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Boeing has received a US patent for a laser-powered fusion-fission jet propulsion system.The patent, US 9,068,562, combines inertial confinement fusion, fission, and a turbine that generates electricity.Boeing claims that there is a silhouette of a turbo fan engine and in the middle of the engine there is a fusion chamber, with a number of very strong lasers focused on a single point. A hohlraum (pellet) containing a mix of deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) is placed at this focal point. The lasers are all turned on at the same instant, creating massive pressure on the pellet, which implodes and causes...

Toyota has been very vocal about its lofty plans for the new Mirai. After severing ties with Tesla in 2014, Toyota has shifted its focus toward fuel cells and away from all-electric cars. On Wednesday, Toyota announced that the Mirai had achieved an EPA-estimated range of 312 miles. That’s the longest range of any zero-emission vehicle on the market today, including electric vehicles. “Toyota realized in the early 90’s that electrification was key to the future of the automobile,” said Toyota’s North America CEO Jim Lentz in a statement “Just as the Prius introduced hybrid-electric vehicles to millions of customers...

Gurr test-driving an early prototype of his Autopia vehicle in 1955.George Clooney may get top billing in his new film, Tomorrowland, but design visionary Gurr is the real star.In his 27 years as a Disney Imagineer, Bob Gurr was known for doing the impossible: He designed a submarine fleet, the cars of Autopia, and the Monorail that soars above the park on a single beam. With the opening of Tomorrowland in 1955, Gurr shaped a vision of the future (1986 to be exact) that still feels out of reach. Six decades after Gurr began creating ride vehicles for the theme...

The patent -- which ensures the design for the Apple Watch cannot be copied by a competitor -- was filed in August of last year, just weeks ahead of its unveiling. The Apple Watch's design is now officially protected by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO on Tuesday issued a design patent on the Apple Watch look and feel. The design patent filing provides precious little information, but includes several sketches showing the device from all angles, including from the top, side and underneath the face where the sensor and charging apparatus sit. Getting a design patent is...

The man who invented the K-Cup coffee pod almost 20 years ago says he regrets doing so, and he can't understand the popularity of the products that critics decry as an environmental catastrophe. John Sylvan worked at Keurig in the 1990s when he devised a simple product that could create a small mug of coffee out of a plastic pod. Originally aiming it at office workers, Sylvan said he thought the product might have some limited appeal to people who would normally go Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts or other coffee chains in the morning, because now they could get a cup...

Do you like internal combustion engines? Thank a few white men. (Jean Lenoir, Nikolaus Otto, Karl Benz, Rudolf Diesel, Gottlieb Daimler, Emil Jellinek, Henry Ford among others.) Are you a fan of flush toilets and indoor plumbing? Thank white males Alexander Cumming, Thomas Twyford, and Isaiah Rogers Toilet paper? Thank Joseph Gayetty, W.M. How about washing machines and dryers? Thank white males Alva Fisher and J. Ross Moore. “When you’ve got your health, you’ve got just about everything” ran the tag-line in a famous Geritol commercial from the 1970s, and the guys we most have reason to be grateful for...

A while back (I think within the past three months) there was a very interesting article posted here about inventions by white men. I have not had any luck finding it through FR search. Does anyone remember it? Does anyone have it? Can anyone post a link to it? Thanks.

Every week CBS News travels America fishing for interesting stories. And, once again, we've hooked a good one. A trout's brain is no bigger than a lentil, yet when it comes to outsmarting fly fishermen, it's enough. Which is why truly obsessive fishermen, like Randy Brown, seek any advantage they can -- like splurging on a $4,000 fishing pole. "It's just a pleasure to fish with. There's just no other rods like these," says Brown. "It's the best stick there is." The rods he's referencing are designed by legendary rod-maker Tom Morgan. If fly fishing is a religion, this is...

The statement “everything that could be invented has been invented” is frequently misattributed to the late-nineteenth-century American patent commissioner Charles Holland Duell. The Economist once credited him with the remark, and sites such as “kool kwotes” still reproduce it. In fact, Duell believed the opposite. “In my opinion,” he wrote at the turn of the century, “all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.” While...

Imagine if clinics in developing countries were equipped with an inexpensive yet durable tool that could help medical personnel identify and diagnose a variety of deadly diseases like Malaria...

