the ability to determine if a tomato is ripe. “Nobody chooses a black-and-white TV over color,” says University of Washington ophthalmology professor Jay Neitz, who has devoted his career to studying color deficiency. “ Color makes us happy.” Cone cells in the retina normally help the brain translate lightwaves into what we perceive as colors. When those cells lack red or green photopigments, it causes the most common colorblind disorder, one that afflicts 1-in-12 men in the U.S.…

COTTON IS COMFORTABLE, but when wet from sweat, it gets clammy. Self-wicking polyester is a good fix. But in wind or a temperature drop, it wicks away sweat so quickly, you get uncomfortably cold. Polartec’s engineers have figured out the right balance. Polartec created its new Delta—a mechanical wicking fabric-—to hold sweat close to the skin. It mimics the body’s natural cooling process before sweat evaporates through the fabric and into the air. Its secret: a water-receptive synthetic called Lyocell is knit into fins, similar to those in a car radiator, that absorbs and spreads out perspiration. Polyester between the fins pulls moisture from the fabric and disperses it into the air to limit sogginess. Added odor control and UPF make it ideal for indoor or outdoor training.…

THE WHITE-MALE-DOMINATED TECH INDUSTRY is sorely in need of a diversity upgrade. So Kimberly Bryant founded Black Girls Code in 2012 to add a few shades to Silicon Valley’s color palette. Her nonprofit is dedicated to teaching girls K-12 how to code. Some 6,000 girls have enlisted, from San Francisco to as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa. Many others have taken note, from President Obama to the folks at Google, who this summer gifted the group $2.8 million in office space inside their Manhattan headquarters. Bryant, the group’s CEO, talked to Popular Science about the importance of inclusion—and how diversity benefits us all. +STATS NAME Black Girls Code MISSION Train 1 million girls by 2040 NUMBER OF CHAPTERS 13 worldwide Why is inclusive hiring important in tech? The people…

BY AGE 7, TERESA CODY’S SON, NEAL, had yet to say his first word. He has Down syndrome, a disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21, found in 6,000 babies every year in the U.S. There’s no cure, and most people with the diagnosis have an IQ about 50 points below average and a shorter life expectancy. Desperate to improve her son’s cognition, Cody gave him supplements, vitamins, and medication, which led her to an unlikely treatment: Prozac. She found studies that claim the antidepressant—also known as fluoxetine— could stimulate the growth of new neurons in mice. She convinced Neal’s pediatrician it couldn’t hurt, so he added the drug to Neal’s supplement regimen. Cody believes the drug sped Neal’s development, and although there’s no way to prove causation,…

DESPITE ITS SMALL SIZE, 101955 Bennu is one of the most dangerous asteroids in the solar system. In 2135, it will fly within about 186,000 miles of Earth, at which point, the odds of it striking us are an unsettling 1-in-2,700. Based on impact calculations, University of Arizona Lunar & Planetary Laboratory staff scientist Bashar Rizk estimates that if a person were within 5 miles of the asteroid’s impact, he or she would likely not survive. If Bennu were to hit a city, “ civilization would be wiped out; most buildings would collapse or ignite, or both,” Rizk says. “The fireball would be about 1,500 times as bright as the sun.” That’s why this month NASA is sending a solar-powered spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid. The OSIRIS-REx ( Origins,…

BEFORE CHRIS WHITE COULD HELP DISRUPT JIHADI FINANCE NETWORKS, CRUSH WEAPONS MARKETS, AND BUST UP SEX-SLAVE RINGS WITH SEARCH TOOLS THAT MINE THE DARK WEB, HE FIRST HAD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO STOP HIMSELF FROM PLUMMETING THROUGH THE OPEN GUN DOOR OF A BANKING BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER. ¶NO HAND-HOLDING IN A WAR ZONE, HE THOUGHT. ¶IT WAS SEPTEMBER 2010. WHITE WAS ON HIS WAY TO A FORWARD OPERATING BASE OUTSIDE KABUL HEADQUARTERS, AS PART OF A SECRET INTELLIGENCE CELL TO HELP CONFRONT THE TALIBAN and al-Qaida, smash their encrypted online money stream, and win over the hearts and minds of the Afghanistan population. Slight and lanky and 28, White felt Dukakis-ridiculous in his unwieldy body armor and bulbous helmet with “Dr. White” scrawled in marker on duct tape across…

WILDLIFE CRIME IS PUTTING THOUSANDS OF SPECIES AT RISK OF extinction to feed a growing human demand for food, pets, medicine, and status symbols. Led by international crime syndicates that move animals and products through black markets, illegal trafficking is an industry that’s worth up to $150 billion each year. ¶ Poachers are good at hiding their tracks. “The trick is getting one step ahead of them,” says Richard Thomas of Traffic, a wildlife trade-monitoring network. The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge could help. Launched last year by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the global competition received hundreds of ideas from technologists, academics, and activist hackers. Here are 10 of the most innovative. 32 Percentage of all seafood imported to the U.S. that is likely illegal SOURCE: MARINE POLICY HAWAII…

HALLOWEEN FALLS ON A MONDAY THIS YEAR, GIVING YOU an excuse to celebrate it in the office—with a mini fog machine that fits in a coffee mug. This project, inspired by a water-only fogger from DIYer Brian Clarke, employs sound waves to turn distilled water into a spooky haze. The tiny cauldron gives you all the boil and bubble of a witch’s brew for a lot less toil and trouble. TIME 15 mins COST $30 DIFFICULTYY +TOOLS & MATERIALS Wire strippers • Two 23A battery boxes • Soldering iron • 5.5 mm-by-2.5 mm male plug for DC power • Two 23A batteries • Empty, dry 16-ounce plastic water bottle • Etree ultrasonic fogger • Duct tape • Mug • Distilled water +INSTRUCTIONS 1/Strip the ends of the battery box…

