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Formula E—the world's first fully electric racing series—recently wrapped its second season with a close championship fight in London. Ahead of the start of the third season later this year, the series has just unveiled a revised version of the Spark-Renault SRT_01 cars that each of the 10 teams will race in cities around the globe.

In fact, from the wheels back, the cars are basically the same; the big change is a striking new front wing, meant to make the car look more aggressive:

"I like the look of the new front wing—it looks a little bit more futuristic, and from inside the car you can see the top part of the wing, so visually for the driver there is also a small change," said Sebastian Buemi, the Swiss driver and reigning Formula E champion. "We want Formula E to look different and be different, and the new wing is a good way of showing that. I don’t think it will make too big of an impact on aero which isn’t in the ethos of this championship—but it’s a good way to show visual development heading to Hong Kong for the start of season three."

NASA's Orion spacecraft may first carry crew into space in 2023. (credit: NASA)

At the request of Congress, the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office reviews the finances and management of federal programs, and this week it released a study critical of NASA’s crew capsule, Orion. Most worryingly, the 56-page report (PDF) regularly draws parallels between the Orion program and another large NASA project, the James Webb Space Telescope. The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is notorious for ballooning from a 10-year, $500 million project to a 20-year, $8.8 billion (£6.7 billion) instrument that may finally launch in 2018.

Although Orion has not yet experienced such dramatic increases in costs, the spacecraft is now into its second decade of development. NASA estimates that it will spend a total of $16 billion (£12 billion) to ready Orion for its first crewed flight in April 2023. However, the GAO review, signed by Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Cristina T. Chaplain, did not find these numbers to be reliable.

The federal auditing agency based this conclusion on the fact that only a handful of NASA’s methods for estimating costs and schedule were consistent with “best practices.” Moreover, the GAO found, in making a number of its estimates, NASA appears to be relying too heavily on data analysis from the primary contractor for Orion, Lockheed Martin. In regard to Orion’s cost and schedule estimates, then, the GAO report concludes, “They do not fully reflect the characteristics of quality cost or schedule estimates and neither estimate can be considered reliable.”

(credit: quinn norton)

Sorry, kids. You may be doing your best at jamming your finger up your nose, digging tirelessly. But it seems scientists are the ones that have struck gold.

Sifting through the bacteria that inhabit our cavernous snouts, researchers came up with one that produces a new antibiotic—an antibiotic unlike any other bacteria-busting drugs known to modern medicine. That prized chemical nugget can kill off Staphylococcus aureus strains, including the dastardly methicillin resistant kind called MRSA, plus other drug-resistant foes. Though it's still unclear how exactly the new drug slays nasal rivals, scientists are hopeful that the compound will be useful in treating deadly MRSA infections and even clearing out S. aureus from the nose before it has a chance to cause an infection.

“Nobody has found something like this before,” Bernhard Krismer, a bacteriologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and a lead scientist for the research, said in a press briefing. The drug, along with its bacterial maker, have “a huge impact on the composition of the microbiota,” Krismer added. The full results of the nasal excavation appear in the July 28 issue of Nature.

It happens to the best of us. After looking closely at a bank statement or cable bill, suddenly a small, unrecognizable charge appears. Fine print sleuthing soon provides the answer—somehow, you accidentally signed up for a service. Whether it was an unnoticed pre-marked checkbox or an offhanded verbal agreement at the end of a long phone call, now a charge arrives each month because naturally the promotion has ended. If the possibility of a refund exists, it’ll be found at the end of 45 minutes of holding music or a week’s worth of angry e-mails.

Everyone has been there. So in 2010, London-based UX designer Harry Brignull decided he’d document it. Brignull’s website, darkpatterns.org, offers plenty of examples of deliberately confusing or deceptive user interfaces. These dark patterns trick unsuspecting users into a gamut of actions: setting up recurring payments, purchasing items surreptitiously added to a shopping cart, or spamming all contacts through prechecked forms on Facebook games.

Dark patterns aren’t limited to the Web, either. The Columbia House mail-order music club of the '80s and '90s famously charged users exorbitant rates for music they didn’t choose if they forgot to specify what they wanted. In fact, negative-option billing began as early as 1927, when a book club decided to bill members in advance and ship a book to anyone who didn’t specifically decline. Another common offline example? Some credit card statements boast a 0 percent balance transfer but don’t make it clear that the percentage will shoot up to a ridiculously high number unless a reader navigates a long agreement in tiny print.