Good Thinking

In many parts of the world there may not be much precipitation, but there is a fair amount of water vapor in the air – particularly at night. An experimental new device draws in that vapor, then uses it to irrigate edible plants.

When spawning fish travel through the canals of Utrecht, they're often blocked by the city's closed Weerdsluis lock. Regular citizens are now helping the fish to get through, though, using an online "fish doorbell."

It's easy for us to forget that our computers are equipped with "electronic eyes," potentially watching us at all times. Scientists are now exploring the dynamics of the relationship, with a creepy – but fully functional – human-eye-like webcam.

Lots of people love multitools, even though they usually ending up paying for and lugging around tool bits they don't need. The Goat Tools multitool is designed to address that shortcoming, as users can add or remove its tools.

As the folks at tech startup CharaChorder point out, we think in words, not letters … so why slowly type words out one letter at a time? That's where their new keyboard comes in, as it uses groupings of keys to instantly generate whole words.

Many cars are now equipped with pedestrian-detecting radar systems, but those systems can still be blocked by obstacles such as buildings or other vehicles. A new setup is intended to get around that problem, by taking the radar to the streets.

Ironically, many of the places that most require water purification have the least-developed infrastructure. That's where a new filtration device comes in, as it's activated by the sun – and it works relatively quickly.

If you worked in a dingy, windowless environment, it would be nice (and energy-efficient) if you could get natural daylight "piped in" from outside. An experimental device does exactly that, in a new compact and robust form.

It's a sad fact that many of the people who most need water filters are those who are least able to afford them. A newly demonstrated MIT technology could help, in that it uses locally sourced wood to inexpensively purify contaminated water.

Those purple corn chips you see in the store aren't just a gimmick – the corn's purple pigment actually has health benefits. Researchers have now devised a method of extracting more of it from the usually discarded cob, for a variety of uses.

Although an increasing number of countries are switching to sturdier, harder-to-copy polymer banknotes, the things still are being counterfeited. A new technology could help weed those fakes out, by taking their fingerprints.

Although facial ID verification tech may seem pretty impressive, it can be thwarted. An experimental new system is claimed to be more foolproof, by requiring users to make specific facial movements.