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Perfection often requires iteration. Even after releasing a product, designers, programmers, and engineers will continue to reinvent subsequent generations. But sometimes they get it right the first time. These items [...]

Like people, cars die. But they won't be buried. U.S. scrappers recycle some 13 million autos each year. Their journey begins at salvage yards, where massive machinery reduces mountains of [...]

Hate and harassment flourish in online comment sections. To keep these digital forums open, Jigsaw--a division of Google's parent company, Alphabet--built Perspective, a machine-learning system that scores readers' written thoughts [...]

WHEN YOU REALLY NEED TO NAVIGATE THROUGH DARKNESS YOUR PHONE'S WIMPY FLASHLIGHT JUST WONT CUT IT. THE REAL DEAL WILL LAST LONGER AND SHINE BRIGHTER. For charging The Coast Polysteel [...]

COVID-19 IS POISED TO enter the history books as a catastrophic pandemic. While combating a new disease is difficult, we can't blame this outbreak's losses on the pathogen's novelty alone. [...]

YOU TYPE ALL DAY, BUT A GOOD PEN OFFERS A CONNECTION TO THE WRITTEN WORD THAT YOUR KEYBOARD LACKS. THESE EIGHT HAVE YOU COVERED FOR VARIOUS TASKS. For every day [...]

MEASURED EDGE TO EDGE, the universe as we know it stretches some 93 billion light-years across. That unfathomable expanse contains 2 trillion galaxies, each shining with millions of stars and [...]

IN THE 58 YEARS SINCE ALAN Shepard became the first American to orbit Earth, NASA has deemed just one watch tough enough to wear in open space. The Omega Speedmaster [...]

ON THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII, A FUNGUS CALLED CERATOCYSTIS is murdering 'ohi'a trees--at least i million in the past eight years. Local forest experts had no idea how to [...]

ON MARCH 18, 2018, ELAINE HERZBERG, 49, WAS crossing a road in Tempe, Arizona, when a Volvo SUV traveling at 39 miles per hour hit and killed her. Although she [...]

PROFESSIONAL CAVING MEANS ENTERING A WORLD MORE DANGEROUS THAN ANY WELL-TROD TOURIST CAVERN. THIS BURLY GEAR WILL KEEP YOU SAFE AS YOU VENTURE INTO THE DARK. 1 Headgear The tough [...]

THE WORLD'S PRICIEST COFFEE BEANS MAKE A LONG TRIP FROM PANAMA'S MOUNTAINS TO YOUR MUG. TREAT THEM-OR YOUR REGULAR DAILY BLEND-WITH RESPECT BY ASSEMBLING A WELL-ENGINEERED BREWING KIT Beans Klatch [...]

THE BIG BANG WASN'T A SOLITARY EXPLOSION THAT ended in a minute: It was a long, simmering process that, over millennia, led to the birth of the universe as we [...]

SLEEPING BY YOUR SMARTPHONE PROBABLY ISN'T HELPING YOU get solid shut-eye--notifications can be so tempting. Consider charging your device far from your pillow and placing this simple analog alarm clock [...]

MOST LIGHTNING JUST bounces around within its cloud of origin. But the rogue charges that escape are enough to dazzle observers, inspire awe and fear (which is fair--the zaps do [...]

WHEN YOU'RE CLIMBING A STEEP, rocky trail on the side of a mountain, a bulky pack catching on branches or scraping against boulders will slow your ascent. Lightweight, space-saving camping [...]

Changing lanes is simple for human drivers. Not so for autonomous cars. Instead of gray matter and muscle memory, self-driving vehicles make decisions using programming, artificial intelligence, and onboard perception [...]

YOU CAN PILOT THE PARROT MAMBO drone with boring, old manual controls, but unlike other drones, this quadcopter can carry out missions you design in advance. Programming it helps pint-size [...]

STANDING ON YOUR PEDALS AND HUFFING and puffing up a hill is totally unnecessary in the lithium-ion era. E-bikes--basically standard two-wheelers with motors and batteries squirreled away in their frames--put [...]

Byline: Rob Verger {'id':'19821','type':'widget','widget':'video','ratio':'16by9','autostart':'1'} Ganhuyag Chuluun Hutagt, the former vice minister of finance of Mongolia, doesn't have a mailing address for his home in Ulaanbaatar, the country's capital. Instead, he [...]

KOLIN POWICK, CLIMBING CATEGORY DIRECTOR AT BLACK DIAMOND EQUIPMENT A portaledge is like a cot designed to hang off a cliff thousands of feet above the ground. Rock climbers sleep [...]

DESPITE GRAVITY'S EFFORTS TO KEEP HUMANS GROUNDED, the lure of exploring and conquering massive walls draws climbers upward. A little training and the right gear go a long way toward [...]

