Hawaiian Island Dissolving From Within

Plan your island getaway now: In time, the mountainous tropical paradise of Oahu will erode, according to new research, with the biggest losses coming from within the island itself.

To be accurate, you do have some time to book that vacation before Hawaii's Oahu flattens from an island into a low-lying seamount. Researchers writing in the upcoming February 15 issue of the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta estimate that the volcanic island will continue to grow, thanks to plate tectonics, for another 75,000 to 1.75 million years. After that, however, the forces working to eat away at Oahu from the inside out will begin to triumph.

Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah investigated the forces that add and subtract material from Oahu. The island offers an ideal place to conduct such a study, the researchers said, as it consists of one kind of rock that is exposed to very different levels of precipitation. Various regions in Oahu can record between 2 and 23 feet (0.6 to 7 meters) of precipitation a year, depending on the local climate. 

The researchers measured solids dissolved in both surface and groundwater from 45 streams and 30 springs and wells around the island, adding those new measurements to previously reported data, for a total of 170 water samples scattered across Oahu.

Using that data, scientists calculated the mass Oahu loses each year. Although one might expect rain to carry away most of the soil in such a wet climate, underground freshwater springs actually removed the bulk of the mineral material from Oahu, the researchers found.

"More material is dissolving from those islands than what is being carried off through erosion," study researcher Steve Nelson, a Brigham Young University geologist, said in a statement.

In fact, groundwater carried between three and 12 times as much dissolved solids compared to surface water, the researchers report.

Oahu is made up of the remnants of two collapsed shield volcanoes, the kind known for burping out thick, oozy lava that hardens into new land. One volcano, Waianae, was active from about 4 to 2.6 million years ago; the other, Koolau, developed later.

Today, Oahu grows not because of volcanism, but from geologic uplift. As the younger Hawaiian Islands push the Pacific tectonic plate downward, nearby Oahu "pops up," as if on a seesaw. That uplift pushes Oahu's landforms upward at a rate of 0.2 feet (0.06 m) per thousand years, enough (for now) to compensate for the losses caused by groundwater carrying away the island's mass.

Researchers hope that the same methods they used on Oahu can help clarify how other tropical islands change in response to different climate conditions.

College student's turtle project takes dark twist

Clemson University student Nathan Weaver set out to determine how to help turtles cross the road. He ended up getting a glimpse into the dark souls of some humans.

Weaver put a realistic rubber turtle in the middle of a lane on a busy road near campus. Then he got out of the way and watched over the next hour as seven drivers swerved and deliberately ran over the animal. Several more apparently tried to hit it but missed.

"I've heard of people and from friends who knew people that ran over turtles. But to see it out here like this was a bit shocking," said Weaver, a 22-year-old senior in Clemson's School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Sciences.

To seasoned researchers, the practice wasn't surprising.

The number of box turtles is in slow decline, and one big reason is that many wind up as roadkill while crossing the asphalt, a slow-and-steady trip that can take several minutes.

Sometimes humans feel a need to prove they are the dominant species on this planet by taking a two-ton metal vehicle and squishing a defenseless creature under the tires, said Hal Herzog, a Western Carolina University psychology professor.

"They aren't thinking, really. It is not something people think about. It just seems fun at the time," Herzog said. "It is the dark side of human nature."

Herzog asked a class of about 110 students getting ready to take a final whether they had intentionally run over a turtle, or been in a car with someone who did. Thirty-four students raised their hands, about two-thirds of them male, said Herzog, author of a book about humans' relationships with animals, called "Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat."

Weaver, who became interested in animals and conservation through the Boy Scouts and TV's "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, wants to figure out the best way to get turtles safely across the road and keep the population from dwindling further.

Among the possible solutions: turtle underpasses or an education campaign aimed at teenagers on why drivers shouldn't mow turtles down.

The first time Weaver went out to collect data on turtles, he chose a spot down the road from a big apartment complex that caters to students. He counted 267 vehicles that passed by, seven of them intentionally hitting his rubber reptile.

He went back out about a week later, choosing a road in a more residential area. He followed the same procedure, putting the fake turtle in the middle of the lane, facing the far side of the road, as if it was early in its journey across. The second of the 50 cars to pass by that day swerved over the center line, its right tires pulverizing the plastic shell.

"Wow! That didn't take long," Weaver said.

Other cars during the hour missed the turtle. But right after his observation period was up, before Weaver could retrieve the model, another car moved to the right to hit the animal as he stood less than 20 feet away.

"One hit in 50 cars is pretty significant when you consider it might take a turtle 10 minutes to cross the road," Weaver said.

Running over turtles even has a place in Southern lore.

In South Carolina author Pat Conroy's semi-autobiographical novel "The Great Santini," a fighter-pilot father squishes turtles during a late-night drive when he thinks his wife and kids are asleep. His wife confronts him, saying: "It takes a mighty brave man to run over turtles."

