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Mazda celebrates the Miata's 20th birthday

Hard to believe, but the Mazda Miata is 20 years old. And Mazda didn't let the birthday pass without a party. On July 17, parked in the inner courtyard of Mazda R&D in Irvine, Calif., were examples of every significant Miata and MX-5 Miata ever made.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.

Crucified cassette, Hindi BMW remix CD and other junkyard musical finds

In addition to holiday-themed displays assembled by junkyard employees and the occasional sad, flood-victim Volvo Amazon, I frequently find homemade mix CDs and cassette tapes while prowling through wrecking yards. In fact, it would be possible to go into just about any high-inventory-turnover self-service wrecking yard in North America and come away with several dozen such discs and tapes, if anybody ever felt motivated to do such a thing. I haven't, yet.