PHANTOM LIMB James Young sports one of de Oliveira Barata’s most audacious projects: the Phantom Limb, inspired by the video game Metal Gear Solid. Young and de Oliveira Barata worked with 11 artists and engineers to craft an arm that boasts lights, USB charging ports, a 3-D-printed hand, and a drone that docks on the shoulder, among other features. Young says he did lose some functionality for the cool factor, but tinkering with the limb has involved him in maker culture. “I’ve learned about LEDs and coding,” he says. FOR EIGHT YEARS, PROSTHETIC sculptor Sophie de Oliveira Barata created realistic-looking limbs for amputees who wanted to blend in. But she longed to work on more whimsical designs that would stand out. Then she met Pollyanna Hope, a young amputee. “She…

1/ FREEWRITE Tap away without distraction on this digital typewriter, then upload your analog opus to the cloud. 2/ LOGITECH ZEROTOUCH Take calls and change tunes in the car with a wave of the hand so your eyes stay on the road ahead. 3/ CYRANO Deploy this gizmo for all of your aromatherapy needs: soothing coconut and guava scents during rush hour, or energizing citrus at work. 4/ SAMSUNG ICONX WIRELESS EARBUDS IconX earbuds track your heart rate and hold up to 4GB of music so you can go for a run phone-free. 5/ THINCHARGE CASE The Thincharge iPhone case protects your phone and adds 100 percent more battery life. 6/ KNOCKI This puck translates knocks into commands. Knock a surface twice to turn on smart lights or call an…

OUR TELEVISION OVERLORDS—THOSE BOXES THAT hulk on our walls—are an insidious lot. Not happy to stay relevant for more than two years, their makers constantly beckon with new features, each more complicated than the last. The newest princeling is high-dynamic range, or HDR. These televisions display more than 1 billion colors, with ultimate control over every possible combination thereof, from the blackest black to the whitest white (if the content is HDR compatible). That means you see a more vivid movie, or a more textured video-game shootout. But do you really need HDR? Don’t ask the clerk at Best Buy. Our chart has your answer.…

25 Number of volunteers who repeatedly jumped on a cracked panel to test its durability WHEN IT OPENS NEXT YEAR, THE WORLD’S LONGEST and highest glass bridge will stretch 1,400 feet across China’s Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, a setting that helped inspire the fictional world, Pandora, in James Cameron’s Avatar. To build it, engineers installed four support towers into the quartz sandstone of the canyon walls. A steel frame was fitted with more than 120 glass panels, which will allow up to 800 tourists to walk—and gawk—nearly 1,000 feet above the national park’s floor. Because durability is critical, each panel is a three-layered, 2-inch-thick slab of tempered glass; if one layer cracks, the others will hold. Adrenaline junkies will be able to dangle from the bridge’s underbelly on three long swings.…

When first responders enter the scene of an active shooting or chemical spill, they must rapidly decide how to prioritize patient care. The current triage system uses color-coded tags corresponding to the seriousness of a patient’s injuries. The problem is, first responders don’t always have the medical expertise to accurately identify who needs the most pressing attention. “During disasters, emergency rooms typically get overwhelmed,” says Peter Chai, an emergency medical physician at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “So when truly injured patients show up later, we have nowhere to put them.” Enter Google Glass: The augmented-reality headset that failed as a consumer product is getting a second life as a tool that turns paramedics and emergency medical technicians into walking telemedicine suites. Wearing it while assessing patients allows them…

( LET’S GO TO THE MOON ! ) Before this decade is out, humanity will go where it’s never gone before: the far side of the moon. This dark side—forever facing away from us—has long been a mystery. No human-made object has ever touched its surface. The mission will be a marvel of engineering. It will involve a rocket that weighs hundreds of tons (traveling almost 250,000 miles), a robot lander, and an unmanned lunar rover that will use sensors, cameras, and an infrared spectrometer to uncover billion-year-old secrets from the soil. The mission also might scout the moon’s supply of helium-3—a promising material for fusion energy. And the nation planting its starry flag on this historic trip will be the People’s Republic of China. After years of investment and…

LAST YEAR, THE DENTED BODY OF A 1969 BELL OH-58 Kiowa helicopter sold at auction for $3,101. Previously, it had served in the Vietnam War, flown missions for a federal drug task force, and been chopped up for parts in Nashville, Tennessee, before floating away during a flood. Instead of landing in the junkyard, it got a second lease on life—as an amphibious car. That’s because the helicopter’s new owner was Jeff Bloch, a novelty-car builder and D.C. police officer. Bloch, who had dreamed of making a helicopter racecar for years, received the chopper as a donation and immediately recruited 16 friends and family members to help make it drivable. They mounted the helicopter on the chassis of a mid-’80s Toyota van wagon and added a lightweight rear suspension from…

EVER DREAM OF BECOMING A RADIO personality? While tinkering with an FM transmitter for MP3 players, engineer Denise Lee realized she could boost its range to turn her music into a radio show. “This is the cheapest form of broadcast technology,” she says. Her build lets you share your NPR voice with neighbors, the college quad, or fellow campers—up to about 100 feet away. +TOOLS & MATERIALS • Belkin TuneCast II FM transmitter • Screwdriver • Soldering iron • 70 mm of copper wire • Telescopic antenna • Electrical tape • Hot-glue gun • Wire cutter TIME 30 mins COST $15 DIFFICULTY +INSTRUCTIONS 1/ Open the transmitter’s battery compartment and pry open the seam near the DC input. 2/ Carefully heat the solder at the two points where the…