The father denies it at first, then claims he hits them because they are a road hazard. "It's my only sport when I'm traveling," he says. "My only hobby."

That hobby has been costly to turtles.

It takes a turtle seven or eight years to become mature enough to reproduce, and in that time, it might make several trips across the road to get from one pond to another, looking for food or a place to lay eggs. A female turtle that lives 50 years might lay over 100 eggs, but just two or three are likely to survive to reproduce, said Weaver's professor, Rob Baldwin.

Snakes also get run over deliberately. Baldwin wishes that weren't the case, but he understands, considering the widespread fear and loathing of snakes. But why anyone would want to run over turtles is a mystery to the professor.

"They seem so helpless and cute," he said. "I want to stop and help them. My kids want to stop and help them. My wife will stop and help turtles no matter how much traffic there is on the road. I can't understand the idea why you would swerve to hit something so helpless as a turtle."

First 'Alien Earth' Will Be Found in 2013, Experts Say

The first truly Earth-like alien planet is likely to be spotted next year, an epic discovery that would cause humanity to reassess its place in the universe.

While astronomers have found a number of exoplanets over the last few years that share one or two key traits with our own world — such as size or inferred surface temperature — they have yet to bag a bona fide "alien Earth." But that should change in 2013, scientists say.

"I'm very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year," said Abel Mendez, who runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Planets piling up

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995. Since they, they've spotted more than 800 worlds beyond our own solar system, and many more candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations.

NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope, for example, has flagged more than 2,300 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. Only 100 or so have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists estimate that at least 80 percent will end up being the real deal.

The first exoplanet finds were scorching-hot Jupiter-like worlds that orbit close to their parent stars, because they were the easiest to detect. But over time, new instruments came online and planet hunters honed their techniques, enabling the discovery of smaller and more distantly orbiting planets — places more like Earth.

Last December, for instance, Kepler found a planet 2.4 times larger than Earth orbiting in its star'shabitable zone — that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, can exist.

The Kepler team and other research groups have detected several other worlds like that one (which is known as Kepler-22b), bringing the current tally of potentially habitable exoplanets to nine byMendez' reckoning.

Zeroing in on Earth's twin

None of the worlds in Mendez' Habitable Exoplanets Catalog are small enough to be true Earth twins. The handful of Earth-size planets spotted to date all orbit too close to their stars to be suitable for life. 

But it's only a matter of time before a small, rocky planet is spotted in the habitable zone — and Mendez isn't the only researcher who thinks that time is coming soon.

"The first planet with a measured size, orbit and incident stellar flux that is suitable for life is likely to be announced in 2013," said Geoff Marcy, a veteran planet hunter at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Kepler team.

Mendez and Marcy both think this watershed find will be made by Kepler, which spots planets by flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler needs to witness three of these"transits" to detect a planet, so its early discoveries were tilted toward close-orbiting worlds (which transit more frequently). But over time, the telescope has been spotting more and more distantly orbiting planets — including some in the habitable zone.

An instrument called HARPS (short for High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) is also a top contender, having already spotted a number of potentially habitable worlds. HARPS, which sits on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, allows researchers to detect the tiny gravitational wobbles that orbiting planets induce in their parent stars.

"HARPS should be able to find the most interesting and closer Earth twins," Mendez told SPACE.com via email, noting that many Kepler planets are too far away to characterize in detail. "A combination of its sensitivity and long-term observations is now paying off."

And there are probably many alien Earths out there to be found in our Milky Way galaxy, researchers say.

"Estimating carefully, there are 200 billion stars that host at least 50 billion planets, if not more," Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, told SPACE.com via email.

"Assuming that 1:10,000 are similar to the Earth would give us 5,000,000 such planets," added Tuomi, who led teams reporting the discovery of several potentially habitable planet candidates this year, including an exoplanet orbiting the star Tau Ceti just 11.9 light-years from Earth. "So I would say we are talking about at least thousands of such planets."

What it would mean

Whenever the first Earth twin is confirmed, the discovery will likely have a profound effect on humanity.

"We humans will look up into the night sky, much as we gaze across a large ocean," Marcy told SPACE.com via email. "We will know that the cosmic ocean contains islands and continents by the billions, able to support both primitive life and entire civilizations."

Marcy hopes such a find will prod our species to take its first real steps beyond its native solar system.

"Humanity will close its collective eyes, and set sail for Alpha Centauri," Marcy said, referring to the closest star system to our own, where an Earth-size planet was discovered earlier this year.

"The small steps for humanity will be a giant leap for our species. Sending robotic probes to the nearest stars will constitute the greatest adventure we Homo sapiens have ever attempted," Marcy added. "This massive undertaking will require the cooperation and contribution from all major nations around world. In so doing, we will take our first tentative steps into the cosmic ocean and enhance our shared sense of purpose on this terrestrial shore."

Cameras for every personality

Face it: Even at home, we often find ourselves lazily reaching for the smartphone to capture moments for posterity, and we rationalize it by telling ourselves that our hastily taken shots look "good enough."

