Heating

Different materials can play different roles when it comes to trapping and dissipating heat. But could one material have it both ways? A new breakthrough suggests that it could, made by scientists who believe heat needn’t just be a one way street.

Although heated gloves have been around for some time, the things are generally pretty thick and bulky – best-suited to activities like skiing. Candle Apparel has designed a more dextrous alternative, in the form of its "city-oriented" Candle gloves.

Although it's unlikely that many people would think of wood-fired hot tubs as being "green" products overall, some of the things are certainly more eco-friendly than others. Such is the case with a new tub, that's already on sale in Europe.

Artificial retinas have the potential to restore some sight to people with certain kinds of blindness, but they contain complex electronics that can overheat. Now a Stanford team has found a way to potentially bypass the issue.

Stanford University engineers have developed an ultra-thin heat shield for electronic devices that measures just 10 atoms thick.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made some groundbreaking discoveries for physics, but it’s hard to tell how exactly that benefits the average Joe/Jill. Now CERN has announced that the LHC will soon divert some of the waste heat from the collider to help heat thousands of nearby homes.

Researchers at EPFL have crunched the numbers on heat transfer in the air of train tunnels, and outlined a geothermal heat recovery system that could potentially supply heating and cooling to thousands of nearby homes.

Engineers from the University of California San Diego have developed a proof-of-concept armband that can keep the wearer's skin at a constant temperature, even when the ambient temperature is raised or lowered. And the technology is being scaled up to vest size.​

​Squids, octopi and cuttlefish are able to change the color of their skin thanks to specialized cells known as chromatophores. Scientists have now replicated the manner in which those cells work, resulting in a flexible material that can either trap or release heat as needed.

A German research team has prototyped an extraordinary heating/cooling system that stresses and unloads nickel-titanium "muscle wires" to create heated and cooled air at twice the efficiency of a heat pump or three times the efficiency of an air conditioner.

​If you're a winter cyclist, then you'll know how off-putting it can be to press your butt down onto an ice-cold saddle. Slovenian inventor Drago Beravs is out to remedy that situation, with his heated Sweet Saddle.

If you're dirty and sweaty from performing an outdoor activity, it's understandable that you don't want to drive home that way. Wouldn't it be nice if you could take a hot shower first? Well, the portable Geyser System lets you do so – depending on how you define the word "shower."