Good Thinking

If you’re a farmer with a herd of hundreds of cows, keeping tabs on them can be tricky work, but we’ve seen how sensor tags might one day ease the burden. New research has demonstrated how smartwatch-style sensors could be powered by animal movement.

If you grab fast food while out and about, there's a good chance that you use the restaurants' disposable plastic cutlery. Uphold offers a more eco-friendly alternative, as it's a reusable modular cutlery set that packs away into a slim case.

When running through an airport, your luggage becomes a liability dragging along behind you. A new ride-on suitcase called the Airwheel, currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, can let your luggage lug you around for a change.

This remarkable desalination device, made from recycled plastic bottles, floats in the ocean and runs on wave power, creating up to 13,000 gallons (53,000 liters) of fresh water a day – and discharging far less toxic brine than other designs.

We've all seen footage of disaster victims being hoisted into helicopters, in litter-type stretchers. It's not a good thing if those litters start spinning or swaying, though, which is what the thrust-vectoring Vita Rescue System is designed to stop.

As microplastics pollution and potable water scarcity both worsen, it's becoming increasingly important to find efficient ways of filtering and desalinating seawater. A new aerogel definitely holds some promise, and it's made from egg whites.

Over the past couple of years, a lot of people have discovered the joys of telecommuting from locations other than their official workplace. The Nomad Desk was designed with such folks in mind, as it can be folded up and carried in a backpack.

Monitoring the structural integrity of heavily used and aging bridges is complex work that often involves arrays of costly sensors, but new research has demonstrated how smartphones might one day do the heavy lifting.

It's easy to think of shipping containers as simple metal boxes, that can't be improved. The Unit One container, however, is claimed to be lighter, stronger and more energy-efficient than others, plus it uses multiple sensors to monitor its cargo.

Since taking its first product to Kickstarter eight years ago, Australian startup Orbitkey hasn’t been afraid to float some fresh ideas around how we carry our keys, and its latest offering continues on with this theme.

Ordinarily, we associate mouthguards with sports such as boxing and football. An experimental new one, however, could allow people who lack the use of their hands to control electronic devices – and it would do so by tracking their bite patterns.

In some of the world's hottest countries, where cooling systems are most needed, the infrastructure required to power such setups is often lacking. A new system could help, as it provides multiple cooling effects but uses no electricity.

We've heard how 3D-printed concrete buildings can be built quickly and easily, but could there be an even faster and simpler method? According to inventor Alex Bell, there is – and it involves inflating buildings, then pumping concrete into them.

Although advances are occurring in the field of powered prosthetics, the devices still require heavy batteries. Scientists at Rice University are trying to change that, by creating a pneumatic "extra limb" that's powered by the wearer's footsteps.

While the farming of salmon does help take pressure off wild stocks, the feed used to raise the fish still isn't entirely sustainably sourced. That may change, however, thanks to nutrient-rich worms that eat readily available seaweed.