@PopularMechanics _ March 2019 17The First American to Pay Taxes with Bitcoin
ONE OF A NEW FAMILY of materials
invented by Drexel University’s
Nanomaterials Group, composed
of carbides and nitrides and called
MXenes, is conductive enough to
reflect electromagnetic waves and
transmit and direct radio waves. It
also has a paint-like consistency in
layers only a couple atoms thick—
so it could be used to put antennas
almost anywhere. “The goal is to do
things traditional antennas can-
not do, or place them in locations
they cannot be placed,” says Yury
Gogotsi, who leads the lab. The uni-
versity has already licensed the
technology—Gogotsi couldn’t name
the company, but said a “major inter-
national corporation” is already
scaling up production. What Gogotsi
could share: MXene is a very prac-
tical material—in the lab, his team
painted antennas on surfaces using
a spray gun they bought at Home
Depot. The Internet of Things is
about to get much bigger. —C.J.FOR ATHLETES AND DOCTORS, understanding how the
human body moves through space is essential. But the
nuance and complexity of human motion defies model-
ing. (And photos or raw video aren’t easy to analyze.) So
a team of MIT researchers created MoSculp, an A.I. sys-
tem that processes video to create 3D “motion sculptures.”
MoSculp starts by detecting a human body in a video. Then,
an algorithm identifies points of reference—typically knees,
elbows, and hips. It creates a 3D model of the body and stitches a series of models together,
creating one extended visual representation of the entire sequence of movements—which
can even be 3D printed. The MoSculp team sees the tool as a resource for training: a bud-
ding tennis player could more easily spot the hitch in her backhand, or compare her serve’s
motion sculpture to Roger Federer’s to find spaces for improvement.
Xiuming Zhang, one of the project’s principal researchers, also envi-
sions motion sculptures of game winners or record breakers becoming
memorabilia—additive-manufacturing-era versions of the Jordan
foul-line dunk posters in ’90s kids’ bedrooms. —Colette Juran
What the
Heck Is
a Motion
Sculpture?
Paintable
Antennas
MoSculp detects key
points in a motion
(top) and stitches
them into a 3D shape
(middle), which can be
3D printed (bottom).In November, Cleveland businessman and
blockchain evangelist Bernie Moreno paid
his state business taxes in Bitcoin using
Ohio’s new OhioCrypto.com service. As its
first user, he is the first American to pay
taxes—state, local,
or federal—with a
cryptocurrency.
I FIRST HEARD about cryptocurrency from
my son. He came home one day and told me
to sell ever y thing and invest in Bitcoin. A nd
he did—four years ago, when I want to say it
was at about $300. So he did very well. I did
not. What I did do is start studying block-
chain. Now we’re trying
to reposition Cleveland
as a critically relevant
tech city, and Ohio trea-
surer Josh Mandel issaying, Ohio’s going to lead. Paying taxes was
easy. You go on OhioCrypto.com. You enter
your tax ID number. You click to show you’re
not a robot, you enter the date your taxes are
due and how much you want to pay. Then it
brings up a bar code. Your cryptocurrency
wallet on your smartphone reads that bar
code, and the transaction is done. I paid it,
actually, in advance to show how easy it is.
I’m probably the first American to pay taxes
in advance, too. —As told to Kevin Dupzyk