The US Naval Research Laboratory announced a major breakthrough in materials science on Thursday. After decades of research and development, the NRL has created a transparent, bulletproof material that can be molded into virtually any shape. This material, known as Spinel, is made from a synthetic powdered clay that is heated and pressed under vacuum (aka sintered) into transparent sheets. "Spinel is actually a mineral, it's magnesium aluminate,"...

Physicists at Northwestern University have created perhaps the smallest tunable laser beam ever, according to ​a new report in Nature Communications. The work, which exploits the peculiar tendencies of particles known as surface plasmons, paves the way toward new and better ways of detecting cancer biomarkers in very low concentrations, e.g. rooting out cancer while it's still easily treatable—or treatable at all.

Faster, cheaper, better. An innovation that accomplishes those three things has the potential to disrupt an industry. But such innovations are rare. Theranos, a company founded by Stanford sophomore Elizabeth Holmes in the fall of 2003 (she dropped out a few months later) has generated a lot of buzz for developing a revolutionary approach to the blood test.

A super-accurate atomic clock just got more accurate. Thanks to new modifications, a record-setting strontium atomic clock is now so stable that it could theoretically "tick" for 15 billion years -- the age of our entire universe -- without gaining or losing a second. That's much more accurate than America's master clock. The clock was developed by JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Germans use electric to stimulate muscles and send walkers in the right direction.

Kenton Lee was working at an orphanage in Kenya when he noticed a little girl with the ends of her shoes cut off and her toes sticking out. It was then that he came up with the idea for The Shoe That Grows. “For years the idea of these growing shoes wouldn’t leave my mind,” he told BuzzFeed News. The first step was starting Because International with a few friends in 2006, a nonprofit devoted to “working with and helping those in extreme poverty,” their site says.

One night during World War II, Richard Post, a civilian scientist for the Navy, was summoned from his bunk in Hawaii by the legendary Adm. Chester Nimitz.

There’s awesome dads, and then there’s David Hyche, who went above and beyond in his fatherly duties to make sure his visually impaired daughter, Rachel, could enjoy Easter. Nine years ago Hyche, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) from Birmingham, Alabama, was trying to find ways for then 19-month-old Rachel, who is blind, to enjoy the same egg-hunting activities as her older brother.

The first-ever perfume delivery system to ensure the more a person sweats, the better they will smell, has been developed by scientists at Queen's University Belfast. Researchers in the Queen's University Ionic Liquid Laboratories (QUILL) Research Centre have developed a unique new perfume delivery system which releases more of its aroma when it comes into contact with moisture, meaning a person smells nicer when their sweat levels increase.

The latest exoskeleton technology doesn't need an outside power source to boost your strength. It harnesses the power of your own muscles to put a spring in your step instead. And soon baby boomers could be using it to keep hiking and jogging just a few years longer.

Not only do they make periods less messy, more manageable and allow you to go swimming, they have a huge number of other uses. Now engineers from the University of Sheffield have discovered that glow-in-the-dark tampons can be used to stop sewage leaking into rivers. The untreated white cotton used in tampons glows under UV light when they're soaked in dirty or polluted river water.

A light bulb made from graphene - said by its UK developers to be the first commercially viable consumer product using the super-strong carbon - is to go on sale later this year.

Everyone who partied in college knows that Jello shots are tasty—but they take a frustratingly long time to set up. That’s why you typically make a big batch ahead of time, then accept the fact that you will run out. But what if there was a machine that automated the process? Better yet, what if that machine could crank out 20 Jello shots in just 10 minutes? That’s exactly what Oregon entrepreneur Jeff Jetton has done with Jevo, his newest creation.

Invented by a Hungarian architect, the Rubik's Cube has captivated the world for the past 40 years. This is the story of how it was created.

It happens so quickly you almost don’t believe it: Seth Robertson and Viet Tran ignite a fire, snap on their low-rumbling bass frequency generator and extinguish the flames in seconds. And even after you’ve seen it over and over, it’s still unbelievable. But the two senior engineering majors at George Mason University appear to have invented and built a way to use sound waves to put out fires. It started as an idea for a senior research project, and after a year of trial and error...

A new superthin material can cool buildings without requiring electricity, by beaming heat directly into outer space, researchers say. In addition to cooling areas that don't have access to electrical power, the material could help reduce demand for electricity, since air conditioning accounts for nearly 15 percent of the electricity consumed by buildings in the United States.

In an iconic scene in the movie "Terminator 2," the robotic villain T-1000 rises fully formed from a puddle of metallic goo. The newest innovation in 3D printing looks pretty similar, and that's no mistake: Its creators were inspired by that very scene. The company Carbon3D came out of two years of stealth mode Monday night with a simultaneous TED Talk and Science paper publication. Their new tech, which they say could be used in industrial applications within the next year...

PoolLiveAid is a snooker project capable of ball, cue and tables detection, for easy learning and move prediction.

The challenge of being a futurist pioneer is being Patient Zero for the future’s headaches. In 2009, Raul Rojas, a computer science professor at the Free University of Berlin (and a robot soccer team coach), built one of Germany’s first “smart homes.” Everything in the house was connected to the Internet so that lights, music, television, heating and cooling could all be turned on and off from afar. Even the stove, oven, and microwave could be turned off with Rojas’s computer...

Think people going bald here in the 21st century have it tough? Just imagine what the folks of 100 years ago went through. Balding men were apparently so desperate for hair that they'd let a doctor near them with this terrifying machine.