Popular Science

Like a cowboy loosely holding the reins, Larry Weatherman steers up Deer Creek Road with his left hand on the wheel, his right arm ready at his side. His upper body rocks with the motion of the pickup as he navigates the dirt road’s gauntlet of potholes and rocks. Since his retirement from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department in 2000, Weatherman has adopted the bushy white mustache and Stetson of a gentleman rancher.

Financial institutions aren't the only banks hurting these days. Brain banks—repositories for donated brains—are running low on fresh noggins for research, said a group of scientists from various institutions in the United Kingdom this week. Get past the ewww factor (remember nasty Halloween games and that creep Frankenstein?), and fresh brains are essential for researching neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer's, autism, Parkinson's, and schizophrenia.

Living in a New York apartment, I barely have room for two stereo speakers – let alone 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 surround-sound rigs. So I may not be the ideal person for Dolby’s new Dolby Prologic IIz setup, which features up to 10 speakers, with two up in the air.

Just a year ago, Casio introduced its first high-speed camera, the Best of What’s New-winning EX-F1. The size of a small SLR, that camera captures up to 60 full-res photos per second. The rate is cut to 30 per second in Casio’s two newest high-speed models, but the size is also cut as low as 0.64 inches thick for the model EX-FS10 (and just an inch for the companion EX-FC100). They also capture high-speed video at up to 1000 fps at low resolution, or up to 720p high-def at a standard 30fps.

For years, pocket-sized projectors were talked about but not seen—like a mythical or at least very rare, endangered species. Now, it seems, they are multiplying like rabbits.

Gradually, OLED TVs are getting to sizes that seem fitting for actual TVs. Last year, Sony brought its 11-inch screen to the US. And today, Samsung is expected to announce the availability of its 14.1-inch diagonal, 2.63mm-thick screen (shown here).

Aside from a few more inches, the Samsung set offers many technical advances over the now old-looking Sony. For starters, it's an actual HDTV, with a resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. (The Sony is a sub-HD resolution of 960 x 540.) It's also based on technology that shows a lot more promise for mass production and lower prices.

While all consumer electronics items have large ecological footprints, plasma TVs have long had the distinction of being size XXL. But Panasonic is out to change that with a new line of ultra-efficient (and ultra-thin) panels called NeoPDP.

The technology appears this summer in the Z1, a 54-inch (diagonal) screen measuring about one inch thick. It's also equipped with a wireless receiver that can pick up video beamed from across a room.

Since it debuted half a century ago, 3D cinema has mainly been a gimmick. To date, perhaps my favorite of the all these movies is a short horror film farce by the Three Stooges, because it fully embraces the silliness of 3D, using every gag imaginable, with no pretensions of it being an art form.

3-D started its comeback at CES about two years ago when Samsung first showed capable rear projection TVs. At the time, 3D was just for video games, with only the vague promise that movies would be coming. On Wednesday in Vegas, Panasonic announced plans to push for technical standards that could show up in TVs and Blu-ray discs and players in less than two years.

Just as production of Polaroid's beloved instant film grinds to a halt, the company is announcing the anticipated digital version of the original "instant camera". Debuting in spring 2009 for $199.99, the PoGo Instant Digital Camera combines Polaroid's 2008 breakthrough pocket printer with a digital camera.

The earliest photos in my family albums are all old-school Polaroid, and I have fond memories of watching images of birthday parties and impromptu portraits emerge on the film. So my first thought about the PoGo was: can a digital camera possibly capture this mysterious magic?

OQO has been pushing the bounds of what you can fit into your palm for a few years. Long before netbooks were even a twinkle in Intel's eye, the company was making tiny, full-service computers. But with the explosion of said netbooks, plus ever-smarter smartphones, is there still a place for this Lilliputian, high-power, high-priced computer? Hard to say, but the company isn't just sitting back to see what happens.

We at PopSci love Sonos, the wireless music streaming system that has won two Best of What’s New awards over the years. And since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Linksys division of Cisco seems to love Sonos too. They’ve come out with their own version of the product--with a few features that may be better.

Apparently, Rupert Till, an expert in acoustics and music technology at Huddersfield University in northern England, knows where to find a good party. Till took a second look, or rather, a second hear, at the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge and discovered that its huge stone slabs reflected sound perfectly, making the site the perfect place to listen to repetitive, trance-like music.