Tag: #100

Historical smells no longer belong to the past. Methane, however, is odourless, and usually slips undetected into the atmosphere. Traditional methods of recovering the greenhouse gas, where people with handheld devices scour rubbish depots or faulty pipelines, are expensive. Yet methane can be deployed as a sustainable energy source to produce hydrogen. Cue a Michigan-based startup which has developed a patented drone complete...

Rail journeys should be more comfortable in future. People with limited mobility, however, don’t just need help at train stations. Which is why a British consortium has developed a new concept to improve accessibility at airports. The consortium’s electric one-seater vehicle is self-balancing and comes with luggage space at the rear. Its design means users can dine or shop like other airport...

With the right light, plants grow better. But too much light can have a negative impact on the health and daily rhythms of both people and animals. To say nothing of the bulb waste. Ever since observing bioluminescent marine bacteria, a female founder from France has been working to produce more environmentally-friendly city lamps. Talk about a bright idea… Her startup’s...

Coral landscapes can be re-generated with the help of probiotics. Using the body’s stem cells for bone grafts sometimes leads to complications or disease transmission. But the alternative - so-called xenograft materials from mammalian tissue - is both ethically and environmentally problematic. Which explains why a research team from Oslo has developed a sustainable solution, using eggshells. As well as calcium and...

Video games can help diagnose depression, and smartphones identify blocked arteries. Now, a research team in Singapore has developed a light-emitting diode (LED), less than a micrometre in size, which has been used to build a holographic mini-microscope. Both LED and microscope are the smallest of their kind in the world. A neural network-algorithm converts objects measured by the microscope, such as cells...

Sustainable material and human hair waste have much in common; hair extensions are environmentally-friendly too. But what about braids? Certainly, getting them requires time, patience and powers of endurance. Or at least it did, until a new US startup came on the scene. No more pulling or cramping: once the braid is started, its new, automated device is set to finish the rest...