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Come along with us as we explore this year's New York International Auto Show—and don't miss Audi's spectacular trolling of its German rivals. (video link)

This year's New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) is currently underway at the Jacob H. Javits Center in Manhattan, and in recent years New York has become an increasingly important event for the auto industry. NYIAS is almost at the point of rivaling Detroit as the premiere US show. We spent a couple of days pounding the floors to find out what's new and interesting, and we've already reported on some of the more significant debuts—like Mazda's MX-5 RF and Porsche's 718 Boxster. There are simply too many noteworthy vehicles and technologies on display these days to give the fuller review treatment to all, so what follows is our "best of the rest," in alphabetical order, because we don't want to play favorites.

A is for Acura, and that means the Acura NSX GT3. This is a racing version of the company's new hybrid supercar, built on the same production line in Marysville, Ohio. It's shorn of the road car's hybrid system, however. We hope to see some of these competing in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship next year.

Google Fiber Phone. Phone handset not included.

Google Fiber's phone service is official. Secret invitations to the phone service leaked back in January, but today Google announced the addition of optional phone service for Google Fiber residential customers. The addition of phone service allows Google Fiber to finally compete with "Triple Play" home offerings, which bundle Internet, TV, and phone service from a single company.

In addition to the regular Google Fiber bill, "Fiber Phone" costs $10 per month for unlimited local and nationwide calling. For international calls, the service uses Google Voice's international rates. The actual hardware you receive from Google won't be a phone, it's a VOIP phone box that will bridge your new-school fiber connection with an old-school landline phone.

The service is clearly an offshoot of Google Voice/Project Fi and carries over most of that feature set. You get a "cloud based" phone number that you can forward to any phone with spam filtering, call screening, and do-not-disturb features. There's a voicemail system with speech-to-text transcription, which we'd imagine requires an app or website of some kind. There's also call waiting, caller ID, and, critically, 911 access.

This year it looks like Porsche's 919 Hybrid will once more be the car to beat. (credit: Porsche)

2016's most technologically exciting racing cars have revved up in Europe this month. Of course, we're referring to the hybrid prototypes from Audi, Porsche, and Toyota that will compete in this year's World Endurance Championship. It's no secret that we're gigantic fans of the WEC here at Ars. And we especially love that these carbon fiber testbeds use the crucible of long-distance racing to develop new technology that has a direct impact on the cars we drive on the roads.

The cars were revealed to the world in the days leading up to the WEC's Prologue test at the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France, which was held on March 25 to 26. There have been a few changes compared to last year's cars, and these tweaks are aimed at making the hybrids even more efficient than 2015. (Bear with us, this may get a little complicated to explain.)

Each car is allowed up to two hybrid systems in addition to their internal combustion engine. These can be motor-generator units that harvest and then deploy kinetic energy to the front or rear wheels, but other systems are also allowed (i.e. a motor-generator unit connected to an engine's turbocharger). Gasoline and diesel engines are allowed, and they can be naturally aspirated or turbocharged.

(credit: Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier)

With patches of stem cells on their broken spinal cords, partially paralyzed rats once again reached out and grabbed distant treats, researchers report in Nature Medicine.

While previous studies have shown progress in regenerating certain types of nerve cells in injured spinal cords, the study is the first to coax the regrowth of a specific set of nerve cells, called corticospinal axons. These bundles of biological wiring carry signals from the brain to the spinal cord and are critical for voluntary movement. In the study, researchers were able to use stem cells from rats and humans to mend the injured rodents.

“The corticospinal projection is the most important motor system in humans,” senior author Mark Tuszynski at the University of California, San Diego said. “It has not been successfully regenerated before. Many have tried, many have failed—including us, in previous efforts.”

(credit: Perspecsys Photos)

US government officials from the FBI director down have said repeatedly that the FBI-Apple legal brouhaha was just about a single phone—the seized iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. And just last week, James Comey, the FBI director, said his fight with Apple wasn't about setting precedent; rather, it was about battling terrorism.

But it seems that the storyline has changed.

The Justice Department now says it will not hesitate to invoke the precedent it won in its iPhone unlocking case. The authorities had obtained a court order weeks ago ordering Apple to write code to help the authorities unlock Farook's phone, all in hopes that data on it could stop another terror attack or shed light on the one that killed 14 people in San Bernardino in December. On Monday, however, the authorities said they didn't need Apple's help, asking the judge presiding over the case to withdraw the order because they had cracked the phone and obtained the desired information, all with the help of an "outside" party.