This is so cool; what a great idea!

Teens Invent Condoms That Change Color When They Detect STDs

These kids aren’t just all right, they’re brilliant. A group of schoolchildren have invented a condom that changes color when it comes in contact with a sexually transmitted disease (STD). Safe to say, this isn’t the glow many of us are anticipating between the sheets.

The condom, called S.T.EYE, won the health category at the TeenTech Awards in London, which is an annual competition that aims to inspire 11- to 16-year-olds to realize “their true potential and the real opportunities available in the contemporary STEM workplace.”

S.T.EYE would theoretically have molecules in the rubber that would glow when it comes into contact with different pathogens. The condom would glow green for chlamydia, yellow for herpes, purple for human papillomavirus (HPV) and blue for syphilis. The conversation that would follow would certainly have the culprit blushing bright red.

Not sure how practical it will be to put into place, but it is a very interesting concept.

Speaking of Mitchell & Webb...

This is fun...

An interesting new device

Smallest man-made pump revealed
It's the size of a human red blood cell. Really.

Wow!

High-Speed Camera Scans Books in Seconds

Just flip through the book under the camera lens and it takes pictures of the pages and then reconstructs them as flat even if captured at an angle. A 200-page book takes less than a minute to scan.

It's just a prototype, but think of how it could revolutionise digitilisation of print.

Wow.

Something that could open up a world for the blind

Blinded Merseyside soldier 'sees' with tongue device

A Merseyside soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq has said his life has been turned around by technology that allows him to "see" with his tongue.

L/Cpl Craig Lundberg, 24, from Walton, Merseyside, can read words, identify shapes and walk unaided using the BrainPort device.

The machine converts visual images into a series of electrical pulses which are sent to his tongue.

The soldier said the device gives off "a pins and needles sensation".

L/Cpl Lundberg lost his sight while serving with the King's Regiment after being hit by a rocket propelled grenade in 2007.

There's a video that accompanies the article that demonstrates the device. Although it's just a prototype, and an expensive one at that, there's hope that one day it will help those who are visually impaired navigate and read. The glasses have a camera and the device translates the letters or objects into a two-dimensional shape using electrodes on a 'lolly pop' held on the tongue. The lance corporal describes it like 'licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy'. The main drawback is since it is held on the tongue, you can't talk or eat at the same time you're using the device. Researchers are working on a smaller version that might fit in roof the mouth or such that would allow this at some point.

This is an excellent example of technology pursued in an effort to make people's lives better.

Missed this awhile back

U.S. Military Working on Flesh Eating Robot

Is this really a good idea? I wish I could find the animated short YKWIA showed me where the inventor's project went awry and his invention ate everything, even him.

I don't have a tag called 'Things That Might Run Amuck' but maybe I should.

Innovative idea of the week

Solar Cells — Made In a Pizza Oven using the oven, some nail polish, and an inkjet printer, dreamed up by an Australian woman .

A gizmo that could save lives

Colorizing technology highlights cancerous tissue

A combination of a dye and electronics leads to cancerous cells 'lighting up' under an imager so that surgeons knows what material still needs to be removed.

Move over, Edison

Remember when you were told in school that the first recording of the human voice was Edison's 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'? That was in 1877. Now an audio historian has uncovered four phonautogrammes recorded by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville 17 years before that, in 1860. The phonautograph was a hand-cranked device that created visual images of sound waves on sooty paper. Several of those found were dated and had been deposited at the French Academy of Sciences in 1861, when Scott sought patents on the technology. A laboratory in the US analysed the images and re-created the sound that was recorded there.

Listen to 'Au Clair de la Lune' as recorded on phonautogrammes at the First Sounds website. It's not clear by any means, but is recognisably a woman's voice. She is singing the beginning line of the second verse-'Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit'. It's possible, of course, that there are other recordings of the human voice that remain undiscovered, but for now, this is the earliest one that we know of.

Neat, hmm? Thanks to zzshupinga of LISNews for the story.