Good Thinking

Imagine being able to listen to music or other audio that no one else can hear, without having to wear headphones. Doing so is now possible via so-called "audible enclaves," which already exist in functional prototype form.

If you want to stop potholes from forming in asphalt roads, you've gotta get 'em while they're still just tiny cracks. A new self-healing asphalt could one day do that very thing, utilizing spores obtained from moss.

When someone has been rendered tetraplegic by a spinal cord injury, they may still retain partial use of their wrists. A new device could help such folks lift cumbersome objects, by adding a robotic hand to the back of their dominant hand.

In morning meetings and Slack messages between the New Atlas team, sometimes a phrase is mentioned that simply begs to become a band name. Here's your chance to vote on the best of the best!

Fighting fire usually involves water or foam, but they can be messy and environmentally destructive. Engineers at Ohio State University have now developed handheld tools that cleanly extinguish fires with 'ionic wind’ and vortex rings.

Pine cones are pretty smart for things with no brains, enough so that scientists have copied them to create a unique window shading system. The setup blocks sunlight in the summer and lets it through in the winter, without using any electricity.

So, you know you should cut back on salt, but you don't like the bland taste of low-sodium foods. The Electric Salt Spoon may be just what you need, as it's claimed to boost the salty flavor of foods without actually adding any salt.

Cuneiform, the world's oldest form of writing, involved making indentations in clay tablets. Scientists have now developed a data storage system that's like cuneiform on steroids – and it's capable of storing more data than a typical hard disc drive.

When a raging forest fire is approaching a community, a good rainfall greatly reduces the chances of the flames actually reaching the buildings. But if rain isn't in the forecast … well, that's where the RainStream tower is designed to come in.

Traversing the width of Scotland in a canoe would be a challenge in and of itself, as would traversing it on a recumbent tricycle. Well, British adventurer Ben Kilner recently canoed the trip in one direction then triked it in the other, using the same amphibious vehicle for both legs of the journey.

In what shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, electric-assist baby strollers are now a thing. And if you're wishing that your old-school manual stroller had a motor … well, the Easy-Way kit is designed to give it one.

Steering a wheelchair can be a strenuous, inefficient process, in that you have to brake with one rear wheel while pushing harder on the other. A clever new chair addresses that problem in a brilliant fashion, by using a moveable backrest to steer.

Ordinarily, if you want liquid to flow in only one direction through a pipe, that pipe has to have a flap-type valve – which could fail. Now, scientists have created a new type of more robust one-way-flow pipe, which was inspired by shark intestines.

While clay is widely used to build basic structures such as huts, we typically don't see it being utilized in large-scale construction projects. That could soon change, however, thanks to a recently developed process known as impact printing.

If you live on an acreage, there's a constant risk that your home may be consumed by a brush fire. That's where the Blaze Barrier comes in, as it forms a flame-activated fire-retardant boundary line around the user's house.