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Still worrying about the problem that your expensive cellphones may get destroyed when water goes into it? Stop it then, as a company named Liquipel will render our electronic devices completely waterproof with a hydrophobic nano-coating they’ve developed. The coating, actually not visible to human eyes, can protect the entire device as a whole, with all vital components inside and out completely coated to fight against accidental contact with liquids. Though the new technology would allow us to use cellphones and other devices in bathrooms or swimming pools, it may fail to protect your devices in deep sea, however. Thus while giving your devices a protection with this hydrophobic nano-coating, you’ll still need to pay high attention when using them in water.

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One possible new tendency for car manufacturing announced at the beginning of 2012 is the smart fabric seat covers developed by researchers from Polytechnic School in Montreal, Canada. The new fabric has electrical properties that will change depending on where touched, so that it allows the drivers to control their radio volume via merely a simple swipe. It means the fabric might replace the nobs, buttons and dials commonly built in cars in the future, so as to offer us a more convenient way to control the car. As BMW is reportedly interested, we guess it wouldn’t be long for us to see the touch fabric roll out in future car models.

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We’ve already encountered many high-tech equipments that are helpful to people who have lost their limbs during a mishap, but few of them are as surprising as the intelligent touch-sensitive gloves designed by Daniel Kamp for prosthetic arms.

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Wait, wait, what you’ve already seen from the image isn’t the world’s smallest microphone we’re here to argue. Actually, the smallest capacitor microphone built by Noshirvani University of Technology researcher Bahram Azizollah Ganji is merely 0.5 X 0.5 mm big, almost invisible to the naked eyes. However, it comes with really high sensitivity and low power consumption, and can be widely used for a variety of purposes such as diagnosis of cardiac problems or marine surveillance.

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One same cup of wine offers totally different taste, smell, and even color, if it is activated by different wattages and duration of exposure to microwave, that’s rightly the short description of the ‘Nano Wine’. Based on the principles of nano encapsulation, the drink is actually composed of millions of molecule-sized flavor capsules in it, which can be activated by microwave to release different flavors of particles, so as to endow the wine with different tastes and looks. The product is a part of “Next Nature” studio’s “Nano Supermarket”, a storefront of speculative nanotech products capable of being mass produced within the next ten years.

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Wearable electronics are much closer to us, with the development of new electronic transistors made of cotton thread by researchers from the United States, Italy and France. To create these electromechanical transistors, scientists coated each cotton fiber with a mix of gold nanoparticles, and then a polymer and waterproof glycol coat following that. The resulting cotton yarn is a flexible textile semiconductor, thus clothes can double as computers or other electronics in the future.

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Jayne Vidheecharoen from the Art Center College of Design, California has invented a machine that converts your physical hands into virtual ones, so as to help you control the virtual world directly. Just as shown in the video, the prototype of the technology uses Google Streetview as its background, with various objects of the Streetview that are controlled by people’s hand. Though quite amazing, the prototype model is actually constructed with really cheap components such as a duct tape, a desk lamp, an end table, fabric scrap, a borrowed monitor and a cheapest possible webcam, as the designer listed on her blog.

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Over one hundred years ago, the Wright brothers invented a practical flying machine that allows humans to fly like birds, and today Jarnos Smeets from Netherlands has created a Human Birdwings that makes us not only fly like birds, but look more like them. These wings seem interesting, composing of an HTC Wildfire S, a Wii remote and something else to be controlled by a person’s waving of his arms as if to fly. But currently the project is still under experiment, requiring further development to turn them into real wings that can help human to fly.

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Diaper for men? Sounds bit of ridiculous, it is real product recently showcased at the Eco-Products 2011 in Tokyo. The pas has a cozy penis pocket, an electronic urine sensor, and a suction tube that’s hooked to a bedside vacuum with a tank. Whenever the diaper detects urine, the vacuum then starts sucking until the pad becomes virtually dry once again. That means the diaper not only features an outstanding ability of absorbing urine, but also quite ideal for reuse. According to its demonstration on the Eco-Products 2011, the vacuum can suck up almost all the urine, leaving merely a maximum of 0.5 cc (0.01 ounces) in the pad.

