Passengers landing at Hong Kong International Airport this month will be greeted by a surprise friend waiting for them in the arrivals hall – a giant fluffy orange cat sleeping right in the middle of the bustling space.
Category: Holiday Destinations, Outdoors
Tags: Hong Kong, Cats, Airports, Art, Animals, artificial animal
Years of research and development, precision manufacturing, extreme testing, constant monitoring, and dozens of failsafes all go into preventing thermal runaway in batteries. Now, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are proposing a shockingly simple solution: batteries that simply cannot catch fire.
Category: Energy, Engineering
Tags: Sodium battery, Batteries, Fire-Proof Coatings, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Austrian e-bike maker Esel is bringing its stunning ash wood frames to the city for the first time with the new eUrban. The model launches with three international design awards already on the shelf – including the German Design Award 2026 – and two builds aimed at riders who want something different from the carbon-and-aluminum mainstream.
Tags: ebikes, Pedal-assisted, Wood, Carbon Fiber, City, Luxury
In January 2023, researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Germany noticed that an infant monkey known as a sooty mangabey had developed reddish skin lesions across its forehead, chest, and legs. Within 48 hours, the animal was reported dead. Over the following weeks, nearly a third of the group's 80 members developed similar lesions, and four infants died. The outbreak was caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV).
Tags: Orange Monkey, Monkeys, nature, Virus, Epidemiology
Rolls-Royce has just unveiled Project Nightingale – its second electric car after the Spectre, which the company is building to order for discerning customers who enjoy driving with the top down.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: Rolls+Royce, Electric Vehicles, Convertible
Strange times in the electric vehicle (EV) world at the moment. While the technology behind electric cars continues to gather momentum, the sales numbers are showing mixed results. On one hand used EV sales are nearing record growth, but new EV sales are actually in decline.
Category: Automotive, Transport
Tags: Electric Vehicles, Depreciation, Toyota, Tesla, America
When we first caught wind of Thule's all-new Widesky rooftop tent (RTT), we took the model name to imply a large, clear stargazing skylight on par with Inspired Overland's fully transparent roof. We had the idea of open views correct, but instead of a skylight, Thule's latest RTT encourages panoramic viewing in a different way, one we haven't seen on other rooftop tents. In doing so, it creates a high-riding space in which you'll want to spend both waking and sleeping hours.
Category: Tents, Gear, Outdoors
Tags: roof-top tent, Tent, Thule, Camping, Outdoors and Camping
Some people want a flashlight to do more than just emit a forward-facing cone of light. If you're one of those folks, you might like what the multi-functional Endorol has to offer.
Tags: Flashlights, Kickstarter
Keeping homes warm in winter is becoming extremely expensive, and many existing methods aren't always efficient. In the US alone, tens of millions of people struggle with energy costs and often have to cut back on basic expenses, including food, just to be able to afford heating. With ongoing fossil fuel dependency and climate change, traditional heating methods are not only costly but also environmentally harmful.
Category: Energy, Engineering
Designed to maximize comfort in a compact footprint, the Currumbin combines a smart layout with some well-thought-out features to create a home that's suitable for full-time life on wheels. There are lots of optional upgrades available too, including an off-grid setup and an outdoor terrace area.
Category: Tiny Houses, Outdoors
Tags: Building and Construction, Tiny Footprint, Micro-House, House, Home
Anbernic makes a wide range of portable gaming consoles whose designs leave nothing to the imagination, with the usual arrays of controller buttons alongside or below a display. With its upcoming device, it's taking a more discreet design direction, which should also make for an easier fit in your pocket.
Category: Consumer Tech, Technology
Tags: Gaming, Handheld, Portable Gaming, EDC
Baby caterpillars have figured out how to get themselves the royal treatment in certain ant colonies – getting carried around like precious cargo, fed on demand, guarded and being rescued from danger. But why would ants give this celebrity status to a caterpillar? The secret lies in perfect mimicry: the caterpillar copies not just the queen ant’s chemical scent, but the exact rhythm of her vibrations.
Tags: Insect, Ants, Butterfly, Caterpillar
Regional Electric Ground Effect Nautical Transport (REGENT) has completed the maiden flight of Squire, an autonomous variant of the company's Wing-in-Ground Effect Seaglider aircraft that's being pitched to the US military for logistical duty.
Category: Military, Engineering
Tags: Aircraft, Ground Effect Vehicle, Department of Defense
Energy can never be created or destroyed. That's basic Physics 101. You simply cannot create energy out of thin air. Yet researchers at Kyushu University in Japan say they have developed a technology that pushes the energy conversion efficiency of solar cells to 130%!
Category: Energy, Engineering
Tags: Solar Cell, Solar Power, Kyushu University, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, American Chemical Society
The market for versatile, vehicle-agnostic camper pods seems to be growing. A year after the original Tusca HitchHiker emerged, it morphed into the Freedom Camper lineup from Redneck Blinds in 2025. And we've noticed an uptick in similar drop-and-drive truck/trailer pods showing up from other builders.
Category: RVs and Motorhomes, Adventure Vehicles, Outdoors
Tags: teardrop trailers, Camping, RV, Pickup, Truck, Outdoors and Camping, Off-road, Hunting
Disaster sites vary as widely as rescue missions. Using robotics to help often requires multiple robots to survey, climb, lift, or manipulate objects. Athena unites all these capabilities in a single, rugged, autonomous platform built for search and rescue.
Category: Robotics, Engineering
This new flashlight is a lot more versatile than most other models designed for outdoorspeople, thanks to a clever feature and its surprisingly compact build.
Tags: EDC, Flashlights, Camping, lights, Kickstarter
For more than 150 years, vertebrate vision has been understood as a two-part system: rods for low-light conditions, and cones for bright light and color. That tidy division is now under the microscope, as researchers from the University of Queensland have discovered a new hybrid cell that breaks the rule: rod-shaped photoreceptors that run cone-specific genetic programs.
Tags: Vision, Fish, University of Queensland
Imagine learning to operate a piece of machinery you've never previously touched, not through a tutorial, but through your own hands electrically guided through the right motions. That's the core idea behind an AI-powered suit created by researchers from the University of Chicago.
Category: AI and Humanoids, Technology
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, University of Chicago, Control, Learning, wearable electronics
After Polish architecture firm KWK Promes won a competition in 2016 to design a luxury single-family home in suburban Vilnius, Lithuania, a law slashed the allowable building footprint in half. While the client saw this as a reason to move the project to another site, KWK Promes saw the problem from the unique view of architects – where constraints aren’t obstacles but essential drivers of innovation. Thus, the striking triangular form that would be known as the Trim House was born.
Category: Architecture, Engineering
Tags: House, Building and Construction, Home
