Fresh mint for your mojitos? Tomato-basil for your salad? How about a thyme branch for the barbecue? Perhaps a lemon balm tea infusion? The Véritable indoor garden provides the perfect growing conditions for each plant type and guarantees you a sizable harvest, with hardly any need for intervention. ImaginThe Veritable® indoor garden allows you produce your own food in the comfort of your home, without having to worry about anything. It is an  indoor garden which is a merge of technologies th...

Water-storing crystals known as hydrogels can effectively deliver pesticide bait to invasive Argentine ants, quickly decimating a colony, a Purdue University study finds. Pesticide sprays and baits are common tactics for managing pest ants. But sprays can have little long-term impact and carry environmental costs such as chemical contamination of soil and water sources. Baits also present challenges. Ants prefer liquid food to solids, rendering granular baits less appetizing. But liquid baits ca...

Scientists studying penguins’ feathers have revealed how the birds stay ice free when hopping in and out of below zero waters in the Antarctic. Penguins living in the Antarctic are highly evolved to cope with harsh conditions, their short outer feathers overlap to make a thick protective layer over fluffier feathers which keep them warm. Under their skin, a thick layer of fat keeps them insulated. The flightless birds spend a lot of time in the sea and are extremely agile and graceful swimmers, ...

A new UK-based startup, Smart 3D Company, Ltd., has come out with an innovative and easy-to-use device that, combined with a smartphone, will allow users to scan small objects in 3D, as well as take pictures or shoot 360° time lapse videos. The device is not only useful for photographers or 3D printer users, but also architects, engineers, graphic designers, bloggers and many more. PIXELIO, in combination with free software installed on your smartphone (eg. Autodesk 123D Catch), will allow us...

Pulse is a new camera accessory that allows you to control things wirelessly using a smartphone. It plugs into your DSLR or mirrorless camera’s USB port, allowing you to shoot photos, time-lapses, or videos from an app on your phone. Outwardly, Pulse looks like an ultra-flat flash transmitter that sits on your camera’s hotshoe with a wired connection on the side, it has a small form factor, so it’s portable and doesn’t get in the way of your photography. Inside, it packs a Bluetooth radio with a...

Startup ShiftWear, has come up with a concept that promises wearers the ability to art-direct their footwear via a mobile app with an endless stream of HD-quality images and animations. Powered by the wearer’s movements via a “walk and charge” system, the shoes, which are still in the prototype phase, use HD color-flexible e-paper displays and Bluetooth-enabled software that allows them to communicate with the ShiftWear mobile app, the founders say. The idea seems novel, but it’s part of a large...

'Netatmo' home security camera with face recognition The 'Welcome' home security camera is a small 45mm-diameter (1.8in.) cylindrical device standing 155mm (6in.) tall, with a shiny metallic-gold finish and a white plastic base. The gold cylinder is punctuated by a black strip housing the 4-megapixel HD camera's glass lens, which has a 130-degree field of view, an LED that glows red in night-vision mode and a microphone. Opposite the lens strip, towards the bottom, are the connections: a M...

AirBolt is a Bluetooth-enabled smart lock that layers a variety high-tech security measures into a system that you control entirely from your smart phone. The AirBolt smart lock is comparable in size to most old-school combination locks, but despite this small footprint, the device is absolutely stuffed with features that put the safety of your stuff back in your hands. The device comes with a rechargeable Li-ion battery that lasts a year and has a backup button unlocking feature that lets you u...

Europe has launched the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, an exquisite space physics experiment. It will test the technologies needed to detect gravitational waves, the warping of space-time produced by cataclysmic events in the cosmos. Having such a capability would make it possible to detect the merger of monster black holes, a marker for the growth of galaxies through time. Lisa Pathfinder went into orbit on a Vega rocket from French Guiana. The satellite is being sent in the direction of the Sun, t...