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Anyone cares about the astronauts’ weight, except for their families? Anyway, the French scientists have claimed capable of calculating astronaut’s weight in zero gravity using a body tracking camera system built into Microsoft’s Kinect gaming sensor. To achieve that, the researchers firstly utilized the Kinect’s depth-sensing ability to create a 3D model of an astronaut, and then ran their calculation using a statistical model that links weight to body measurements based on a database of 28,000 people. The result turned out with a high accuracy of 97%, corresponding to an average error of just 2.7 kilograms.

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Incredible techniques that ever appeared in science fiction novels are gradually emerging in our real world: quite soon the circuits will heal themselves using liquid metal. That amazing news comes from University of Illinois, the scientists of which created tiny micro-capsules that contain liquid metal and built them on top of the conventional strip of metal. So whenever the circuit is broken, some capsules near the gap will then be wrenched open to release liquid metal so as to bridge the gap and keep the circuit working. It only takes microseconds for the crack to be healed, while the repaired circuits still features a 99 per cent of the original conductivity.

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Quite soon in the future we’ll be using solar paint on our houses to harvest energy to power the household electricity, as researchers from the University of Notre Dame have developed low-cost solar paint using nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, coated with cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. Once brushed onto any conducting materials and exposed to the sunlight, the paint will then create electricity with a light-to-energy conversion efficiency of 1%. Even though its efficiency isn’t high enough, the researchers are still trying to improve it, so as to make the solar paint both low-cost and high-efficiency for household use.

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Scientists from China have recently brought good news for people who seldom want to clean their clothes: the self-cleaning clothes. The new material was created by coating titanium dioxide and nitrogen on cotton fibers, and those two elements will break down dirt and kill microbes once exposed to the sunlight. Additional nanoparticles using silver and iodine are also adopted to accelerate the discoloration process. Of course the self-cleaning clothes can be washed with water too, as the special coat is claimed to be robust enough to withstand washing and drying.

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New developments have been found in the Electronic Skin field, because researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab have created both flexible and stretchable electronic skin using semiconductor-enriched carbon nano tubes. The electronic skin is proved capable of detecting and responding to touch, and expected to provide lithography-free fabrication of low-cost flexible and stretchable electronics in the future in combination with inkjet printing of metal contacts.

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Change, change, almost every day we’re delivering new changes happened in the world. Today’s news comes from Japan, where scientists from Toray Industries have developed samples of the world’s first renewable, bio-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber, which is what polyester is made of. The new creation is durable, coming with all good features as common polyester does while is better and safer to the environment since it is constructed of renewable material.

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I love vending machines, because I could always easily find my favorite cola there. But things are different now, as the Transparent Touchscreen Vending Machine developed by Sanden, in cooperation with Okaya Electronics and Intel offers me another reason to appreciate the machines: you love it simply because the vending machine is fabulous! It comes with a 65-inch full HD vertical screen on front, displaying animated graphics, clock time and other information from time to time. As people walk by, it would display customized menus based on facial recognition technology.

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Based on their observations and researches of carol, scientists from Stanford University have developed a new technology to produce cement by mimicking carol’s action of taking in minerals and CO2 to build its hard exoskeleton. Therefore, during the construction process of the new cement, the material actually absorbs CO2 and dissolves it instead of releasing CO2 as common cements do, so as to benefit to the environments. The new cement is durable too, strong enough to last for a long time.

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The augmented reality technology has been widely used in various industries, to add more fun into virtual games, to allow for a more convenient operation remotely, and even endow us with the ability to see through clothes. So you’re now exciting, right? Let’s welcome the X-Ray augmented reality app by clothing retailer Moosejaw then. The app uses your mobile device’s camera and some augmented reality trickery to help you see totally different images as you scan the models’ bodies in the catalog. It’s really superb and become quite popular on-line, which has been downloaded for seventy-five thousand downloads in five weeks. Also, the app has brought the retailer with more profit, as a 37 percent boost in sales has been created compared with the same period a year earlier.

