Good Thinking

While having a hot lunch certainly is nice, it's not always possible if you don't have access to an electrical outlet or a microwave oven. That's where the Dutch-designed Heatbox comes in, as it uses an integrated battery to steam-heat your food.

If you're the user of a powered wheelchair, it goes without saying that you really don't want that chair to tip over, or to crash into obstacles. The LUCI system – which gets added to existing chairs – is intended to keep those things from happening.

There are already computer vision systems and sensor-equipped gloves that can detect a person's hand gestures. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed an alternative technology, however, that offers some key advantages.

When trying to learn a skill such as judo or yoga from a video, it can be frustrating if you're not able to keep up with the onscreen action. That's where Reactive Video playback comes in, as its slows videos down to match the speed of their viewers.

With colony collapse disorder continuing to decimate honeybee populations, it's more important than ever for beekeepers to monitor hive conditions. The ApisProtect system is made to automate the process, potentially catching problems earlier.

The future of food security, sustainable agriculture and the environment as a whole calls for a lower reliance on meat products over the coming decades, and a newly announced XPrize contest puts this issue center stage.

When training for any sort of physical task, it's important to keep challenging yourself as your skills improve. That's the thinking behind a new adaptive basketball hoop, that gets higher and smaller as users make more shots.

The bottom of the crowdfunding barrel never seems to dry up. Once again New Atlas pulls on its thickest gloves and boots and wades into that murky world of ideas and innovations that are somehow both half-baked and completely cooked at the same time.

While autoclaves are considered essential for sterilizing medical equipment in First World health care facilities, they're often not available in developing nations where access to electricity is limited. A new solar-powered autoclave may be the answer to that problem.

While double-glazed windows do help save energy, scientists have tweaked the concept to make it even more effective. Instead of leaving an air gap between the two panes of glass, the researchers have inserted a heat-absorbing, light-blocking liquid.

A total of 74 projects have been selected for the 2020 Beazley Designs of the Year shortlist. The variety is genuinely impressive, encompassing everything from Braille Lego to an uncensored library in a Minecraft server and a social housing project.

Optical fibers are already used in many fields, but they would have even more applications if they could be manufactured faster and cheaper. An experimental new process is claimed to deliver on both counts, and it uses mostly existing technologies.