In a world’s first, researchers at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou confirmed they had engineered embryos to modify the gene responsible for the fatal blood disorder thalassaemia. The Chinese team used embryos they obtained from fertility clinics that had been created for use in IVF but had an extra set of chromosomes, following fertilization by two sperm, which prevents a live birth. They injected 86 embryos with the Cas9 protein and left them for two days to allow the gene-editing...

The infinityPV HeLi-on is the world's most compact solar charger. It fits into your pocket, and the solar panel can be rolled out when needed. Inside HeLi-on there is a powerful printed solar panel and a battery, so it can both generate and store energy. The HeLi-on charger combines three key components into a single product. A large energy collecting solar panel, an energy storage battery bank, and efficient electronics. All features are combined in a slick and light design for convenience. HeL...

Invented by Dr. Wayne B. Hayes, a professor at the University of California and a visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the "Cold Shoulder" calorie-burning vest apparently is based on hard science, rather than science fiction. According to info on Kickstarter, scientists have spent decades studying how mild cold exposure can enhance calorie burn, and the results seem to show that it works. Hayes works with NASA scientists who purportedly study ice, so he ...

Aerion Mouse is a gesture-driven computer mouse that’s somewhat smaller than traditional mice. It gets placed between the top of any two of the user’s fingers. The user then points the mouse at the display to operate it and, instead of clicking on any buttons, just leans to the left to achieve what a typical left click on a mouse would and leans to the right for a right click. One main benefits to Aerion is that it allows one to keep fingers close to a typing position without having to grab a se...

An Oakland company working with scientists from the University of California at Berkeley is claiming a breakthrough in the race to develop an instant roadside marijuana Breathalyzer. Hound Labs Inc, said on Wednesday it had found an accurate way to measure THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis within one or two blows. The portable device is designed to help determine if a driver is impaired from recent marijuana use. The idea is to replace a complicated assortment of costly blood and urine...

Walli is an intelligent wallet that keeps track of your valuables. It's an interactive system between your phone and your wallet, so if you lose your wallet then your phone notifies you, if you lose your phone, just tap the wallet twice and your phone will automatically ring. Walli connects to your smartphone over Bluetooth. Once connected, the Walli app will display notification on your phone once you get too far from it. Connecting to an iOS and Android app over Bluetooth 4.0, it sends a displ...

EyeGuide Focus, a 10-second concussion detection tool, measures neurocognitive impairment quickly and reliably, following established research protocols to return quantifiable results, aiding athletic trainers and other healthcare providers in making informed decisions on concussions. It detects concussions in 10 seconds by recording and interpreting athletes' eye movements. Focus can be administered immediately after a possible concussion. Just as important, it can be used to monitor recovery, ...

After 36 days of battling sharks that kept biting their equipment, scientists have returned from the remote Pacific Ocean with a new way of looking at the world’s largest and possibly most mysterious volcano, Tamu Massif. The team has begun making 3-D maps that offer the clearest look yet at the underwater mountain, which covers an area the size of New Mexico. In the coming months, the maps will be refined and the data analyzed, with the ultimate goal of figuring out how the mountain was formed....

Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines are developing a new aerospace engine class that combines both jet and rocket technologies. They call it the greatest advance in propulsion since the jet engine which will help potentially revolutionizing hypersonic flight and dramatically reducing the cost of space access. SABRE, which stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, is designed to enable aircraft to operate from a standstill on the runway to hypersonic flight in the atmosphere, and then tra...

AquaFresco provides the state-of-the-art filtration technology which regenerates 95% of laundry wastewater. Three MIT grad students have invented a washing-machine filter that cleans wastewater and reuses it over and over again. “Washing machines are one of the major sources of detergent pollution in rivers,” Huang says. “Current laundry technology is not sustainable. A regular washer discards the water right into the drain after one usage, but less than 1 percent is the actual waste component.”...