US scientists deplore ‘innovation deficit’ By Nuala Moran Scientists in the US remain the best funded in the world, but they say falling federal investment and cuts due to sequestration, coupled with the enormous resources other countries are lavishing on research, are creating an “innovation deficit”.The consequence, say the presidents of more than 200 US universities, will be fewer US scientific and technological breakthroughs, fewer US patents and fewer US start-ups, products and jobs. Investment in research is not inconsistent with deficit reduction, indeed it is vital to it, they said in an open letter to President Barack Obama...

When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery. It’s an agonizing process that doesn't always work--if bleeding hasn't stopped after three minutes of applying direct pressure, the medic must pull out all the gauze and start over again. It’s so painful, “you take the guy’s gun away first,” says former U.S. Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh. Even with this emergency treatment, many soldiers...

You no longer need to be a spy like James Bond to get your hands on an amphibious car. David March has designed the world’s fastest Jeep-style vehicle that can be driven straight from the land into the water and goes from a car to a boat in just 15 seconds. Called the Panther, the vehicle can reach water speeds of up to 45 mph—almost as fast as an average speedboat—and is fitted with a custom-made 3.7 liter V6 engine, fiberglass hull and lightweight chromoly steel chassis. …

It looks and plays like a piano, but it sounds like a string quartet — and it took 500 years before anyone built it. Leonardo da Vinci’s flight of fancy in designing a hammerless piano, called a “viola organista,” has come to life half a millenium after da Vinci designed it, thanks to a Polish concert pianist and musical engineer. It couldn’t have sounded any better in da Vinci’s head (via Brad Thor and Dan Gainor): A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up...

Alfredo Moser's invention is lighting up the world. In 2002, the Brazilian mechanic had a light-bulb moment and came up with a way of illuminating his house during the day without electricity - using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. In the last two years his innovation has spread throughout the world. It is expected to be in one million homes by early next year. So how does it work? Simple refraction of sunlight, explains Moser, as he fills an empty two-litre plastic bottle. "Add two capfuls of bleach to protect the...

Doug Engelbart, who has died aged 88, will be remembered as the man who in 1963 invented the computer mouse, but that was incidental to his vision of computers augmenting the human intellect and increasing our "collective IQ". While he became a much-loved and oft-lauded Silicon Valley celebrity, his most visionary ideas were neglected and went unfunded.

MAN REPLACED 90 PERCENT OF HIS MEALS WITH DRINK MIXTURE KITCHEN DAILY 6/17/13 The 24-year-old, who has difficulty finding time to shop and cook as a software engineer in Atlanta, researched what nutrients his body actually needed to get from food. He then created Soylent, which, according to Fox News, is a "drink mixture of vitamins and minerals which includes calcium, potassium, zinc, vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K." Rhinehart began swapping his daily meals for his Soylent formula. We caught up with Rhinehart to talk about his new diet.

The idea of a flying car has fascinated dreamers and aviation geeks alike since humans first got off the ground with powered flight. The concept has obvious advantages: the "go anywhere, anytime" freedom of an automobile without any of the traffic congestion that terrestrial drivers face on a daily basis. Featured in movies like Back to the Future and Blade Runner, this mode of transportation has been restricted to the realm of science-fiction due to the complexity of the drivetrain required and the training that would be needed to operate such a vehicle. Now, a company called Terrafugia has put...

The Connecticut state Senate recently passed a bill striking Orville and Wilbur Wright from history, and assigning credit for the first powered flight to Gustave Whitehead instead. Aviation historian John Brown found photographic evidence in March that Whitehead made a powered flight over Connecticut in 1901, "two years, four months, and three days before the Wright brothers." The relevant section of House Bill 6671 reads, "The Governor shall proclaim a date certain in each year as Powered Flight Day to honor the first powered flight by [the Wright brothers] Gustave Whitehead and to commemorate the Connecticut aviation and aerospace industry."...

Domino’s Pizza has hired a creative agency called T + Biscuits to test the feasibility of octocopter drones that deliver a hot, delicious pizza to your doorstep. Heavily branded as the DomiCopter, the current prototype can deliver two, large pizzas in about ten minutes within a four mile radius of the store. While future versions could hypothetically use GPS coordinates to deliver the pie, the existing model is piloted from the ground by someone experienced in drone flight. Other names previously batted around for the DomiCopter included the Pepperdroney and the Flyin’ Hawaiian. The DomiCopter has eight spinning blades and...