Deep down, we know that they don't, though, which is why we'll be asking for a higher-quality camera this holiday season. If cell-phone photography is bumming you out too, we encourage you to add one of the eight impressive cameras below to your wish list.

For the Eternally Nostalgic Polaroid Z2300

Amazingly, Polaroid is still chugging along. With the Z2300, the storied company's patented technology has been freed from the clunky, black-plastic camera design prison. Still, you'll get a nostalgic thrill whenever the Z2300 goes old-school and spits out a 2x3 photograph—which it accomplishes in under a minute using the same technology found in many printers. If you insist on staying in the 21st century, the image can also be stored digitally on an SD card. $159

For Facebook Oversharers(Photo: courtesy of Samsung)
Samsung Galaxy

This offbeat gizmo combines a 16-megapixel, ultrazoom camera with Android 3G Internet connectivity—a gearhead way to say that it allows you to shoot, edit, and share your images with the tap of a finger. The Galaxy makes it a breeze to add Instagram filters and other social-media bells and whistles before you push pictures up to the cloud. When you're not feeling the shot, check your e-mail or play Fruit Ninja instead.

$500, optional AT&T data plan


For Shutterbugs Into Leather(Photo: courtesy of Fujifilm)
Fujifilm XF1

It's the Usain Bolt of the camera world, with a swift .55-second startup time and .15-second focus speed. But we love this compact point-and-shoot bad boy because it wears more leather than David Lee Roth circa 1983. Available in tan, red, and black, the XF1 gets bonus points for its retractable manual zoom and its 12-megapixel sensor, each as impressive as a vintage Diamond Dave leg kick.
$499.95


For the Jittery-Handed(Photo: courtesy of Lytro)
Lytro Light-Field Camera

Featuring something called light-field photography, this camera lets you take a photo and focus the image after it's shot. This means there'll be no more worrying about autofocus and shutter lag, freeing your mind to think about more important things, such as what the hell to shoot.
Starts at $399








For Weather Channel Addicts(Photo: courtesy of Pentax)
Pentax K-30

Completely weather-sealed, this DSLR is man enough to hack being dunked in water, buried in dust, and exposed to extreme temperatures. This means you can bring it along on scuba dives, snake hunts, and ski trips, or just simple strolls in the rain. Rest assured, it also has the guts (i.e., a 16-megapixel CMOS image sensor and 1080p HD video capture at a rate of 30 frames per second) to make its competitors look like sissy cameras.
$849.94

For Richard Avedon Wannabes(Photo: courtesy of Sony)
Sony RX1

The pro: The newest Cyber-shot is the world's first fixed-lens digital camera to sport a full-frame 35mm-format. Specifically, it has a Carl Zeiss lens and ISO range of 100 to 25600, up to 5-fps (frames per second) continuous shooting speed, and 14-bit RAW image-data recording. Translation: It's professional-grade. Did we mention it fits in your pocket? The con: Check the price tag.
$2,799


For Steven Spielberg Wannabes(Photo: courtesy of Canon)
Canon EOS 6D

Most videos uploaded to YouTube are crudely shot cell-phone jobs that scream "amateur!" This excellent entry produces anything but, wielding 20.2-megapixel DSLR power and shooting in remarkable full-HD video, while giving you manual control over exposure and audio levels. The 6D is the real deal: It boasts the same remarkable video-capturing capabilities as Canon's 5D, which, as camera geeks already know, was used to shoot scenes in a little movie called The Avengers.
$2,099

For Status-Conscious Spendthrifts(Photo: courtesy of Leica)
Leica M

The New York Times deemed Leicas the accessory of choice for the celebrity class on red carpets, film sets, or vacation. Brad Pitt, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig are all fans. It's fitted out with a 24-megapixel full-frame sensor (and able to accommodate different lenses). Plus, there's a giant upgrade to 1080p HD video recording. Sadly, the seven grand you just shelled out doesn't come with a guarantee of getting into hot clubs—worse, the lenses cost extra. $6,950

2013 Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster

On the heels of the successful coupe introduced in 2011, the House of the Raging Bull is now offering the convertible version of the Aventador - the 2013 Lamborghini Aventadore LP 700-4 roadster.

The two-piece roof of the 2013 Lamborghini Aventador roadster is made entirely from carbon fiber. Each component is extremely light, weighing less than 6 kg. Being lightweight and simple to attach, the two parts can be easily removed and stored in the front luggage compartment.

The rear pillars in the new car have been redesigned to offer support for the removable roof, accommodate an automatic protection system for passengers and provide the engine compartment with ample ventilation. Engine hood also gets a bit of redesign and sports a more aggressive look than the coupe version.

The 2013 Lamborghini Aventodor roadster features a powered rear wind screen and wind deflectors to keep civilized conversations going in the cabin area. The new Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster features new Dione 20'/21' rims with a daring, aggressive look. Crafted in light forged aluminum, they lower the weight of the vehicle by 10 Kg as compared with the standard set of rims.

