Safety last: Russian hoverbike is equally amazing and horrifying

[AIRCRAFT]( [Safety last: Russian hoverbike is equally amazing and horrifying]( Aspiring amputees should check out this latest manned multirotor out of Russia. The Hoversurf Scorpion is a motorcycle-styled hoverbike with four high-speed props mounted right at leg-amputation level. And it's already flying high enough to bang the pilot's head on the rafters. [Read more]( [SPECIAL PROMOTION FOR NEW ATLAS READERS]( [Get a Lifetime of Unlimited Mobile Backup for Just $19.99]( Your phone holds a ton of valuable personal information and digital assets, and IDrive is here to make sure your digital life is safe, backed up, and secured with 256-bit AES encryption. This unlimited lifetime mobile backup plan allows you to back up your contacts, photos, videos, calendar events, and more on up to 5 devices. [Read more]( [3D PRINTING]( [3D printing Martian habitats from the ground up]( Building habitats, tools and parts out of local resources would be ideal for the first human colonists of Mars. So researchers from NASA and UCF are investigating how metals could be extracted from the Martian soil, refined, and used as “ink” to 3D print vital components. [Read more]( [AIRCRAFT]( [Flight of the Blackbird: The how, what and why of the incredible SR-71]( Even though it was built at the height of the Cold War and hasn't flown in over 17 years, the SR-71 Blackbird still looks like it fell out of the future. So how was it built, and what was it like to fly this supersonic denizen of the edge of space? [Read more]( [GOOD THINKING]( [Robot taxes and universal basic income: How do we manage our automated future?]( As more jobs are becoming automated, there are calls for everything from a robot tax to universal basic income to deal with the dramatic shift in the underlying structures of labor economies over the next 20 to 50 years. But what do these proposals truly mean and can any be properly implemented? [Read more]( [SPACE]( [How a drone saw SpaceX's latest rocket landing (plus killer new photos)]( ​Three times SpaceX has landed its Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground and three times it has shared video of the event to the world. But as the company continues to show, there is more than one way to skin a 20-story spacecraft. [Read more]( [MEDICAL]( [Fiber optics shine a light on blood clots during surgery]( To counter blood clots, surgeons administer blood thinning drugs throughout a procedure, but knowing when to do so is difficult. By shining light through the patient’s blood, researchers have developed a new system that gives surgeons real-time feedback and alerts them at the first sign of a clot. [Read more]( [AIRCRAFT]( [AW609 tiltrotor climbs towards 2018 certification]( After resuming flight testing last April following a fatal crash, the third AW609 tiltrotor aircraft prototype went through several weeks of ground testing and flight trials in Italy. The aircraft has now been shipped to the US, where icing trials are set to take place through winter. [Read more]( [GOOD THINKING]( [The Pixie tracker: A finer finder?]( ​New Atlas takes a few Pixie trackers out for a spin. The Pixie app uses augmented reality to help you find your missing stuff, but did it work any better than Tile trackers? The short answer is: sort of. [Read more]( [ENERGY]( [Electrified fibers help pull uranium out of seawater]( Uranium reserves may be on the decline, but the oceans contain billions of tons of it, just waiting for us to find a practical way to extract it. To that end, a Stanford team has developed a technique that improves the capacity, rate and reusability of materials that harvest uranium from seawater. [Read more]( [SCIENCE]( [Genetically-engineered hens produce birds of a different feather]( Rare breeds of chickens could soon come from entirely different types of hens. The University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute ​used gene editing techniques to create surrogate hens that grow up to produce eggs with all the genetic information of different breeds. [Read more]( [SMARTWATCHES]( [LG Watch Style vs. Moto 360 2nd gen.]( In this comparison, we pit the second-generation Moto 360 – one of the leading smartwatches when it was released at the end of 2015 – against the new LG Watch Style, one of the first wearables to ship with Android Wear 2.0. If you have the former, should you upgrade to the latter? [Read more]( [BIOLOGY]( [Drones provide birdsong researchers with flying ears]( ​Bioacoustic recording devices can help fill in some of the gaps for ecologists surveying bird populations, particularly when it comes to species that like to stay hidden. Better yet might be bioacoustic recording devices that dangle from drones, according to a new study. [Read more]( [MUSIC]( [Paul Vo working on second wave of his magic Wond]( About 2 years ago, Paul Vo revealed a prototype string sustainer called the Wand that used similar tech to his Vo-96 Acoustic Synth. Named the Wond for its Kickstarter launch, it subsequently shipped to almost 500 musicians. Vo has now announced that he's ready to work on its successor, the Wond II. [Read more]( [LAPTOPS]( [The best alternatives to Adobe Illustrator]( ​Adobe Illustrator is not as well-known as its eponymous cousin Photoshop, but it’s far from a niche application. Here’s a primer on when and why to use Illustrator – and its best alternatives, if you don’t want a monthly bill from Adobe. [Read more]( [MOBILE TECHNOLOGY]( [Snapchat Spectacles, the trendy social media wearable, now for sale online]( Snap Inc. first released its camera-equipped Spectacles last November. Until now, they have only been available through traveling vending machines that appeared in select US cities, but the company has just launched an online ordering option. [Read more]( [TINY HOUSES]( [Escape gives Tradition a nod for latest tiny house]( We usually associate Escape with contemporary tiny house designs, but its latest model may appeal to those who prefer the classic tiny house look. Able to run on or off-the-grid and offering lots of options for interior layout, the Tradition starts at US$53,000. [Read more]( [AUTOMOTIVE]( [Roborace DevBots take to city street circuit in Buenos Aires]( Two Roborace DevBot cars zipped around the Formula E circuit in Buenos Aires at the weekend. The battle between DB1 and DB2 on the city street track on Feb 18 marked the first time two cars have been raced together, though only one driverless racer made it to the finish line. [Read more]( You are receiving this email because you signed up for our daily newsletter at [newatlas.com]( (or [gizmag.com]( before August 2016). [Update profile]( | [Unsubscribe]( Copyright New Atlas © 2017