iCandy: July 2010

This house, shaped like a giant loaf of bread, was one of the entrants in the 10-day Solar Decathlon Europe, which took place in Madrid in June. The houses, built by 17 teams from universities around the globe, consumed less than half the energy they generated. The surplus went to the grid.

Researchers at HeiQ Materials in Bad Zurzach, Switzerland, present yet another potential cleanup tool for the rapidly expanding crude oil spill fouling the Gulf of Mexico. The company makes a water-resistant, feltlike material it says is capable of absorbing up to seven times its weight in oil.

It’s not Star Trek’s holodeck, but the Virtusphere, a hollow globe 3 meters in diameter mounted on rollers that let it rotate in place, may be the next best thing. The Virtusphere registers your footsteps while you’re wearing virtual reality headgear so that the simulator or gaming system responds accordingly, helping to immerse you in a digitally created environment.

These artificial hands won’t be just dumb pinchers. Engineers at Otto Bock Health Care Products in Vienna are endowing them with technology called targeted muscle reinnervation, which connects the prostheses to nerve endings in the wearer’s arm so he or she has complete dexterity and the ability to “feel” what the hand is touching.

Icarus would be supremely envious of this Solar Impulse plane, which is powered by the sun’s rays. The 12 000 solar panels blanketing the HB-SIA’s fuselage and the 64-meter wingspan allow it to soar for days on end without jet fuel. Batteries store some of the solar energy during the day for use after dark.

Amid the bright lights and giant billboards of New York City’s Times Square is ample evidence that anonymity is a thing of the past. The still image of passersby was created using a tiny but sensitive surveillance camera perched more than 18 meters above the street.