A centrally located, 6.5 liter aspirated V12 generating 700 hp, an ISR 7-speed gearbox and push-rod suspension make the new Aventador Roadster a unique super sports car that accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in only 3 seconds flat and has a maximum speed of some 350 km/h.

Of course the Roadster's V12 also includes a cylinder deactivation system when the engine is working at partial capacity, while the innovative, instant Stop Start system includes high-performance capacitors known as supercaps to awaken the engine. This is an absolute first in the super sports car segment.

The new Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster is a dream that can be realized and ordered at any Lamborghini dealer in the world for the price of 300,000 euro, excluding taxes.

2013 Lexus LS launched in UAE

Al-Futtaim Motors, exclusive distributor for Lexus in the UAE, has announced the arrival of the new 2013 Lexus LS in the country. The model range includes the LS 460 - in standard and long wheel base versions, the LS 600h hybrid and an all-new LS 460 F SPORT.

Prices start from AED 325,000 for the base model of 2013 Lexus LS F Sport and goes right up to AED 495,000 for the top of the range long wheel base version of the luxury sedan. For the environmentally sensitive, the LS600h V8 top of the range hybrid car comes at a ticket price of AED575,000.

The 2013 Lexus LS is a re-skinned version of the already popular previous generation LS and gets the new family face - the splindle grille, smacked loud and clear on its nose. Not as much as the outside, the interior of the new LS has undergone a complete change and those who have owned a LS in the past will instantly notice this.

The 2013 Lexus LS sedan boasts 3 world's first and 15 Lexus first features. Advance Interior illumination, improved climate control system and pre-collision safety systems are touted as world first by the Japanese car maker.

The cars are now available in the showrooms across the country. If you are in the market for premium luxury sedan, the 2013 Lexus LS is a compelling car to keep in the potential buy basket.

2013 Honda Civic first images released

The highly anticipated refreshed model of the ninth-generation Honda Civic is finally here. Honda has revealed the first look of the 2013 Honda Civic Sedan in advance of its debut at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show on November 29.

The vast majority of updates for the 2013 Honda Civic are only skin-deep and Honda says that the Civic has been 'honed to make the segment's best-selling car even better.' Up front there is a new open-mouth lower bumper with a horizontal chrome accent and a sportier, black honeycomb mesh grille anchored by new integrated fog lights on upper trims. The grille is flanked by new clear-lens corner lights to provide a better look. The more sculpted front end flows into a new, more deeply faceted hood, complemented by a collection of sharp new wheel designs.

In the back, a new rear bumper design and new rear trunk lid are capped by a clean, horizontal chrome trim piece. The all-new design of the jewel-like taillights now carries into the trunk face, providing a more upscale look. The rear bumper features integrated reflector treatments and a new lower diffuser panel finished with a honeycomb mesh vent. A host of new alloy wheels will also be offered.

Honda has not yet revealed any other details regarding the aforementioned 'safety, feature, comfort, chassis and interior styling enhancements' or even the mechanical changes that will round-out the 2013 Honda Civic. We certainly do hope there is more to offer as far as engine, chassis and suspension set-up is concerned.

2013 Audi A6 and A7 Black Edition announced

Audi has unveiled Black Edition versions of the A6 and A7 in the UK. Each model will come with a set of rotor-design wheels and feature a lower sports suspension borrowed from the company's S Line kit. The rotor-design alloy wheels have a dark titanium finish and are a 20-inch diameter in the A6 Saloon and Avant or 21 inches in the A7 Sportback.

Designers swapped the standard grille, license plate surrounds and window trim for blacked-out pieces. Inside, the cars get Piano Black inlays which complement the sports seats upholstered in black Valcona leather and the black headlining. In the A6 models the foundation S line specification also brings features such as exclusive S line exterior and interior styling enhancements, satellite navigation, Bose sound system, light and rain sensors, xenon headlights and LED rear lights, the Audi drive select adaptive dynamics system, the Audi parking system plus and keyless go. On top of these, the A7 Sportback also includes extras such as powered tailgate operation, electrically adjustable front seats and a powered retractable rear spoiler.

Buyers will have to wait until early 2013 to take delivery. Prices start at £35,010  for the A6 Sedan Black Edition and rack all the way up to £50,575 pounds for the A7 Sportback Black Edition. It’s still not sure as to whether the car will be introduced to the Middle Eastern market or not, but keep an eye on Auto MiddleEast.com for more info.

'World's Fastest Supercomputer' Crowned in US

In the clash of the world's supercomputing titans, a new U.S. supercomputer named "Titan" is king.

