If smartphones can fit a whole world of functionality within our pockets, why can’t the same features be incorporated into useful tools for people with disabilities? In a particularly cool example of accessible technology, the WeWALK Smart Cane does just that. Created by engineer Kursat Ceylan of the Young Guru Academy (YGA) in Turkey, who’s visually impaired, the device is integrated with a voice assistant and Google Maps, and features ultrasonic sensors that detect obstacles above chest level.

“In these days we are talking about flying cars,” says Ceylan, “but these people have been using just a plain stick. As a blind person, when I am at the Metro station I don’t know which is my exit – I don’t know which bus is approaching or which stores are around me. That kind of information can be provided with WeWALK.”

The cane alerts its user to their surroundings using voice and vibration, and features a touchpad, microphone, accelerometer and Bluetooth connectivity to just about any smartphone.

While a lot of these great ideas never make it past the conceptual stage, the WeWALK cane is already available for purchase for $499. Back when it was just a prototype, the WeWALK broke records on Turkey’s crowdfunding platform, and it’s now in production. It’s also open platform, so developers around the world can create their own application to work with it, potentially opening up the ability to use it with all sorts of apps.

As it turns out, surveillance cameras that have been “trained” to spot and read license plates aren’t all that good at discerning real ones from fakes. That makes it pretty easy to trick Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems with images of fake plates, making it possible to flood their databases with unusable information.

When hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose learned – through a conversation with Dave Maass, a researcher with the Electronic Frontier Foundation – that the plate readers kind of suck at their jobs, she got an idea. Her new line “Adversarial Fashion” is the result. Unveiled at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas last week, the garments spell out the words of the fourth amendment of the US constitution, which protects Americans from “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

The cameras, however, read the garments as real license plates, and the proof is in their databases. ALPRs are always on, and can collect thousands of plates per minute, so for the system, there’s nothing unusual about capturing so many individual plates at a time. As Rose’s presentation at DefCon noted, overloading this kind of surveillance technology is one of the main methods of confounding it (along with blocking the collection of information.)

If you’re interested in making your own, Rose has provided all of the information you need to do it. But her line of Adversarial Fashion is pretty affordable, with prices starting at $24.99 – check it out here, or follow the brand new Instagram account @adversarialfashion.

Despite the fact that wood has been in use as a primary building material for millennia, it’s being hailed as the material of the future. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

Wooden architecture is most often associated with cabins and other rustic styles, but that perception is increasingly out of date. Recent innovations are producing wood that’s capable of standing in for more environmentally harmful materials like plastic, steel, concrete and even glass. It might seem like increasing demand for wood could deplete forests more rapidly than ever, contributing to the climate crisis, but the key to sustainability lies in preserving large tracts of old growth forest while also maintaining well-managed working forests using modern methods that protect biodiversity.

Self-Shaping Wood

Wood may seem relatively inflexible when it comes to architecture, but it doesn’t have to be. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute for Computational Design and Construction have found a way to create bending, twisting wooden structures in a process that actually makes the wood stronger than ever. But the best part is, unlike mechanical forming processes that require heavy machinery, this technique requires very little energy. “Urbach Tower” is the result of these efforts, a “shelf-shaping” 46-foot-tall tower in Germany.

The components for the tower were designed and manufactured in a flat state, and once they were assembled, the wood was allowed to go through its natural drying and shrinking process, warping it into a shape of its own creation.

Cooling Wood

A new type of wood developed by a team at the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado Boulder is capable of passively shedding heat, reflecting sunlight and warmth to lower a building’s electricity consumption. It’s created by removing a natural polymer called lignin, which holds together the molecules of wood’s other main component, cellulose. Then the wood is compressed to create a strong, pale material made up solely of cellulose fiber, and a hydrophobic compound is added to make it water-resistant. Since lignin absorbs heat, its removal gives the resulting material a cooling effect.

Fireproof Wood

Not only have those same scientists at the University of Maryland created cooling wood, they’ve found a way to make bulletproof wood through densification, which also makes it resistant to fire. The team led by Liangbing Hu first chemically treated the timber with sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfite to partially remove its lignin, then hot-pressed it to create a dense, laminated material free of the air changes that increase flammability. When burnt, the modified wood doesn’t catch fire; instead, it becomes even more fireproof by forming an insulating exterior layer of char.

Wood Based Plastics

We don’t have to give up the convenience and versatility of plastic in order to curb rampant pollution. We just have to make it out of different materials. Previously, we’ve seen plastic alternatives made of edible algae, the skeletons of arthropods like shrimp, milk proteins and mushrooms. But wood is another contender. Developed by a research group at the Technical University of Hamburg, “lignopure” is a lignin-based plastic that’s completely non-toxic and biodegradable. The lignin is released using a high-pressure process requiring only CO2, water and enzymes, producing a flexible material that can be molded, 3D printed and formed into thin layers for use as tape and packaging.

