Future windows could change their tint or opacity on demand to keep out unwanted heat, light or nosy neighbors. A team from Princeton has now developed a self-powered “smart window” system that uses a transparent solar cell to harvest UV energy from sunlight.
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The Vacanti Spirale is a wine glass with a corkscrew-like twist that captures sediment. Given this a problem that would have confronted every other wine-drinking civilization of the last 10,000 years, it's quite astonishing it hasn't been done before.
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Modern cars are getting safer, but stronger bodies come with a few caveats. Thick a-pillars are great when you have an accident, but they also ruin outward visibility. Teijin Limited might just have a solution, with plans to build the first pillar-less polycarbonate-resin windshield this year.
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If you want to incorporate protruding features into a sheet of glass, the typical way of doing so involves using molds. Those molds are costly to manufacture, however. That's why the Fraunhofer Institute has developed a laser-based alternative technique that promises to be cheaper and faster.
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The 3D-printing of glass objects has been achieved before – we've seen it done by extruding molten glass, and even via a modern take on an ancient Egyptian technique. A new process, however, is claimed to produce complex glass items of a higher quality than has ever previously been possible.
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Ask a smartphone user how to improve them, and it's a safe bet that longer battery life would top the list. Batteries with silicon anodes could help boost that, and now a team has shown that these batteries can be environmentally friendly too, sourced from glass bottles headed for the scrap heap.
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A glass house is hard to get right, often resulting in a home only an extrovert could live in. The Hidden Pavilion offers a good example of how this doesn't have to be the case, however, and has some nice little touches, like a design intended to allow the site's existing trees to grow unimpeded.
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Electrochromic glass that switches from translucent to transparent and vice versa is currently limited to a blue tint. That's set to change with a new manufacturing technique that increases the color options on offer, while also speeding up the switching process by almost 10 times.
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Those with a head for heights and an eye for breathtaking scenery may wish to go to Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China. Home to the world's longest glass bridge, the area is also due to receive a number of reflective bridges and pavilions offering the experience of floating in mid-air.
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Companies are experimenting with ways to balance glass' ability to let light in with the need for a little privacy. Now, Kinestral has unveiled a new system of smart-tinting glass called Halio, which can be adjusted manually or set up to switch automatically.
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