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Innovation

A Farm From a Box is capable of feeding 150 people.

Smart Startup

A San Francisco Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container

Brandi DeCarli, cofounder of Farm From a Box, wants to deploy farm kits to governments, NGOs, schools and individuals

Needle drop is one of the traits plant scientists at the Christmas Tree Research Center at Dalhousie University are hoping to improve.

Can Science Produce a Longer Lasting Christmas Tree?

LED Christmas lights make the needles hold on longer, and other discoveries from the world’s only Christmas tree research center

Iron-thiocyanate complex, droplet on surface

Art Meets Science

Time-Lapse Photos Reveal the Beauty of Metal Crystals Growing

Photographer Emanuele Fornasier spends hours capturing the intricacy of chemical reactions

Andreas Velten and his lab at the University of Wisconsin use this setup, complete with a fog chamber, to test their camera.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

This Camera Can See Around Corners

How a superfast, supersensitive camera could shake up automotive and exploration industries, as well as photography as we know it

Your breath might be bad, but it's also amazing.

New Research

Your Breath Does More Than Repulse—It Can Also Tell Doctors Whether You Have Cancer

An artificial “nose” could be the next tool for diagnosing illnesses from cancer to Crohn’s disease

Radio Nurse by Isamu Noguchi, 1937

The Innovative Spirit fy17

After the Tragic Lindbergh Kidnapping, Artist Isamu Noguchi Designed the First Baby Monitor

The six-decade career of the artist and commercial designer is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Marshall Field's was as much a part of Chicago's soul as the Lakefront and the Cubs.

For Generations of Chicagoans, Marshall Field’s Meant Business, and Christmas

The midwestern mainstay transformed commerce into a communal holiday spectacle

Mersiv is worn around a user’s neck, like a necklace, and features a silver dollar-sized pendant with an embedded camera and microphone.

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This Language-Teaching Device Constantly Whispers Lessons In Your Ear

A conceptual gadget called Mersiv immerses language-learners in their tongue of choice

Swabbing the toads to sample their microbiomes.

Meet the Colorful New Weapon Scientists Are Using to Save Toads From a Devastating Fungus

Researchers are supplementing the amphibians’ natural microbiomes with a fluorescent fungus-fighter they’ve dubbed “Purple Rain”

A cow is milked by a robotic voluntary milking system.

Rise of the (Cow Milking) Robots

The largest robotic dairy farm in the United States will be up and running in Michigan next year

How Chemicals Left Behind on Your Phone Could Identify You

Mass spectrometry is finding a new role in forensic science

Students of design at the Berlin Weissensee School of Art have prototyped a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands.

This Digital Prosthesis Could Help Amputees Control Computers

Designers are developing a new device that tracks gestures in an amputated limb and translates them to computer commands, like scroll and click

The Innovative Spirit fy17

This Device Could Revolutionize How Malaria Is Detected Around the World

The Magneto-Optical Detector (MOD) combines magnets and laser light to determine, in less than a minute, if a drop of blood contains malaria parasites

The Nobel Prize, named after the repentant creator of dynamite, has been awarded nearly every year since 1901.

What Does It Take to Win a Nobel Prize? Four Winners, in Their Own Words

Some answers: Messiness, ignorance and puzzles

Some of the performers are circus-trained, adding authenticity to the aerial acrobatics displayed.

The Innovative Spirit fy17

“Call Me Ishmael” Is the Only Melville Tradition in This Innovative Presentation of “Moby Dick”

Visceral, kinesthetic, cinematic, aural and psychological, Arena Stage’s new show about the 19th-century novel is a 21st-century experience

American Ingenuity Awards

Read the Letter Written by John Glenn to Honor Jeff Bezos for Blue Origin

Two weeks before he died, the legendary astronaut wrote a letter in recognition of the 2016 American Ingenuity Awards

Tamara Schwent and Kevin Curtis, PhD from Sirenas bringing in samples from the deep sea. This was a joint expedition with Chapman Expeditions and the Carmabi Research Station.

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Will the Next Big Cancer Drug Come From the Ocean?

A California startup “bioprospects” for sponges, algae and other organisms whose chemistry may be useful to the world of medicine

The Best Books About Innovation of 2016

If you have a lover of big ideas on your holiday shopping list, consider these thought-provoking titles published this year

The highlight of the Innoskate Cambridge 2016 program with 1,500 attending the two-day program was the best trick contest.

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What Skateboarding Tells Us About Innovation

Rodney Mullen, the godfather of skateboarding, says the sport is all about overcoming disbelief and seeking new connections

The Botswana Innovation Hub will be a new LEED-certified facility for technology research and development.

Step Inside a Virtual Building of the Future

Architects are embracing virtual reality and the complex designs they can create there

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