A new robot created by researchers at the University of Bristol has the mission of cleaning ponds and lakes. Powered by the microbes it scoops up from the water and digests, it doesn't need any recharging to keep going. The Row-bot is inspired by the water boatman insect and uses a similar mechanism to glide across the surface of water, in the robot's case, a paddle powered by a 0.75 Watt DC motor. Both bug and robot maximize surface area when making a power stroke and then minimize surface area...

Amazon Echo is a wireless speaker and voice command device from Amazon.com. The device consists of a 9.25-inch (23.5 cm) tall cylinder speaker with a seven-piece microphone array.[1] The device responds to the name "Alexa"; this "wake word" can be changed by the user (to one other choice at present: "Amazon").[2] The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, set alarms, stream podcasts, play audiobooks, provide weather, traffic and other real time information. I...

Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana are studying Ants to come up with new ways to get rid of them. One of the most common house ant species might have been built for living in some of the smallest spaces in a forest, but the ants have found ways to take advantage of the comforts of city living. Grzegorz Buczkowski, a Purdue University research assistant professor of entomology, found that odorous house ant colonies become larger and more complex as they move from forest...

Intellectual Ability and Heritability Many researchers have studied how our intellectual abilities are affected by genetics. Most believe that a large number of genes each play a small role in our intellectual abilities, but it is difficult to isolate and identify these genes. Imagine you have a number of necklaces with 20,000-25,000 similar beads strung together. Now imagine you are looking for 3,000 specific beads on each necklace, but you're not sure what they look like or even if they ...

Parts produced by some commercial 3D printers may be toxic according to a new study that raises concerns about how to dispose of parts and waste materials from the devices which are becoming increasingly popular. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside studied two common types of 3D printers, one that melts plastic to build a part, and another that uses light to turn a liquid into a solid part. They found that parts from both types of printers were measurably toxic to zebrafish em...

The brain of the house is Intel’s new Internet of Things Platform for connecting and controlling smart devices. It basically allows you to control all of a home’s systems from a single tablet app which you can swipe a slider to adjust the thermostat, change the color and brightness of the home’s lighting, and even open the door for a repairman while you’re away. Older non-connected appliances can also be controlled using smart outlets. All of the systems respond to voice control, and the platfor...

This amazing, interactive, world map from Falling Fruit is a map that charts known fruit trees on publicly accessible land, and as an added bonus, you and your family can add your own finds to the map and share your knowledge of where to forage local food with the world. Technology has dramatically changed our life even our way of eating. We would post the food we eat on social media and we even use applications to know where the best place to chow down is. An interactive crowd-sourced map ca...

Scientists from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) and University of Pisa in Italy have developed an anthropomorphic robot that can use human tools and interact with its surrounding environment in the same way as a human. The researchers hope that the robot, colloquially known as Walk-Man, will find use in search and rescue situations that are too dangerous for humans to engage in. Lead researcher Nikos Tsagarakis believes Walk-Man will be well accommodated in ...

A new study has found that fish have emotions. The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that zebrafish responded to stress by an increase in body temperature, or what it known as an “emotional fever.” It’s been suggested that such a thing only exists in mammals, birds and reptiles, but the new research proves otherwise. Scientists placed six zebrafish groups in tanks divided by plexiglass into six chambers, each containing water of a different temperature. Each tank w...

A Spanish company called Vortex Bladeless is proposing a radical new way to generate wind energy .Their idea is the Vortex, a bladeless wind turbine that looks like a giant rolled joint shooting into the sky. The Vortex has the same goals as conventional wind turbines, to turn breeze into kinetic energy that can be used as electricity but it goes about it in an entirely different way. When wind passes one of the cylindrical turbines, it shears off the downwind side of the cylinder in a spinning ...

LuminAID develops innovative, solar-powered products for humanitarian relief aid and outdoor recreation. The company’s first product, the LuminAID light, is a solar-powered, inflatable lamp that packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof lantern suitable for outdoor recreation and emergency situations. The LuminAID light has been sold to individuals in more than 30 different countries, and outreach projects with NGO partners have put more than 10,000 donated lights on-the-ground...