Shoes

The 90s were a truly great era for basketball and for motorcycling, so a German shoe shop has decided to combine two absolute 90s legends – Michael Jordan and the Ducati 916 – into a custom bike to celebrate the launch of the latest Air Jordan sneakers.

Germany's eco-lux footwear brand nat-2 has been making sustainable footwear for a few years, and has now launched some sneakers made from recycled coffee, with some recycled plastic bottles thrown in for good measure.​​ And yes, they smell of coffee.

Giesswein's Wool Cross X, which the company claims are the world's first Merino wool-lined sport shoes, are lightweight, grippy, cool in summer and warm in winter. Plus they absorb five times more sweat than a regular shoe, and they won't pong, even if you wear them without socks.

​As we all know, finding a pair of shoes that fits isn't as simple as knowing your shoe size. Depending on the footwear, you might go half a size either way, or the shoes may simply not fit no matter what. A new 3D scanning system, however, is designed to take the guesswork out of the situation.

​One of the more debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's disease is something known as "gait freeze," wherein the person temporarily loses the ability to step forward while walking. Scientists have come up with something that significantly reduces the problem, however – shoes with lasers in them.

​Graphene is already a rockstar of the material science scene, and we're starting to get a better sense of how it will shake things up beyond the lab. Shoemaker inov-8 has unveiled what it says is the first running shoe to use the material and promise an unprecedented degree of grip as a result.

Former Mythbuster Jamie Hyneman has concocted a prototype that sounds like something you’d see in an ACME catalog: electric shoes. Ahead of a crowdfunding campaign for the project, New Atlas spoke to Hyneman about how and why you’d mechanize shoes, and just what you might use them for.

​Graphene – the "wonder material" composed of a one-atom-thick sheet of linked carbon atoms – has already been used in products such as helmets, microphones and light bulbs. Now, it's found its way into a prototype shoe that helps keep your feet cool.

Adidas has taken shoe design to interesting places recently, playing with unique materials such as biodegradable fabrics and ocean plastics last year. Now the design team has binned the laces to create the UltraBOOST Laceless performance running shoe.

Nakefit is one of those products that regularly crops up on crowdfunding sites squarely straddling the line between "why?" and "of course!". They're hypoallergenic elastic adhesive pads that stick onto the soles of your feet, providing some protection for those who don't like wearing shoes.

​Back in 2015, we heard about how bioplastics firm Algix and clean tech company Effekt were collaborating to make eco-friendly foam based on algae instead of petroleum. The material is now being marketed as Bloom foam, and you'll soon be able to buy shoes made out of the stuff.

Surprisingly, there has been no good science explaining why shoelaces spontaneously come untied. A team of graduate students at UC Berkeley set out to solve this everyday mystery and their results shed light on the mysterious mechanics of knots.