Sunlight

Opening and closing your blinds is such a trivial process that you may never have thought about automating it, but it can make your home more energy efficient and secure. A new device called the FlipFlic allows users to automate existing blinds and control them via an accompanying mobile app.

Designer and architect Aldana Ferrer Garcia has imagined a quirky extending window frame that would offer apartment dwellers the opportunity to gaze at the clouds (or indeed, stars) while sat inside.

We have seen a number of smart windows that keep interior spaces from overheating, and some that even harvest energy for lights. But a new tunable window technology is claimed to do things the smart glass before it cannot, allowing users control over brightness, color temperature and opacity.

Researchers from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology have created a light-blocking facade for plate glass windows that only kicks in when exposed to strong sunlight ... and it's powered by that sunlight, too.

Panasonic recently unveiled a new technology to purify water using sunlight and photocalysts. The system purifies polluted water at a high reaction rate, to improve access to clean water where it is needed.

Using a good sunscreen definitely helps to protect against skin damage, although scientists from the University of British Columbia are taking things a step farther. They're developing a drug that could ultimately prevent the sunlight-related aging of skin.

No device can replace the feeling of being outside in the sunshine, but a good smart light could perhaps make spending time indoors more pleasant. Sunn Light is an LED light that changes its level of brightness automatically throughout the day to mimic the natural rhythm of the sun in your area.

In order to get sunlight into the home, one has to simply open the curtains, but what about parts of a room that aren't near a window? Light Bandit captures the sunlight from a window and allows you to use that light on the other side of a room.

Engineers at Stanford University have come up with a new ultrathin, multilayered, nanophotonic material that not only reflects heat away from buildings, but also directs heat from inside out into space, cooling both the building and the planet as well.

Squeezing public spaces into cities that are increasingly built-up gets ever more difficult. One unusual solution is to build such spaces underground. That's the plan for New York's planned Lowline park, which will see an old trolley terminal renovated and illuminated with sunlight via fiberoptics.

As Philae begins its long sleep, mankind's attention shifts back to the Rosetta spacecraft as she begins the next phase of her mission. Over the course of the next year, Rosetta will become the first spacecraft to orbit and observe a comet as it approaches the Sun.

Using information obtained by analysis of data from the Cassini fly-by mission of Jupiter, researchers working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discerned that the planet's Great Red Spot may have more to do with the external action of the sun than some internal mechanism.