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Not only designers, but also the scientists are pursuing things claimed to the “world’s first”, “world’s largest” or “world’s smallest”. However, the researchers are doing that not to set a new Guinness World Record but to make technology serve people better. Put forward by German physicists from University of Stuttgart and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, the world’s smallest heat engine is only a few micrometers wide, almost the same size of a human hair! That’s really incredible, but you can check out the link below for details if you’re interested in the engine.

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Time to make a change, within 12 to 24 months Tech Company Senseg will release “Feelscreens” to take the place of “touchscreens”. But currently shown to us is still a prototype tablet, which allows the users to feel like they’re touching something textured as they touch the flat screen. The tech is mainly based on an electrostatic-field-based system that makes different parts of the screen to produce varying degrees of friction, so that anything displayed on the screen may send a real touching feel to users.

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It’s never impossible to see robots act as flexibly as human beings, because there’re many more techniques created to endow robot machines with powerful abilities, and the Elastic USB Cable is rightly one of those great inventions. The new cords turn to be really flexible, capable of being stretched by a factor of 1.5, and thus ideal for producing clothes built with electrical devices or the skins for humanoid robots.

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The treatment for cancer may soon find a more effective alternative, as scientists from Japan and America have collaborated with a new reagent that makes cancer cells glow and thus visible to human’s naked eyes.

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Researchers at the University of Michigan are currently busying with their cyborg insects that would be used in small spaces or nuclear disaster locations to assist people to collect information or do something else. These insects are all installed with sensors in their bodies, which are powered by the energy generated from their own wing motion. When fully-developed, these insects can help to investigate hazardous environments that are dangerous to humans, thus to find their application value.

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Apparently the computers will become much smaller than we’ve ever imagined, because we people may finally serve as part of the computer. Or in other words, the computer is rightly built in human bodies. Put forward by a team from Washington University, the new contact lenses are embedded with a mini computer that enables people to read their emails directly via the contact lenses. The mini computer’s circuits are made from layers of metal, only several nanometres thick and thus thin enough for comfortable wearing. But is it safe to have circuits in our eyes? That still needs to be further researched and developed.

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Although computers are still designed without emotion or spiritual excitement, they now at least can read your emotions. The new computer system is developed by researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, who have looked at 60 acoustic parameters including the tenor of a user’s voice, the speed at which one speaks, and the length of any pauses, in order to let the computers understand the change of your emotions. Besides, based on predictions of where the conversation may lead, the system can even adapt its speech accordingly and therefore to go through a good conversation with the human users.

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The Bank of Canada has decided to release new $100 bill made of a plastic polymer all over the country. Due to its special material, the new bills are harder to counterfeit, longer to use and cannot be destroyed by liquid. These plastic bills are expected to be used for up to 22 years, which is 1.5 times longer than paper bills. As the $100 bills are widely accepted by Canadian people, the bank announced that $50 bills, $20 bills, $10 bills and $5 bills will also be released by the end of 2013.

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Welcome to learn about another world’s best invention and this time we’ll show you new artificial muscles that can contract and twist, made by researchers from the University of Texas using cylindrical übermolecules. By twisting together “untold billions” of microscopic, straw-like carbon nanotubes into filamentous strands of “yarn”, the researchers have successfully endowed the artificial muscle with an outstanding nanoscale motor capable of spinning at nearly 600 rpms.

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With a density of 0.9 mg/cc, the world’s lightest material is put forward by researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology. The material features a unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture, 99.99% of which is air and only 0.01 percent is solid metal. Thus it weighs incredibly light, even about one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam, and can stand safely on the top of dandelion. Even so, the material still comes with a good mechanical behavior, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50 percent strain and high energy absorption.

“Gelpoly” is a surface protection and surface ornamentation adhesive film that features an excellent self-tackiness and removing ability. Showcased during ‘The 19th Korea International Sign & Design Show (KOSIGN 2011)’, the new sheet is mainly made of polyester film, also with a special Olefin elastomer resin.  Except for its easy adhesion, the film is even re-adhesive with water.

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Milk can build your clothes? German biochemist/fashion designer Anke Domaske says “yes”. The young lady recently received an innovation award from the German Textile Research Association, due to her creation of the hypoallergenic fabric made from sour milk. Quite surprisingly, the fabric is not cheap to make, costing even more than the money spent in producing organic cotton fabric. On the other hand, Domaske’s fabric actually needs only 2 liters of water for 1 kilogram of fabric, compared to more than 10,000 liters of water required to make the same amount of cotton. So what do you think, the money or the water is more important?

