Look down at your feet. Your shoes might seem an innocuous, but they contain lots of forms of plastic, and often leather, giving them their own sizeable carbon footprint. As all companies try to limit their plastic use, shoe manufacturers are trying to design new shoes with lower embedded emissions. Canadian shoe company Native Shoes is doing it by making a shoe that’s entirely biodegradable, because every component is made from plant material.

LEGO Foundation and LEGO Group announced their new project to help blind and visually impaired children learn Braille through custom LEGO Braille Bricks.

What if you could use diamonds instead of GPS to navigate? It is a proposition that has all the elements of a James Bond thriller: quantum mechanics, high-tech gemstones and, yes, spies. Lockheed Martin, the US defence contractor and Europe’s Element Six, the synthetic diamond-producing arm of diamond company De Beers, are working on a navigation technology that would be perfect for covert operations because it is untrackable.

Since the birth of the space age, the dream of catching a ride to another solar system has been hobbled by the “tyranny of the rocket equation,” which sets hard limits on the speed and size of the spacecraft we sling into the cosmos. Even with today’s most powerful rocket engines, scientists estimate it would take 50,000 years to reach our closest interstellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If humans ever hope to see an alien sunrise, transit times will have to drop significantly.

Personal cooling could be one step closer to reality, thanks to the advent of a flexible cooling device that can be incorporated into clothing. Thermoelectric systems use semiconductors to pump heat from one side of a device to the other, creating a cool zone and a hot zone. Such systems can provide compact, easily adjustable cooling, but getting them to efficiently dissipate heat has proved challenging.

Most of our building practices aren't especially sustainable. Concrete production is a major source of carbon emissions, and steel production is very resource intensive. Once completed, heating and cooling buildings becomes a major energy sink. There are various ideas on how to handle each of these issues, like variations on concrete's chemical formula or passive cooling schemes.

The Fluid Inside head protection system is designed to not just protect an athletes skull, but the brain as well, by mimicking the fluids that protect us from repeated impacts and sudden, jarring hits. The system is more than the sum of its parts however, strategically placing the fluid pods to prevent the most common sport injuries.

DARPA, the Department of Defense's research arm, is paying scientists to invent ways to instantly read soldiers' minds using tools like genetic engineering of the human brain, nanotechnology and infrared beams. The end goal? Thought-controlled weapons, like swarms of drones that someone sends to the skies with a single thought or the ability to beam images from one brain to another.

A state-owned rail company in China has built the prototype for a blazingly fast maglev train. The new prototype, built by the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), is being designed to carry passengers at 373 mph (600 km/h). China hopes the train will be serving passengers in 2021. “Take Beijing to Shanghai as an example — counting preparation time for the journey, it takes about 4.5 hours by plane, about 5.5 hours by high-speed rail, and [would only take] about 3.5 hours with [the new] high-speed maglev,” said CRRC deputy chief engineer Ding Sansan, head of the train’s research and development team, in a statement to CNN.

The age of the specialist is giving way to the age of the Renaissance person.

What are some of the most powerful rockets today and how do they compare to rockets of the past? There have been many, many launch vehicles over the years. The list of retired vehicles is almost never ending. But how do these rockets of old stack up to the new wave of heavy launch vehicles? Let's find out.

In an interview with the Daily Star, he explained that he has been working on a revolutionary AI to “personalise education” to enable “anyone can learn almost anything, using AI”. And he believes that within the next two decades, our heads will be boosted with special implants, so “you won’t need to memorise anything”. He told the Daily Star that people won't have to bother typing any questions, as any queries will be answered immediately from "an AI implant", which will result in the end of "parrot fashion" learning at schools.

On Thursday, Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced that it would retire two natural gas plants and replace those plants with what is likely to be the world's largest solar-powered battery bank when it's completed in 2021. The utility says its plan, including additional efficiency upgrades and smaller battery installations throughout its service area, will save customers more than $100 million in aggregate through avoided fuel costs. FPL also says its battery and upgrade plan will help avoid 1 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

When talk turns to new technologies, trash cans may not be the first things that come to mind, but a new smart bin is actively embracing machine learning to target food waste. The device is fitted with a camera, which captures an image each time the bin is used. With some initial help from kitchen staff, the trash can’s algorithm learns to identify different food types contained in each dump of waste, then weighs the volume of each type.

Way, way back, when your caveman grandpa or grandma had to lug something heavy back to the cave, what did they do? Maybe they carried it. Or dragged it. Or tumbled it down a hill. But what they didn't do is wheel it home. They couldn't. Because there no wheels to wheel with. Which is puzzling, really. How could our great, great, great grandparents go for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of generations not thinking, not making, not even imagining a wheel? Wheels appear extremely recently — around 3500 BC — when people were already counting, writing, farming. Why the long wait?

There are two things that patients in a hospital look forward to “going under” the least. One is the surgical knife. The other is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine. The latter is an unforgettable and disorienting experience. The patient rests on a table propped against a large tube-shaped machine. Inside the tube are several coils, designed to induce a strong magnetic force against the object inserted inside of it. MRIs are used as a form of noninvasive imaging technology, allowing doctors to see what’s going on inside your body without having to cut you up to do so.