The $100-million Titan seized the No. 1 supercomputer ranking on the Top500 List with a performance record of 17.59 petaflops per second (quadrillions of calculations per second). The supercomputer, a Cray XK7 system based at Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, leaped past the former champion, the Sequoia supercomputer at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The top five supercomputers in the world are:

1. Titan Cray XK47 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (17.59 petaflops/s)
2. Sequoia BlueGene/Q at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (16.33 petaflops/s)
3. Fujitsu's K computer at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan (10.51 petaflops/s)
4. The Mira BlueGene/Q computer at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill. (8.16 petaflops/s)
5. The JUQUEEN BlueGene/Q computer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany. (4.14 petaflops/s)

U.S. supercomputers had fallen behind China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer and Japan's Fujitsu K Computer starting in 2009, but staged a comeback with Sequoia's rise in 2012.

Sequoia's 1,572,864 computing cores actually outnumber Titan's 560,640 cores, but not all computing cores are created equal. Titan draws 90 percent of its performance from having 261,632 of NVIDIA's new K20x accelerator cores.

The NVIDIA accelerator cores use the same graphics processing unit (GPU) technology that drives graphics cards for displaying video games. GPUs run tasks on many different "threads" that may run slower than traditional threads on central processing units (CPUs), but GPUs make up for that by running many more threads simultaneously.

GPU-driven supercomputers will become even more crucial in building the next generation of "exascale" supercomputers that would work 1,000 times faster than today's supercomputers. That's because GPUs use far less energy than the CPUs that have traditionally driven computing.

Titan used the new Tesla K20x accelerators to achieve an energy efficiency of 2,142.77 megaflops per watt (million calculations per second per watt), enough to also rank Titan No. 1 on the Green500 list of the world's most energy-efficient supercomputers.

Koenigsegg's horizontal roller coaster

Accelerating a standstill to 186 mph in 14.5 seconds is a fairly kinetic event. Very loud, tunnel vision, urge to pee. One moment the Swedish countryside is just sitting there, looking lovely and serene; the next it's blowing past you in a violent blur of autumn colors. Herregud! I've been pillaged.

The Koenigsegg Agera R, built by an extraordinary man named Christian von Koenigsegg, in Angelholm, Sweden, last year laid waste to a bunch of Guinness production-car records, among them: zero to 186 miles per hour and back to zero in 21.19 seconds. The very car I'm driving, in fact. And it is, it feels like, a horizontal roller coaster: At rest, the Agera R always seems poised in space, then hit the gas, over the top, and straight down, bang, bang, bang go the gears. A plunging vertigo takes over, a forward free-fall. The momentum builds in inexorable squares of mass and you scream your face off. Welcome to Six Flags Over Sweden.

The Agera R—$2.5 million or so, about 1,000 to 1,140 horsepower (depending on fuel), about 3,200 pounds—continues to crush passengers in excess of 1g of linear acceleration until somewhere north of 100 mph, at which point the car's aerodynamic shape begins to exert significant downforce (660 pounds at 155 mph). The rate of acceleration levels off but it's still going upstairs like crazy (124 to 186 mph takes 7 seconds). This is telemetry as pornography.

Mr. Koenigsegg estimates the car's top speed would clock in around 273 mph—faster than the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport's record of 267.8 mph—if, that is, he could find some stretch of Mars upon which to test it. On the company's conveniently located airfield, the prudent visitor gets on the brakes after touching 186 mph (I hit 190). The braking event from that speed requires less than 7 seconds and is likewise vigorous. It feels like your pants are going to fall off.

In short, the Agera R is the thing that eats bats out of hell. I am overawed. And yet, it does seem an unlikely obsession for the reserved and purposeful Christian von Koenigsegg.

There had been some concern that Koenigsegg was in financial trouble, and Mr. Koenigsegg, 40, admits business could be easier. The European market has lately fallen off the Earth. With an annual turnover of about €10 million ($13 million), he says, on 12 to 15 cars, Koenigsegg's financial aspirations are modest and the business is, for the moment, stable. "We're never going to make a personal fortune," he says in his IKEA-decorated office, in a former air-force maintenance facility. "The only reason we are still here is we accepted we were going to be small."

My first visit to Ängelholm was in the mid-1990s, when the young Koenigsegg tried to kill me in one of his prototypes. He was a singular figure even then, as bald as the laughing Buddha—Mr. Koenigsegg suffers from alopecia but sort of rocks it, too. In those days he was building his reptilian hypercar in a quaint thatched-roof barn, which in due course burned down in 2003.

The base's jet hangers proved an ideal workspace for Koenigsegg, and today the company's 52 employees quietly bustle through the day, hand-building amazing cars for ridiculous people. On the floor at the moment is a Popsicle-purple Agera R with gold-anodized cockpit appointments, destined for a customer in Shanghai. And they put Martha Stewart in jail.

As a matter of industrial policy, the Swedish government has de-emphasized the domestic car business—note its refusal to bail out Saab—in favor of cleaner, information-based industries and IT. This has suited Koenigsegg well since the company's strategy is to take the essential car—the carbon-fiber core that Mr. Koenigsegg imagined two decades ago—and perpetually evolve it using the power of computer-assisted engineering in the hands of a few massively talented designers. As I walk through the offices, one of the staffers is redesigning the car's proprietary front-brake calipers, which is no trifling matter; another is using a CAE/fluid-dynamics program to refine the airflow around the front valence.

