inventions

A new refrigerated cargo box for moving pharmaceutical products has attracted the likes of delivery giant UPS, but its inventor may go out of business first because of a lengthy review process by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

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I watch a few documentaries a week, but it's rare for me to come across a series that I need to take notes on to keep up with. The first season of the BBC series "Connections" is one of those. It will blow your mind. James Burke walks us through the history of innovation from a touch stone (used to test the purity gold) right up to the atomic bomb, and explains how these two distant inventions are related. If you can see through the 1970s disco outfits and smoking on airplanes, you will be shocked that documentaries this good were being made 30 years ago.

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Even though the ring-shaped Air Multiplier fan isn't particular powerful at $300, it's still, well, a bladeless ring! And while the answer to what comes next can only truly be known in the jetstreams of genius cycloning around in Dyson's head, cartoonist Tobias Lunchbreath has taken a stab at what ring-shaped future luxuries we may have the pleasure to purchase in the future.

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A new coating turns insects' sticky climbing feet into a slippery mess, and could be the future of pest repellent, according to a new research paper. You hear that, bugs? If you can't crawl up my kitchen counter from the floor, you can't go waving your disgusting antennae all over my pizza, you insects-who-shall-not-be-named of apartment horror.

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How will people make dinner in 90 years? If the newly crowned winner of the Electrolux Design Lab 2009 challenge is any indication, it'll be as easy as 1-2-3. Cocoon is a fish- and meat-generating microwave, intended as a solution to preserve fishing and farming resources.

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Chinese locals have already demonstrated a knack for knocking together homemade flying contraptions and robots. Now one amateur inventor has created a full-fledged submarine built primarily from discarded oil barrels and tools bought at a second-hand market.

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The problem with working for a magazine about the future is that things don’t always—in fact, rarely—happen as you say they’re going to, and readers let you know. The call I’ve been getting harassed about for almost four years now: colored bubbles that don't leave stains.

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Carlos Owens had handled all kinds of machines as an army mechanic, but he always dreamed of using those skills for one project: his own "mecha,” a giant metal robot that could mirror the movements of its human pilot.

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"Let's run it through from the top. This is going downhill."

Dean Kamen is standing on a six-inch riser in an almost empty room in the basement of Westwind, his 32,000-square-foot house in Bedford, New Hampshire, trying to get this thing right. It's crunch time for FIRST, the high-school robotics competition Kamen founded two decades ago in an effort to get kids jazzed about engineering, to make science as sexy as sports. (FIRST = For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.)

In less than a month, 42,000 students on 1,700 teams will gather at 43 regional championships to showcase the ball-throwing 'bots that each team has spent six weeks assembling in novel ways from nearly identical boxes of parts. At stake -- besides glory -- is $9 million in scholarships.

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