Here’s a quick look at everything that caught my eye this past week:
Transition Contacts
Rejoice contact wearers. You too can now have the ability to adjust to changes in lighting, just like glasses wearers. Thanks to this breakthrough going out into the sun will no longer seem like a chore.
According to CNET, “The Food and Drug Administration last week approved photochromic soft contact lenses that automatically darken when exposed to bright lights. Johnson & Johnson says its Acuvue OasysContact Lenses with Transitions Light Intelligent Technology can be worn daily for up to 14 days.”
Grasshopper
Have you ever wanted to learn how to code? Well, now you can, in a fun and clever way, thanks to Google.
According to Engadget, “The app has a few legs up on other coding software. Not only is it free on the Google Play store, but it works in puzzles to make learning fun — and it has users learn JavaScript, a leading language used in many of the websites folks visit everyday. It’s already hit over 100,000 installs in the three days it’s been online, and most of the 1600 reviews are positive, so it seems like a great introduction.”
Graphene Breakthrough
Graphene, the wonder material that’s 200x stronger than steel, yet a million times thinner than a piece of paper, just received a significant upgrade that could finally help it replace silicon as a building block in the computer of the future.
As Extreme Tech puts it, “There are, broadly speaking, two major problems with graphene. The first problem is the difficulty in producing it at scale. The second is its electrical conductivity. The latter might seem like an odd problem, given that graphene’s phenomenal electrical properties are the reason semiconductor manufacturers are interested in it in the first place. But graphene’s unique capabilities also make it difficult to stop the material from conducting electricity. Silicon has a band gap — an energy range where it doesn’t conduct electricity. Graphene, in its pure form, does not. While a handful of methods of producing a band gap in graphene have been found, none of them have been suitable for mass production. That may finally change, thanks to a team from the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), who have found a way to create a graphene bandgap that’s identical to silicon’s.”
Are any of these the Greatest Idea Ever?
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