If you ask us, off-road camping is the best kind of camping. But hours after hours of brutal, hard-hammering, slow-crawling trail driving can also leave the body aching before you even step out of the vehicle. Unfortunately, many of the best 4x4 camper vans will require you to squeeze those aching limbs into an undersized bed at night. But the new Bürstner Habiton X gives you an agile Sprinter 144 on the trail and your own personal longitudinal bed at camp. That's all thanks to its space-optimizing transformer capabilities.

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Category: Campervans, Adventure Vehicles, Outdoors

Tags: burstner, Campervan, Off-road, Off-grid, Hymer, Transformable, RV, Outdoors and Camping, Camping

Dipa Kamdar/Kingston University/The Conversation

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Category: Chronic Pain, Illnesses and conditions, Body and Mind, Refractor: Science & Health

Tags: Melatonin, Joints, Muscle, Pain, Chronic pain, Medication, The Immune System

Evolution has already found solutions to lots of problems, so engineers more often borrow ideas from nature instead of reinventing the wheel. We’ve previously seen robots that can curl up like armadillos to protect themselves, and now researchers have developed yet another soft robotic gripper that mimics the tip of an elephant’s trunk. It’s called EleTac and, according to its creators, can actually “feel” the objects it touches.

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Category: Robotics, Engineering

Tags: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Biomimicry, Elephant, Touch

Most repair tools for the DIYer are functional, but can be cumbersome to carry around. The T.Fix, however – a triangular pocket-sized tool on Kickstarter – is a balance of function, versatility and modern elegant design.

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Category: Knives and Multitools, Gear, Outdoors

Tags: Tools, Kickstarter, Titanium, EDC

One common way of maximizing space in a tiny house from feeling is by embracing an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, but few models lean into this idea as much as the Shak. The off-grid home opens up almost its entire interior to the outside – even including the bathroom.

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Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors

Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home

Fixed-lens cameras have recently been enjoying a comeback as photographers look for something better than a phone without committing to a bag full of heavy lenses. That trend has been playing out across Sony's own RX range, from pocketable compacts up to the full-frame RX1R III, and now the company is bringing back its all-in-one superzoom bridge camera.

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Category: Photography, Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: Sony, Cameras, Super-Zoom, Compact, All-in-one

Construction has officially begun on New York City's most high-profile new supertall skyscraper. Rising to a height of 1,226 ft (373.7 m), 2 World Trade Center will finally complete the rebuilt World Trade Center skyline.

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Category: Architecture, Engineering

Tags: Building and Construction, Skyscrapers, New York, Foster and Partners, Office

The unearthing of 2,000-year-old boards has given historians a new insight into an ancient game akin to chess that was played much earlier, by everyone from royals to commoners in society.

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Category: Archaeology, Science, Refractor: Science & Health

Tags: China, ancient, Board, Fossils, Chess, Game, Puzzles

Toyota's first real swing at a mainstream battery-electric vehicle, in the awkwardly named bZ4X, felt like it had been designed by committee. Did a name change improve things?

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Category: Automotive, Transport

Tags: SUV, Toyota, Battery+Electric+Vehicle, Electric Vehicles, Reviews

A bug commonly cast as one of the gut’s good guys may have a darker side when dietary fiber is in short supply. Researchers have found that the gut microbiome could help identify people at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes years before the diagnosis.

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Category: Diet & Nutrition, Wellness and Healthy Living, Body and Mind, Refractor: Science & Health

Tags: Type 2 diabetes, Gut Bacteria, Microbiome, Fiber, Diet

Large and luxurious tiny houses are all well and good, but the Fairfax 20' draws on the small living movement's modest roots with a compact, no-frills model that's currently up for sale for just US$33,700.

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Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors

Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, House, Home, Micro-House

London-based architecture studio, David Kohn Architects, has transformed the top of a 19th-century Covent Garden warehouse with an unexpected addition. Dubbed Smart's Place, it’s a two-story home that feels more like a freestanding house with its own patch of ground, even though it’s an extension of a flat roof.

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Category: Architecture, Engineering

Tags: London, Home, House, Building and Construction

The Anthbot M9 is a surprisingly adept wire-free mower, which can master lawns of up to 1,000 sq m (around a quarter of an acre) for a fraction of the price of its famous competitors. And, importantly, it's incredibly easy to use, making it a great option for those new to home-robot life.

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Category: Consumer Tech, Technology

Tags: Mower, Smart technology, Smart Home, Artificial Intelligence, GPS, RTK positioning, Satellite Navigation, Reviews

Danielle Thielke and Giselle Woodley, Edith Cowan University, and Campbell Ince, Monash University/The Conversation

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Category: Society & Community, Wellness and Healthy Living, Body and Mind, Refractor: Science & Health

Tags: Addiction, Edith Cowan University, Monash University, Pornography, ADHD, Depression, Developmental conditions

Whether you’re constructing homes through your 3D-printing company, creating RPG tabletop terrains and cosplay weapons through your garage-based modeling operation, or providing disaster relief and building structures in distant locales or even on other planets, you don’t want to waste your medium. On Earth, that’d be financially and ecologically expensive, but in space, on the Moon, or on Mars, depleting your printing resource could be a disaster.

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Category: 3D Printing, Manufacturing, Engineering

Tags: Yokohama National University, Recycling

In the event that we spiral into a dystopian hellscape ruled by evil corporations in the future, it seems pretty reasonable to turn to a life of crime, swiping data and selling cyborg spare parts on the black market.

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Category: Motorcycles, Transport

Tags: Custom Bikes, Custom, KTM, Goodwood

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just approved a game-changing cholesterol drug, the first of its kind in a class that's otherwise administered by injection.

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Category: Heart Disease, Illnesses and conditions, Body and Mind, Refractor: Science & Health

Tags: clinical trials, Heart Disease, Cardiovascular, Statins, Cholesterol, Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol

People have been fantasizing about humanoid robots for decades. Movies such as Blade Runner, Ex Machina, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence imagined a future where robots and AI could interact with humans and save them from loneliness. Today, those sci-fi stories seem to be closer to reality than ever before, as Chinese company Ubtech has recently launched a product it calls the world’s first full-size, mass-produced "ultrabionic" companion robot.

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Category: Robotics, Engineering

Tags: Humanoid

In a world first, the Royal Air Force airdropped an autonomous drone boat from a military transport aircraft. Part of the Royal Navy's Project Beehive, a Kraken Technologies K3 SCOUT vehicle was parachuted from an Airbus A400M cargo plane over the North Sea.

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Category: Military, Engineering

Tags: Royal Navy, Royal Air Force, Autonomous, drones

Properly locking your bicycle can be a hassle, as you often have to secure the frame and rear wheel via a U-lock, while using a cable lock (or similar) on the front wheel. The Cordalock is out to change that, as it's a single lock that secures the whole bike.

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Category: Bicycles, Transport

Tags: Kickstarter, Lock, Security, Theft