LinkSpace has successfully launched a reusable rocket prototype in eastern China’s Shandong province, the private aerospace company told Sixth Tone on Monday. At the launch last Wednesday, the prototype — an 8.1-meter liquid-fueled RLV-T5 — hovered in place for 10 seconds after rising to a height of 20 meters, according to a video LinkSpace sent to Sixth Tone. It then returned to the spot from which it had lifted off: a red circle on a white launch pad.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it will allow royalty-free access to its nearly 24,000 patents for hybrid and other vehicles using electrification technology in a bid to expand competition in the market as the industry adopts stricter emissions regulations. Rather than shutting rivals out, Toyota hopes that making its motor and battery technology accessible to other companies will broaden the market, in particular for hybrids, a field the auto giant leads with its Prius vehicles.

Not so long ago, graphene was the great new wonder material. A super-strong, atom-thick sheet of carbon “chicken wire,” it can form tubes, balls, and other curious shapes. And because it conducts electricity, materials scientists raised the prospect of a new era of graphene-based computer processing and a lucrative graphene chip industry to boot.

It will soon be possible to reduce common indoor air pollutants using just a curtain. A mineral-based surface treatment enables this new curtain from IKEA to break down air pollutants when it comes in contact with light. Air pollution is a global issue and particularly problematic in megacities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 90% of people worldwide breathe polluted air, which is estimated to cause eight million deaths per year.

What once seemed like the moonshot vision of tech billionaires and idealistic architects could soon become a concrete solution to several of the world’s most pressing challenges. At a United Nations roundtable on Wednesday, a group of builders, engineers, and architects debuted a concept for an affordable floating city. Unlike instances in the past when these futuristic designs have been met with scepticism, the executive director of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme...

Boneworks from Stress Level Zero feels like the first game of PC VR’s second generation. The small team based in Los Angeles previously developed Duck Season and Hover Junkers. In Boneworks, they are applying years of refinement to physics, locomotion and object handling systems. You can feel the effort every second inside their virtual world. A recent demo of Boneworks from Stress Level Zero co-founder Brandon Laastch shows interactions tuned to a degree I’ve never seen before. First I held, loaded and fired a one-handed pistol. I dropped the gun, grabbed a bigger one, racked it with my other hand and started firing.

A new wearable device, tested on animals, can capture and remove tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream. With further development, the blood-filtering gadget could be used to diagnose, and perhaps treat, metastatic cancer in humans. Inventors of the microfluidic device, at the University of Michigan, described it last week in the journal Nature Communications.

In the 2018 movie Avengers: Infinity War, a scene featured Dr. Strange looking into 14 million possible futures to search for a single timeline in which the heroes would be victorious. Perhaps he would have had an easier time with help from a quantum computer. A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Griffith University in Australia have constructed a prototype quantum device that can generate all possible futures in a simultaneous quantum superposition.

Imagine trying to take a photo of an orange that's on the moon with your smartphone. It seems impossible. That's what it was like for scientists trying to capture an image of a black hole in space. Despite the tall order, an international team of more than 200 researchers unveiled the first-ever image of a black hole on Wednesday. The effort wouldn't have been possible without Katie Bouman, who developed a crucial algorithm that helped devise imaging methods.

Sharp this week demonstrated its first 31.5-inch HDR display featuring a 7680×4320 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The monitor uses the company’s IGZO technology and the manufacturer evaluates plans to release this LCD commercially.

Simple tandem design uses perovskite layer to feed photons to silicon cell

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have successfully printed the world’s first 3D heart using a patient’s own cells and biological materials to “completely match the immunological, cellular, biochemical, and anatomical properties of the patient.” Until now, researchers have only been able to 3D-print simple tissues lacking blood vessels.

Fans of supersonic flight have been yearning for a new way to break the sound barrier ever since Concorde stopped flying in 2003. Now successful tests of a key part of an air-breathing rocket engine may have brought that dream a step closer to reality.

The field of robotics is going through a renaissance thanks to advances in machine learning and sensor technology. Each generation of robot is engineered with greater mechanical complexity and smarter operating software than the last. But what if, instead of painstakingly designing and engineering a robot, you could just tear open a packet of primordial soup, toss it in the microwave on high for two minutes, and then grow your own ‘lifelike’ robot?

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the rechargeable cell of choice for smartphones and most of today’s other battery-powered gadgets. Despite their prevalence, Li-ion batteries are limited in power density, have reasonably short lifespans, and can become a fire hazard if damaged or incorrectly charged. These drawbacks could be a thing of the past in the not-too-distant future if gadgets move over to solid-state battery technologies.

Life demands flux. Every living organism is constantly changing: cells divide and die, proteins build and disintegrate, DNA breaks and heals. Life demands metabolism—the simultaneous builder and destroyer of living materials—to continuously upgrade our bodies. That’s how we heal and grow, how we propagate and survive.

His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income. But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant. Wind. "I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too."

A new paper frames the emerging interdisciplinary field of machine behavior As our interaction with “thinking” technology rapidly increases, a group led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab are calling for a new field of research—machine behavior—which would take the study of artificial intelligence well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences.

I loved the Thundercats cartoon as a child, watching cat-like humanoids fighting the forces of evil. Whenever their leader was in trouble, he’d unleash the Sword of Omens to gain “sight beyond sight,” the ability to see events happening at faraway places, or bellow “Thunder, Thunder, Thunder, Thundercats, Hooo!” to instantaneously summon his allies to his location to join the fight. What kid didn’t want those superpowers?