"Building a car like this is about fighting physics," he says. "I'm not sure committees fight physics better than a few great guys."

The Agera R's mugging of Newton begins with a bespoke, race-spec, dry-sump 5.0-liter, twin-turbocharged V8 weighing a mere 435 pounds and boasting some staggering statistics: 228 hp/liter of displacement; 737 pound-feet of torque from 2,700 to 7,300 rpm, with redline at 7,500 rpm; and a brake mean effective cylinder pressure (BMAP) of 28 bar, about 406 psi, which would blow most gas engines' spark plugs to the moon.

And the sound? Your ears are going to need condoms.

Sorry, it's about to get all geeky in here: The longitudinally midmounted V8 transfers power to the limited-slip e-diff through a Koenigsegg-designed seven-speed gearbox, with a twin-disc dry clutch and an 11-disc wet clutch arranged sequentially, working cooperatively, rather like a dual-clutch automated manual transmission. Still, under the best of circumstances, the Agera R's gearshifts are rough, and at light throttle and low speeds the car can buck and lurch like a poisoned pony.

The Agera R is hard-core in every way you'd hope: carbon-aluminum monocoque; stressed engine and gearbox; chro-mo subframes; pushrod suspension; adaptive damping, ride height and aero. For 2013 the company is offering astonishing, hollow carbon-fiber wheels—the front wheel with tire weighs less than 25 pounds. Other upgrades include a new spring-loaded, adaptive rear wing and the Triplex rear suspension, comprising a bidirectional hydraulic strut mounted horizontally between the pushrod rockers. My test car doesn't have the Triplex rear suspension. Mr. Koenigsegg says it improves the car's antisquat characteristics.

And speaking of squat: I know squat about how the Agera R handles. Considering the forces involved, the car is reasonably manageable on narrow, and wet, Swedish roads, just. It does have an amazing turning radius! You can turn this thing around in a drive-through. Mr. Koenigsegg assures me that his new car will pull in excess of 1.6 g lateral acceleration, and he is pondering a sub-7-minute go at the Nürburgring. Yahoo.

She's not for the timid, that's for sure. Holding the revs at around 6 grand produces a galling, blasting staccato that could alert NATO. The cabin is rakish and dead cool, and the electronic amenities, the navigation and driver instruments, are first-rate. The driving position is like being a ball-turret gunner on a star destroyer.

Want one? You're in luck. Mr. Koenigsegg has gone to the trouble of federalizing the Agera R—U.S. sales began this month—which, among other things, required developing a multimode stability-control system. Much needed, too. The Koenigsegg's 44/56 front/rear weight distribution, combined with the low polar moment of the midengine layout, makes the Agera R what you might call excitingly neutral. The stability control will help keep rich guys out of the hedges.

But, clearly, the Agera R is not about nimble handling. From a man who is one of the most peaceable presences I've lately encountered, a gentle giant of a mind, this car is nothing but a weapon: a very large, very Norse, not-all-that-pretty ax meant to be thrown with staggering force at a great distance. You, dear reader, are looking at the fastest street car in the world.

Honda Fit She’s, the world’s only car aimed exclusively at women

Around the world, building and designing cars remains a male-dominated business, and many companies live by an old axiom that women will buy a man's car but men won't buy a woman's car. While a few companies have attempted to bend that rule, only Honda has chosen to embrace it with the Honda Fit She's -- the only model built by an automaker today aimed exclusively at women. Hope you like pink, ladies.

There's a long and embarrassing history of automakers attempting to lure women with ladies-only models. At the turn of the 20th century, electric cars were marketed to wives with the pitch that their lack of hand-crank starting would avoid broken shoulders and/or death. In 1955, Chrysler made a bid for feminine attention with the Dodge LaFemme -- which came in a two-tone pink-and-white paint scheme, along with a storage place for the matching purse and rain hat. Lest you think modern executives learned from errors of the past, in 2000 Ford showed off a concept Windstar minivan developed with Maytag featuring a compact washer/dryer, microwave and vacuum in the rear hatch, because why would a soccer mom ever want to be parted from her appliances?

As women have grown to buy more cars in recent decades -- accounting for about one-third of car shoppers in the United States -- such attempts have given way to more savvy marketing. But in Japan, the gender divide remains more stark; half of all working-age women stay out of the workforce due to more stringent societal pressure to choose homemaking over careers, a major reason Japan's economy has been stuck in a rut for decades. But there's a cohort of younger Japanese women putting work first, and in a weak market Honda sees an opening.