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Scientists from Osaka University applied the augmented reality technology into real life and developed this wearable “Parasitic Humanoid” system that allows people to directly guide the hands of others even at a far-away distance. The guidance system is composed of three parts, including a head-mounted display, a Panasonic laptop and an HD camera. Although its set-up is really simple, the function it finally features is quite powerful, and you may check out the video below to see the system’s performance.

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As the best thing we’ve ever met until now for us to use the Kinect, Microsoft’s “Code Space” is a smart system that combines the Kinect gaming controller with laptops and cellphones, in order to bring people a totally different experience of meeting. It allows people to actively participate in the meeting, to upload or download meeting data directly with their gestures or cellphone. Check out the video below and you’ll know how wonderful the “Code Space” is.

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Apart from the Black Hole, the new black material developed by NASA may be the most-efficient material to absorb light. It’s a special coating blacker than ordinary black materials, featuring an outstanding ability to absorb almost all the light that hit it. Through the visible spectrum it absorbs about 99.5 percent of the light hitting it, and at the ultraviolet and infrared ends the black coating sucks up to 98 percent of light. The coating is made from carbon nanotubes, and can be applied to many types of materials to form an absorbent coating on them.

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Ross Nanotechnology’s NeverWet Spray is a magic product that makes liquids never stick onto anything it’s applied to, simply because the spray is silicon-based super-hydrophobic. In the video below, you’ll see chocolate running off the shoes without leaving even a bit on them, and that’s really incredible.

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Traditional clothes, especially those made from synthetic fiber, burns so easily in flame that they usually result in heavy burns to people who get stuck in fire.  To solve that problem, researchers from Texas A&M University have developed a nontoxic fabric that is fire-resistant. The new fabric is composed of renewable ingredients like clay and chitosan, and forms a protective layer of foam on the clothes’ surface to prevent the fabric from igniting when fire is applied to it. It is said that the flame-resistant fabric could find applications in clothes, car seats and many other fields, thus featuring a wide prospect in the market.

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Two things, both the labels and water-resistant wax, are really annoying elements that I never want to see on my apples. But they’ve still been there for quite a long time, until the Fruit Wash Label to end them. From Amron, the new label can serve as an organic soap to wash off the water-resistant wax, when it is rubbed with water. In that case, labels are never discarded to leave a footprint to the environment, and meanwhile the fruits we eat will be much cleaner for healthy diet.

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The material is really magic, as it can fold up itself automatically once you shine the light on it. But as a matter of fact, the principle of the origami is quite simple: different types of materials feature different levels of ability to absorb energy. So you can successfully do the experiment too: prepare a sheet of pre-stressed plastic, print bold black lines onto it, trim the sheet into the shape you want, and shine an infra-red light on it – look, the material then  folds itself. Incredible? You should have a try too.

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Can balloons be used as an input device? Even though currently they cannot serve as functionally as keyboards or touchscreens, the system invented by a research group from Osaka University indicates that a balloon is really able to input and send your messages. With a pressure sensor and a microphone built inside the balloon, it can detect the distinctive sounds of stroking, striking the balloon or feel the change the pressure when it is squeezes, so as to recognize your actions.

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The Zoological Institute at the University of Kiel has drawn an inspiration from geckos and insects which have an ability to defy gravity, to develop a new dry adhesive tape that features quite outstanding performance. Moreover, the super-strong tapes can maintain its boning strength even when it has been used for thousands of times. It can also work under water, and leaves no sticky residue.

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Technology changes the life, and quite soon you’ll see fabric that can convey therapeutic treatments through the skin. Developed by Schoeller Textil AG, the “iLoad” is made to soak up positively charged medical emulsion and then release the substance into the wearer’s skin when triggered by warmth, perspiration or other elements. Moreover, the fabric can be washed with industrial machines to remove lingering residue and then make it ready for reuse. Except used for medical treatment, the “iLoad” fabric is expected to create odor-neutralizing clothes too.

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