Good Thinking

There are many parts of the world that lack infrastructure, but that get a lot of sunlight ... which makes buildings hot. A new system could help, as it uses a combination of sunlight and salt water – but no electricity – to produce a cooling effect.

Milan’s famous Salone del Mobile has once again filled the Italian city with color, inspiration and innovative design, following some false starts and setbacks due to COVID-19. Let's take a look at some special picks from Milan Design Week 2021.

3D printers may allow small companies to produce prototypes, but the machines aren't really suited to mass production. That's where the Mayku Multiplier is intended to come in – it's billed as being the world's first desktop pressure former.

The James Dyson Award is an international competition to encourage students to get creative to solve the world's pressing problems. The national finalists have been announced for 2021, showcasing ideas that help people and the environment.

The tried and true form factor of a utility knife is one many will be familiar with, but toolmaker ToughBuilt has just introduced one with a very handy trick up its sleeve, able to instantaneously turn into a scraper at the push of a button.

In many arid regions, people use devices known as solar stills to extract drinkable water from seawater or tainted water. A new type of solar still is claimed to be much more effective than others, by incorporating a rotating cylinder.

Nobody likes hearing their neighbors' music or loud conversations. Soundproof wall materials, however, can be quite expensive. Swedish scientists have developed a thinner, less costly alternative, in the form of a spring-loaded sound-damping screw.

When someone is suffering from a deep stab wound, it's important to apply pressure within that wound. A new student-designed device is intended to let first responders do just that, potentially saving lives that might otherwise be lost.

Ordinarily, if you're building something, you don't want the materials to buckle under pressure. In a new Harvard University-designed system, however, that buckling action allows flat-packed objects to be twisted into useful three-dimensional forms.

As part of a refurbishment at the planetarium at La Coupole, a former World War Two bunker in northern France that's now a museum, RSA Cosmos has installed a dozen 4K projectors to create what's billed as the world's first 10K 3D planetarium.

Despite the fact that it's made of fermented raw pork, the Vietnamese meat snack Nem Chua does not cause food poisoning in people who eat it. In fact, new research suggests that a compound found in it could be used as a natural food preservative.

Flashover is a very dangerous phenomenon, in which all of the exposed combustible materials in an enclosed area near-simultaneously ignite. Thanks to a new AI-based system, however, firefighters may soon receive warnings when flashover is imminent.