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Recon Instruments and Contour have announced a new app that will let skiers and snowboarders look through the lens of their action cam right inside their goggles. The Contour Camera Connectivity App establishes a Bluetooth connection between Recon's MOD Live goggle display and the camera. Read More

Ever since University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov first isolated flakes of graphene in 2004 using that most high-tech pieces of equipment - adhesive tape - the one-atom sheet of carbon has continued to astound researchers with its remarkable properties. Now Professor Sir Andre Geim, (he's now not only a Nobel Prize winner but also a Knight Bachelor), has led a team that has added superpermeability with respect to water to graphene's ever lengthening list of extraordinary characteristics. Read More

Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, are one of the largest sources of coalition casualties in Iraq. Many of these IEDs take the form of roadside bombs, which are hidden on or alongside a road, then detonated when a moving vehicle passes near them. While there is more than one way of causing these bombs to detonate, they are often set off by a hidden human observer, using a radio-control device. Forces using the new Vehicle Protection Jammer from EADS subsidiary Cassidian, however, should find themselves at a greatly-reduced risk of such attacks. Read More

The 110th National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Show wrapped up on Sunday at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. With upwards of 1400 exhibitors and a record breaking 95,709 registered attendees, the trade-only show delivered four days of the most mind-boggling array of musical hardware (and software) that you're likely to see anywhere. We've already reported on some of the outstanding innovations we encountered - and there's more to come - but in the meantime we hope this photo journal will give you a taste of the musical wonderland that is the NAMM show floor. Read More

BMW M Performance is adding four new models to its product range, all powered by a new triple-turbocharger, piezo direct injection, three liter diesel motor that looks to be a contender for the engine of the year already - 280 kW, 740 Nm, instantaneous response, very economical, low emissions. The BMW M550d xDrive, BMW M550d xDrive Touring, BMW X5 M50d and BMW X6 M50d models will be seen at the Geneva Motor Show in March with availability just a few weeks later. The numbers are remarkable, Read More

In the face of potentially catastrophic effects on global food production, some have proposed drastic solutions to counteract climate change such as reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. A new study from the Carnegie Institution for Science examining the effects of sunshade geoengineering has concluded that such an approach would be more likely to improve food security than threaten it. Read More

Two things are certain in this crazy world - unicycles are cool and unicycles are seriously hard to ride. Well no longer. Now anybody can clown about on a unicycle and what's more, you don't even have to pedal. Thanks to Focus Designs and several years of development the learning curve required to master the unicycle has been reduced from several weeks to an average of 20 minutes, making it a viable and incredibly cheap-to-run personal transport. Read More

We’ve previously seen – or should that be “not seen” – invisibility cloaks in the laboratory that are able to render two-dimensional objects invisible to microwaves. Such feats relies on the use of metamaterials – man-made materials that exhibit optical properties not found in nature and have the ability to guide light around an object. Now researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) claim to have brought invisibility cloaks that operate at visible light frequencies one step closer by cloaking a three-dimensional object standing in free space with the use of plasmonic metamaterials. Read More

Debuted at the aural Aladdin's cave that was Winter NAMM 2012, the Z-Stik is a wooden zigzag-shaped multi-use percussive instrument that its creator says "combines the most intriguing elements of a rhythm stick, a shaker, a fingertip drum, and a rain stick." The Z-Stik can be tapped and patted in various ways to achieve nice, organic-sounding percussive hits, and shaken to, well, sound like a shaker. "You can get tones from deep bass drum all the way up to bongo drums and everything in between clean or snare," says creator Greg Dahl. Read More