Design
France's road of the future will provide power to 8% of the population
France has a plan that will make its roads as a good as gold. Officials recently announced it will construct a 1,000 kilometer-long (621-mile) solar roadway, with each kilometer capable of providing enough clean energy to power 5,000 homes. To make the street, construction workers will simply need Read More...
Elon Musk is thinking about building an electric airplane that takes off vertically
Electric cars and and commercial spaceflight are clearly not enough. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he’s mulling how to provide super-convenient, electric-powered air travel. When asked to reveal his “next great idea” during a brief Q&A session this week, Musk answered: Read More...
Samsung's new trucks allow you to see what's going on ahead of them
There’s a certain degree of angst that comes with driving behind a slow semi-truck, especially when you’re in a two-lane road. Being unable to see in front of the truck, its hard to prepare for a sudden halt or a safe pass-by. Samsung thinks it has the solution to this problem with the new Read More...
How nature hums with lessons for business
Nature provides a rich, largely unexplored library of technologies that process and manage information, materials and energy. While the idea of looking to nature for solutions steadily has become more accepted in innovation circles, many people are still surprised by the breadth and depth of the Read More...
Want your kids to be better off than you? Move to a high-density city
If you think of high-density cities, you may think of pollution, poverty and moral decline. But the reality, according to new research in urban studies, is that these cities offer residents more economic opportunities and upward mobility. Analyzing data on urban sprawl and economics, the Read More...
Mechanical trees become power 'plants' when they sway in breeze
New tools for harvesting wind energy may soon look less like giant windmills and more like tiny leafless trees. A project at The Ohio State University is testing whether high-tech objects that look a bit like artificial trees can generate renewable power when they are shaken by the wind—or by Read More...
How to make slums more resilient to climate change
In the coming decades, climate change is expected to drive more frequent extreme weather events—such as hurricanes, flooding, and droughts—in many parts of the world. Such disasters hit slum dwellers particularly hard because they lack physical accesses to essential services, such as water and Read More...
This new set of towers in Dubai will have its own indoor rainforest
The Rosemont Hotel & Residences is a massive, double-tower complex that's currently being constructed under the direction of ZAS Architects Dubai.Part of a the new Rosemont global hotel brand, the $550 million project will consist of two towers rising over 50 stories each, adding up to over 2 Read More...
Steel yarn jackets absorb energy from the sun to keep you warm
ThermalTech's jackets don't look too different from a North Read More...
The quest to build the world’s first ethical smartphone
For many people, smartphones are the first thing we see in the morning and the last thing we see at night. Yet despite our intimate relationship with these devices, we tend to know very little about how they are made—which is ironic, considering they put the world’s knowledge at our Read More...