Wearables are big right now, and while they're increasingly useful, they're also limited by the batteries they require. A new effort out of Japan has developed a way to power devices through a chemical found in human perspiration.
A device in Denmark, WasteShark, has been roaming through water to scoop up floating debris. Now it's going to have a flying companion drone to help spot waste and maybe even clean up oil spills.
Today in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was dedicated and opened, but it was only one of hundreds of ideas for what should be built there. And some of the other proposed designs were wild.
It was on this day in 1857 that the first commercial elevator began operating at a department store in New York City. And once elevators took off, they started shaping the world around us in some pretty big ways.
You know about the Echo and the Google Home, but do you know about the Butler In A Box? It was a voice-controlled smart home device in the 1980s, and could do many of the same things our smart speakers do today.
A special sound-absorbing window design from a team at the National University of Singapore might let fresh air in without all the extra noise.
Lasso is a prototype for an in-home recycling system. Instead of dropping your recyclables on the curb, you'd put them in the machine, to be scanned, cleaned and broken down into the raw materials that companies buy to make new cans and bottles.
Frost damage is a growing problem for fruit growers, but a team at Washington State University has developed a cellulose nanocrystal coating that can insulate the buds of grapes and cherries and keep them safe during cold snaps.
We use hundreds of billions of latex gloves a year, for a lot of important reasons. Scientists at Cranfield University in the UK are developing an eco-friendly latex glove that uses less energy to produce and will biodegrade in weeks rather than centuries.
Today in 1889, inventor Louis Glass moved his "nickel-in-a-slot" into a saloon in San Francisco, beginning the age of the jukebox and giving the generations without smartphones and streaming services the chance to push a button and listen to a song.