OCEANS COVER ROUGHLY 70 PERCENT OF THE PLANET, AND that water teems with life. Exploring this other world requires special equipment. You can rent the big stuff like an air [...]

YOU CAN MEASURE BAMBOO'S GROWTH SPURTS IN FEET PER day. That rapid expansion makes it a sustainable substitute for the less-earth-friendly materials such as the plastic, metal, and wood we [...]

YOUR MONTHLY UTILITY BILLS GIVE A BIG-PICTURE LOOK AT the resources your home drinks up. They won't tell you, though, that a leaky toilet is hemorrhaging water or your 'sleeping' [...]

YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO WEAR THAT PAIR OF BLOWNout Converse All Stars to amble anywhere farther than the corner store. For long treks, the proper footwear will support your [...]

THERE'S AN IRONY AT THE HEART OF the Swiss Federal Railways' famously precise train-station clocks: Each second hand takes just 58.5 ticks to move around the dial. When the paddle-shaped [...]

A COOL BREEZE CAN INSTANTLY take the edge off a sweaty day. Indoors, a fan is a perfect substitute--throw a bowl of ice in front of it, and you've got [...]

SUPERCELL THUNDERSTORMS ARE GIANT TEMPESTS with powerful rotating updrafts at their cores--and one out of every four or five spawn tornadoes. Most of these twisters are little, but some can [...]

FOR MOST OF US, AN ELABORATE DOOMSDAY BUNKER IS OVERKILL. But, when facing down a tornado, hurricane, blizzard, or whatever Mother Nature flings at you, a little preparation can save [...]

Byline: Rob Verger It's late June, but it's chilly in Asella, Ethiopia--the city is higher in altitude than Denver--and the patients in the hospital are wrapped in blankets. Dr. Mulu [...]

Byline: Rob Verger In a simple home in the village of Mosebo, Ethiopia--an earthen floor and walls made of wood and mud--a woman sat on a mattress on the floor [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Any interest in a free Ferrari? Michael Flynn, an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center, wants to give you one. But there's a catch: You need to [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kigali, Rwanda-The faces of those killed 20 years ago during Rwanda's genocide are captured in photographs on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. Over a period [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Washington, D.C.--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic principals leave a news conference last week in which they pushed for an increase in the nation's minimum [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Killeen, Texas-Melissa Phillips and others walk in a memorial for the victims of a shooting at Fort Hood earlier this month. On April 2, Specialist Ivan A. [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Herat, Afghanistan-Women lined up to vote in Afghanistan's presidential election on April 5. Turnout was high--about 7 million people participated--and although some polling stations were targeted and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Cairo-An Egyptian soldier, armed with rubber bullets, takes aim at one of the protesters demonstrating against the sentencing of 529 people to death in Minya for taking [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Oso, Wash.-A rescuer wades into the floodwaters on Route 530 a week after a devastating mudslide engulfed an entire community. More than 20 people were killed, and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Pohang, South Korea-South Korean landing craft run a gantlet of fire and smoke during military exercises with the U.S. Monday. North Korea commenced its own drill that [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Moscow-Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to an attentive military audience at the Kremlin. On Monday he announced he would pull some Russian troops away from the Ukrainian [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Moscow-Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses the Interior Ministry March 21 after signing legislation that absorbed Crimea into the USSR. Earlier in the week, in an emotional and [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-After weeks of uncertainty, Monday brought a grim announcement from the prime minister of Malaysia: Flight MH370, which disappeared on March 8, terminated 'in the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kunduz province, Afghanistan-This group campaigns for Ashraf Ghani, a frontrunner in the Afghan presidential election scheduled for April 5. He'll going up against Abdullah Abdullah, Zalmai Rassoul, [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Amsterdam-Shadowed by Secret Servicemen President Barack Obama arrives at Schiphol Airport to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague earlier this week. The crisis over the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Caracas, Venezuela-A protester in the capital runs to dispose of a gas canister in the ongoing battle between demonstrators and security forces. On Monday, a National Guard [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Aleppo, Syria-This devastating scene in the al-Sukari district is the result of barrel bombs deployed by forces aligned with the Syrian government, according to opposition forces. Earlier [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-A woman in the Malaysian capital leaves a note in honor of the 239 people aboard Flight MH370, which disappeared from radar screens on the [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Goncharovskoye, Ukraine-An old-fashioned Soviet-style 97 percent of Crimeans who went to the polls Sunday voted to become part of Russia, and the international response was swift: Both [...]

Byline: Rob Verger Putrajaya, Malaysia-Relatives of one of the 239 people on board the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 await word in a hotel room March 10. The Boeing 777 [...]