Launched this summer, the Honda Fit She's designers say they wanted to take a regular Fit subcompact and make it in their words "adult cute." That means lots of pink: Pink stitching in the seats and steering wheel and floor mats, matched by pink metallic bezels around the shifter and displays. There's also a few extra shades of pink in the special She's badge, spelled with a heart for an apostrophe. If pink isn't a customer's style, Japanese buyers can also select a Fit She's in shades of brown and white that a Honda executive told the Yomuri Shinbun newspaper match the color of eyeshadow.

To Honda's credit, the Fit She's beauty treatment isn't just skin deep. It also comes with special windshield glass that cuts 99 percent of ultraviolet rays and a "Plasmacluster" air conditioning system that Honda claims can improve a driver's skin quality, all aimed at stopping those wrinkles that turn adult cute into just adult. With a starting price of $17,500, the Fit She's got an attractive price for a home-market Japanese car -- but automakers wouldn't need special editions if taking advice from women wasn't such a noteworthy event.

9 diesel cars and trucks that will save you money

Diesel vehicles get remarkable fuel economy, but it’s sometimes not enough to make them a better value overall than their gas counterparts.

The main reason is the higher pricetag: on average a diesel is $5,045 more than a gas-powered version of the same model, according to Vincentric LLC, a research firm in Bingham Farms, Mich.

Beyond the purchase amount, diesels also end up costing a little extra to own and maintain. That’s partly because some new diesel vehicles are required to have a reservoir of urea, which gets injected into the exhaust and neutralizes some of the pollutants.

With this so-called “clean-diesel” technology, emissions are now cleaner than what comes from many gasoline vehicles—which is a major role reversal. But there is added maintenance involved in replenishing the reservoirs and making sure the more complex diesel engine is running properly.

“We found that diesels typically have slightly higher insurance, repair and maintenance costs,” says David Wurster, president of Vincentric, which specializes in calculating total cost of ownership and chose diesels for its most recent alternative fuel analysis.

“An additional noteworthy point is that on a percentage basis, diesels have lower depreciation, but because they cost more to purchase, their total dollars of depreciation are higher,” Wurster says. (Some might argue that diesel is not technically an alternative fuel, but it’s not exactly mainstream in the United States either, given that only a small fraction of vehicles use it.)

The Diesel vs. Gas Showdown

Vincentric analyzed 23 diesels on sale in the United States—11 of them classified as commercial vehicles and 12 as consumer vehicles. It looked at overall cost of ownership for five years, with 15,000 miles driven annually. Based on this analysis, nine diesels had five-year ownership costs that are lower than equivalent models with gasoline engines. We list them in descending order based on overall savings versus their gas equivalents.

Vincentric, a research firm in Bingham Farms, Mich., specializes in calculating cost of ownership for vehicles and tracks more than 2,000 models. Nine factors go into its cost of ownership calculations: purchase price, depreciation, financing, fees and taxes, fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs and opportunity cost. The price it uses for fuel is a weighted national average for the previous five months, to better reflect market trends, rather than market extremes.


2012 Mercedes-Benz GL350 Bluetec 4Matic

Overall savings compared with the gas-powered GL450 4Matic: $10,128
Fuel savings: $4,750

The GL-Class is Mercedes’ largest crossover. It was refreshed for 2012 with minor styling changes. The GL350 Bluetec has a 3.0-liter V6 turbodiesel that puts out 210 hp and gets an EPA-estimated 17 mpg city, 21 mpg highway and 19 mpg overall.

Its substantial fuel savings** of $4,750 helps the GL350 Bluetec achieve the highest total savings of any diesel vehicle for which Vincentric calculated five-year ownership costs. Vincentric estimates that the purchase price* is only $101 higher than that of the gas-powered GL450 4Matic.


2012 Mercedes-Benz S350 Bluetec 4Matic

Overall savings compared with the gas-powered S550: $6,015
Fuel savings: $4,003

The Mercedes S350 Bluetec 4Matic is the least expensive S-Class model. It is one of just a few diesel vehicles in Vincentric’s study with a lower purchase price relative to its gas-powered counterpart.

Just going on the suggested retail price, the diesel S350 is $2,450 less than the S550, which has a V-8 engine that runs on gasoline. But Vincentric, which tries to ascertain what buyers are actually paying, pegs the S350 purchase price* at $3,418 less.

The S350 is the only S-Class model with all-wheel drive. The others are rear-wheel drive, which makes its fuel savings** of $4,003 more remarkable. It has a more powerful version of the 3.0-liter V-6 turbodiesel that’s in the Mercedes GL350 Bluetec. The engine produces 240 hp and gets an EPA-estimated 21 mpg city, 31 mpg highway and 25 mpg overall.


2012 Volkswagen Touareg TDI

Overall savings compared to gas-powered Touareg: $4,447
Fuel savings: $2,840

The VW Touareg Diesel is a pricey midsize crossover with rugged capabilities. Its 240-hp V-6 gets 19 mpg city, 28 mpg highway and 22 mpg combined, according to the EPA—respectable for such a large and heavy vehicle.

