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Innovation / Technology

City Hall to Go is among the innovations the Office of New Urban Mechanics has developed in Boston to make services more accessible to residents.

City Governments Are Collaborating With Startups, and Acting Like Ones Themselves

By establishing offices that promote innovation, cities are taking more risks than ever before

This small adhesive pad tracks skin temperature and changes color if there's a problem.

Soon Our Phones Will Be Telling Us to Drink More Water

A new crop of health wearables aims to keep users hydrated

Pyrex celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

How Pyrex Reinvented Glass For a New Age

One hundred years after the birth of the brand, the Corning Museum of Glass pays homage to America’s favorite dish

Capsules of limestone-producing bacteria are embedded in the concrete.

With This Self-Healing Concrete, Buildings Repair Themselves

A concrete developed by Dutch scientists and embedded with limestone-producing bacteria is ready to hit the market

Cellulose nanofibril (CNF) chips made from wood could lead to flexible, biodegradable electronics that leach far less potentially toxic chemicals into the environment.

These New Computer Chips Are Made From Wood

A new technique replaces the bulk of smartphone-friendly microchips with a transparent, flexible material made from wood pulp

Tech Watch

Forget Credit Cards, Now You Can Pay With Your Eyes

A new Japanese phone with an iris scanner may mark a new era of password-free mobile payments

IBM Watson Makes Things Elementary, Indeed

The cognitive computing system makes for an ideal sidekick—in museums, kitchens, hospitals and classrooms

Maze-like landscaping has cut the decibel level of the ambient noise at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport in half.

This Crazy Land Art Deflects Noise From Amsterdam’s Airport

To drown out flight noise, the Amsterdam Airport turned to large-scale landscaping

Industrial designer Shin Kuo thinks everyone in a building should be able to live in the penthouse for a time.

Six Architectural Ideas That Could Change the Way We Live in Cities

Whether in response to polluted air or shrinking space, architects keep coming up with novel approaches to reshaping urban life

EcoLogicStudio's 430-square-foot gazebo, called the Urban Algae Folly, is on display at the Expo 2015 world's fair in Milan.

Will Buildings of the Future Be Cloaked In Algae?

Built by a London architecture firm, a new gazebo has a living “skin” that produces oxygen and absorbs considerable amounts of carbon dioxide

Make New Memories But Keep the Old, With a Little Help From Electrodes

Matthew Walker thinks there may be a way to simulate deep sleep—vital for memory—by sending a low current to a person’s brain

From the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center

The Ill-Fated History of the Jet Pack

The space-age invention still takes our imaginations on our wild ride

Tech Watch

Has a Finnish Company Found a Cure for Jet Lag?

Valkee is releasing the Human Charger, a new gadget that beams light through a user’s ears

A Harvard Student’s App Could Bring 911 Into the Future

With just one click, RapidSOS sends GPS and medical information to emergency dispatchers

CellScope automatically detects and quantifies infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood.

This Smartphone Microscope Uses Video to Spot Moving Parasites

A team of Berkeley bioengineers has created CellScope, a mobile phone attachment that can quickly test blood for tropical diseases

Watch As a Real-Life Hoverboard Whirs to Life

At Smithsonian magazine’s Future is Here festival, a few lucky attendees got to take a ride

University of Vermont engineering student Joseph Maser gazes down at the prototype of the inflatable airlock for space stations and vehicles that he and three other students built.

Made by College Seniors, These Seven Products Give Us a Glimpse Into the Future

Engineering students at universities across the country took these projects from sketch to reality in one year

Anthropocene

Is This Plan to Combat Climate Change Insane or Insanely Genius?

Harvard physicist David Keith wants to use two jets and one million tons of sulfur dioxide a year to halt global warming

The Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center is the first museum in the world to employ the newest laser technology in its IMAX Theater. Its super sharp 4K laser system encased in two perfectly calibrated fridge-sized projectors is enhanced with a new 12 channel sound system with a sub-bass.

How the Big Screen IMAX Experience Just Took a Quantum Leap Forward

The Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center Airbus Theater is among the first to receive a cutting-edge technology makeover

The first pair of experimental nylon stockings made by Union Hosiery Company for Du Pont in 1937 resides in the Smithsonian collections.

How Nylon Stockings Changed the World

The quest to replace natural silk led to the very first fully synthetic fiber and revolutionized the products we depend on

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