Innovation

Each Librii site will include an anchor building for housing collections, an e-hub with computers and an agora equipped with WiFi.

Smart Startup

Building Libraries Along Fiber-Optic Lines in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Washington, D.C.-based startup, Librii, is rethinking what a library looks like

This robot, made of drinking straws, teaches kids how to hack.

This Week in Crowdfunding

A Kit to Make Robots Out of Drinking Straws and Other Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded

Perhaps a three-dimensional paper mount of an animal is just what your living room needs

Xerox founder Joe Wilson with the 914, which could make copies up to 9 by 14 inches.

How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked—and Played

Decades before 3-D printers brought manufacturing closer to home, copiers transformed offices, politics and art

Someone Built a Bold New Font Out of Buildings

Created out of aerial photography, you'll never guess where the "O" comes from

The lab-on-a-chip gets the power it needs for testing though the headphone jack on a smartphone, and sends the results through the port to the phone for computation, display and storage.

This $34 Smartphone-Assisted Device Could Revolutionize Disease Testing

A new low-cost device that plugs into a smartphone could cut down on expensive lab tests

As a kid, you may remember getting your first glimpse of paramecium in pond water or the cell structure of an onion by peering through a microscope.

Ultra-Cheap Microscopes Could Save Millions of Lives

Researchers are designing portable microscopes that cost just a few dollars to make

Revolution Bioengineering is working to genetically engineer petunias that continuously change from pink to blue and back again.

Art Meets Science

Would You Like to Grow Color-Changing Flowers?

A Colorado company is working to genetically engineer petunias that change colors throughout the day

The Zboard 2 is an electric skateboard that can reach speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.

This Week in Crowdfunding

Five Wild Ideas: From a Vest for Weight Loss to an Electric Skateboard

Plus, building blocks for children inspired by Archimedes

Google's driverless car prototype. Is this the cab of the future?

Cabs of the Future Won't Have Drivers

Recent moves by Uber and Google may foreshadow a battle over who will control fleets of autonomous cars on city streets

None

A Man With ALS Says "I Love You" to His Wife for the First Time in 15 Years

A new invention from Not Impossible Labs allows Don Moir to script an audible love letter

Imagining the future of artificial hearts.

Help for the Brokenhearted: Wearable, Biosynthetic and 'Beatless' Artificial Hearts

Cow-machine hybrids and continuous-flow technologies are helping people survive devastating heart failure

Round Table

What is the Most Important Innovation in the History of Rock 'n' Roll?

Musicians, historians and critics tell us what they consider to be the greatest game changers for the industry

Trained in CPR? This Life-Saving App Could Make You a Superhero

When someone is experiencing cardiac arrest, PulsePoint sends alerts to CPR-certified invidividuals nearby

The sleek 11-foot model of the Enterprise had been seen in the 1966-69 television series Star Trek.

A Feisty Capt. James T. Kirk Checks in on the Starship 'Enterprise'

When the model for the TV show Star Trek was removed for conservation at the National Air and Space Museum, the actor William Shatner weighed in

This personal robot can listen, talk, take photos and even feel temperature.

This Week in Crowdfunding

Five Wild Ideas That Just Got Funded: From an Automated Home Brewery to a Personal (Robot) Assistant

Two other quirky inventions teach music in novel ways

Spire’s Austin Ellis shows off a satellite frame at Spire's San Francisco headquarters. Components, like the weather sensor, stack on top of each other inside the frame. Solar panels and antennae fold out from the frame once the device is in orbit.

New Satellite Network Launching This Year Aims to Improve Weather Forecasting

With a network of compact, low-cost weather satellites with smartphone-like internals, startup Spire plans to make future forecasts a lot more reliable

A new hotel in Japan will have robots serving its front desks.

Japan Announces Plans for the First Hotel Run by Robots

Slated to open July 17, the hotel in a Japanese theme park will be staffed by "actroids"

Amager Resource Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Under construction. This power plant, which turns household waste into electricity, is the cleanest in the world. "Normally, you want to be as far away from the power plant as possible because of the toxins, but in this case you literally have fresh mountain air on the roof of the building. Since we have snow in Denmark, but we don't have hills, we made the roof into a big ski slope," Ingels explains. The chimney puffs a giant steam ring each time a ton of carbon dioxide is emitted.

Designing Buildings For Hot Climates, Cold Ones and Everything in Between

A decade's worth of sustainable projects by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm, BIG, are now on display at the National Building Museum

Art Molella delivers his speech on innovation.

The Innovative Spirit - OLD

The Recipe for Innovation Calls for a Little Chaos and Some Wall Bashing

Scholar Art Molella chronicles the habits, habitats and behaviors of the men and women who invent

Faced with the only high-cost options, Smithsonian researcher Whitman Miller began building his own portable, inexpensive monitoring stations.

Saving Money is Great, but Saving the Chesapeake Bay Will Be Even Better

Whitman Miller's “off the shelf” technology may answer complicated questions about rising CO2 and ocean acidification

Page 106 of 148