Its purchase price* is $3,322 higher than the gas-powered Touareg. But taking into account its five-year cost of ownership, Vincentric estimates that the diesel will end up saving owners a total $4,447 over the gas model—including a $2,840 fuel savings**.

2012 Audi A3 2.0T TDI

Overall savings compared to gas-powered A3 2.0T: $3,583
Fuel savings: $3,793

The A3 is the smallest car Audi sells in the United States. It’s only available as a four-door hatchback. Vincentric estimates that the purchase price* of the diesel A3 is $1,630 higher than the comparable gas-powered version.

The A3 2.0T TDI is less expensive to insure and maintain versus the gasoline version of the A3. That combined with fuel savings** of $3,792 make for a lower five-year cost of ownership. The EPA estimates fuel economy of 30 mpg city, 42 mpg highway and 34 mpg combined.


2012 Mercedes-Benz R350 Bluetec 4Matic

Overall savings compared to gas-powered R350 4Matic: $3,181
Fuel savings: $1,832

The R-Class is Mercedes’ version of a minivan, except with rear doors that swing out, rather than slide open. The diesel R350 Bluetec 4Matic has a purchase price* $844 lower than that of the gasoline R350 4Matic. Vincentric also calculates significantly lower depreciation for the diesel version versus the gasoline one, saving owners $2,142 over five years.

The R350 Bluetec 4Matic uses the same 210-hp 3.0-liter V-6 turbodiesel as the GL350 Bluetec 4Matic. The EPA estimates fuel economy of 18 mpg city, 23 mpg highway and 20 mpg combined. Sales of the R-Class have been sluggish ever since its introduction for the 2006 model year. After 2012, it will no longer be available in the United States.


2012 BMW X5 xDrive35d

Overall savings compared to gas-powered Touareg: $4,447
Fuel savings: $2,840

Never mind that BMW X5 xDrive35d has an awkward name—this midsize crossover is a good value. It’s one of only three diesels with a purchase price* as calculated by Vincentric that is lower than that of its gas-powered counterpart, the BMW xDrive35i, albeit just $597 lower.This lower price has a positive domino effect on five-year ownership, allowing for lower depreciation, finance and other associated costs. Only insurance and repairs are higher with the diesel X5, but not by much. With fuel savings** of $2,405, the diesel handily beats its gasoline counterpart, saving $2,751 over five years. The X5 xDrive35d features a 3.0-liter six-cylinder turbodiesel engine with 265 hp. It gets an EPA-estimated 19 mpg city, 26 mpg highway and 22 combined.


2012 Mercedes-Benz ML350 Bluetec 4Matic

Overall savings compared to gas-powered ML350 4Matic: $2,473
Fuel savings: $2,336

Mercedes’ midsize ML350 Bluetec crossover gets the 240-hp version of the company’s 3.0-liter V-6 turbodiesel, with an EPA estimated fuel economy of 22 mpg city, 27 mpg highway and 22 mpg combined.

Although its purchase price* as estimated by Vincentric is $1,397 higher than that of the gas model, the diesel saves owners $2,336 in fuel costs** and $767 in maintenance over five years of ownership. Factoring in slightly higher finance, insurance and repair costs versus the gasoline version, the ML350 Bluetec saves owners a total of $2,473 over five years.


2012 Mercedes-Benz E350 Bluetec

Overall savings compared to gas-powered E350: $2,204
Fuel savings: $3,145

The gas-powered midsize E-Class sedan is one of Mercedes’ most popular models. The E350 Bluetec diesel sells in far fewer numbers. It costs $1,965 more to purchase* than a gas-powered E350. Besides that, the diesel E350 Bluetec has marginally higher costs in nearly every category that Vincentric tracks, including most notably finance and repairs.

But its impressive fuel savings** of $3,145 help compensate for it all and result in savings of $2,204 over five years of ownership when compared to its gasoline counterpart. The E350 Bluetec has a 210-hp 3.0-liter V6 turbodiesel that gets an EPA-estimated 21 mpg city, 32 mpg highway and 25 mpg combined.


2012 Ford F-350 Diesel

Overall savings compared to gas-powered F-350: $1,131
Fuel savings: $1,999

Of the seven full-size, heavy-duty diesel pickup trucks Vincentric studied, the Ford F-350 is the only one with five year ownership costs that are lower than that of its gas-powered equivalent.

The Ford F-350 Diesel has a 400-hp 6.7-liter V-8 turbodiesel engine. Although it only has 15 hp more than the gasoline 6.2-liter V-8 also offered in the F-350, it has almost double the torque, at an impressive 800 lb.-ft. What that means in practical terms is that the F-350 Diesel is more capable at towing and hauling heavy loads. It also depreciates less, according to Vincentric, retaining $822 more of its value over five years of ownership than the gas-powered F-350. That and its impressive fuel savings** help the F-350 Diesel overcome its $5,355 higher purchase price* and higher ownership costs, resulting in savings of $1,131 over five years of ownership compared with its gas counterpart.