Last month, the Looking Glass Factory launched on Kickstarter to fund production of a personal holographic image display called the Portrait. Now the company has announced a new cloud-based service capable of adding depth to any two-dimensional photo to create a holographic image for viewing in devices like the Portrait. The company says that the cloud service makes use of […]

There are already computer vision systems and sensor-equipped gloves that can detect a person’s hand gestures. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed an alternative technology, however, that offers some key advantages. Computer vision systems not only require the user to have their hand clearly visible at all times, but they also raise privacy concerns, particularly if the […]

While ocean-based fish farms do help take pressure off of wild stocks, they have eco-unfriendly drawbacks of their own. A new underwater robot is being designed to address that situation, by autonomously inspecting the fish and their pens. Among the potential problems with marine aquaculture operations are the facts that non-native fish may escape and upset the local ecological balance; […]

Leaky gas wells are not only a waste of natural resources, but a significant player when it comes to climate change via the release of methane into the atmosphere. Engineers at Penn State University have developed a new type of flexible cement they say can help contain the problem, by being fed into the very fine gaps around deteriorating wells […]

While some snowboarders do find traditional boot-binding systems to be overly-fiddly, simple step-in systems have drawbacks of their own. The Quick Step Binding system, however, reportedly combines the best features of both. Created by Montreal-based snow sports company Unit, the Quick Step is claimed to work with any make or model of snowboard boot, it isn’t encumbered by snow buildup […]

GXN, the innovation arm of Danish architecture studio 3XN, has developed a twittering air-quality sensor that hopes to draw attention to the negative effects of air pollutionwithin our homes and offices. Called AirBird, it takes the shape and colour of the bright yellow canaries that used to be brought into coal mines to warn workers of carbon monoxide and other […]

Nitrogen and phosphorus are two of the key pollutants that have to be removed from sewage, and doing so typically involves two separate steps. Thanks to a newly-discovered bacterium, however, both could soon be removed at once. Currently, most wastewater treatment plants use one type of microbe in one reactor to remove nitrogen from ammonia, and another type in another […]

Radar and LiDAR have been incredibly quick and effective tools for mapping and surveying the Earth’s surface from aircraft and satellites, but while they can deliver accurate readings through cloud and even forest canopy cover, they can’t tell you what’s below the surface of the sea. Seawater absorbs far too much of the signal. Sonar remains the most effective way […]

While traditional diamonds are formed over billions of years deep in the Earth where extreme pressures and temperatures provide just the right conditions to crystalize carbon, scientists are working on more expedient ways of forging the precious stones. An international team of researchers has succeeded in whittling this process down to mere minutes, demonstrating a new technique where they not […]

While “traditional” objects may exhibit varying degrees of glossiness in different areas, 3D-printed items are typically uniformly shiny all over. That could be about to change, however, thanks to a new printer designed at MIT. When it comes to controlling the glossiness of 3D-printed objects, conventional printers are limited by the nozzles in their print head. Although the openings in […]