Tag: #156

Some bicycle wheels are truly otherworldly. Now a Stuttgart-based startup is focusing on personalised saddles, taking their cue from cyclists’ behinds. Using an A4 form at home cyclists record the distance between their two seat bones, and photograph it on their smartphones. Together with information on bicycle model, road performance and sitting posture, this data is fed into an...

An app is inspiring children to read books. But as a non-profit organisation in the US has shown, books are also highly valuable in prisons. The organisation’s founder, a former prison resident himself for nine years, discovered how stories and books could provide perspective during his long stay in solitary confinement. In the meantime, the registered lawyer has been...

The farming industry could greatly reduce its pesticide use. But using natural solutions such as messengers released by female insects is better still. The Nobel prize-winning founder of a California-based startup has developed a process to produce these messengers, or pheromones, from raw materials and bio-catalysts. When sprayed on plants, these mask the pheromones naturally produced by female insects,...

Laser light helps to heal serious burns. A research team from Texas and Portugal has been experimenting with light to fight cancer and has discovered a new, low-cost way to protect healthy cells. The magic formula? Near infrared light from LED lamps combined with tin oxide nanoparticles. During treatment, the light causes the tin oxide particles to vibrate, thus...

Special glasses reduce age-related visual impairment. A healthy human eye can see with an astonishing resolution of 25,000 ppi, a density that no electronic display has ever matched. Until now. Enter a Swedish research team that, with the help of tungsten oxide, has reduced pixel size to 560 nanometres. Corresponding to the size of one light-sensitive receptor cell in...

Wasabi supports memory and chilli has anti-inflammatory properties. Now a research team in Japan is taking a closer look at cardamom seeds. In a study with human lung cells and a simulated viral infection, they established that an extract made with hot water could have antiviral effects. The bioactive component in the cardamom extract, known as 1.8 cineole, activates...