Transparent Wood

Someday soon, wood could even replace glass. Researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm chemically modified wood to make it transparent without losing its mechanical properties – again, by removing the lignin. The team filled the resulting micros coping holes with acrylic to produce a translucent piece of wood with a frosted effect. Then, mixing it with polyethylene glycol, a “phase-change material” that melts at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, they make it fully transparent and capable of releasing energy when cooled, producing a clear “pane” of wood that can absorb energy during the hottest hours of the day and release it at night when it gets chilly.

Cross-Laminated Timber

Now that studies have proven the strength and fire-resistance of cross-laminated timber (CLT), building codes around the world are relaxing to enable the construction of super-tall timber towers. So many of these wooden wonders are under construction, it’s hard to keep track of them all, each vying for the title of “world’s tallest wooden building.”

CLT is an engineered material created by stacking and gluing small pieces of structural lumber, with each layer perpendicular to the one below it. The result is so durable, it’s seen as a viable alternative to steel and concrete, while being competitive in price and far less energy-intensive to manufacture. It’s also a lot more fire-resistant than timber in its natural state. All of these qualities point to the possibility of increasingly wood-filled cities in the near future.

Wooden Bricks

Lots of modular building systems use stackable components made of composite materials to eliminate the need for nails, screws and other fasteners. But almost none of them use wood like Brikawood, a a system of wooden bricks that lets you build an entire house with just a handful of tools. The interlocking pieces of wood snap together so firmly, they become totally rigid with mechanical, acoustic, thermal and anti-seismic properties, and you don’t even have to add any cladding or membranes. The walls are instantly finished on both sides.

In Milan, the eyes and voices of immigrants, refugees and marginalized citizens take on a surprising form to interact with the public, telling people their stories. While drones are typically associated with surveillance, war and intrusion, here they become messengers in an attempt to cross cultural divides and encourage empathy.

Loro (Them), a live performance by New York-based, Poland-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, came to Italy for the first time on June 6-8, during Milan Photo Week, with support from non-profit public art organization More Art. The multimedia installation anthropomorphizes drones “to reclaim a broader conversation about technology’s relationship to humanity,” equipping them with screens that show only the eyes of people involved in the project. A megaphone-like mouth tells each person’s story as the drones fly at low altitude outside Milan’s Teatro Continuo Burri.

“Each drone represents a person, elaborating on the lived experience not only of immigration, but more generally of social and political marginalization, addressing highly topical issues such as cohabitation, citizenship, representation, and even hospitality. The title of the project Loro (Them) immediately emphasizes the distance that is created by those who are mistakenly considered different—highlighting the all too familiar ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ dichotomy. At the same time, the artist seeks to cancel this divisive space, putting audiences face to face, albeit virtually, with real stories and real individuals.”

For all their good intentions, the drones still have a bit of a disconcerting look to them, at least in the initial renderings, but they’re a tad less imposing in real life, as seen in this video by the Instytut Adama Mickiewicza. Whether there’s a disconnect between the stories of these so-called “invisible citizens” and the technology used to present them may depend on your personal view of drones. If you find them creepy, do you think that view would ease at all when they’re humanized like this?

Loro (Them) is just the latest thought-provoking project from Wodiczko, an internationally known artist, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and former director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and of the Interrogative Design Group at MIT.

“Throughout his career, Wodiczko has been instrumental in combining new technologies with art. Working with still images, video and audio, Wodiczko has become famous throughout the world for his large-scale public screenings of iconic buildings and monuments. Since 1980 he has created more than 90 screenings worldwide, including “Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection” in New York City in 2012 commissioned by More Art.”

Images of performance via Art Tribune

Not many sushis restaurants ask their patrons to provide urine and saliva samples upon entrance, but in our era of hyper-personalization, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. From the Japanese company Open Meals, which debuted its complex 3D-printed sushi at the South by Southwest festival in Austin last year, comes a new range of high tech food that’s tailored specifically to the nutritional needs of its diners.

Set to launch in Tokyo next year, “Sushi Singularity” relies on a system of 3D printers, CNC routers, lasers, robotic arms and other components most often associated with industrial design to produce edible sculptures made of sushi ingredients. In each item on the menu, you’ll find common sushi elements like tuna, squid, eel and seaweed, but it’ll be in a form you’ve never seen before.

In order to mix each custom cocktail of nutrients in an aesthetically pleasing way through its machinery, Open Meals transforms each ingredient into a gel or paste. Menu items include “micro pillar saltwater eel,” “oze tick kappa roll,” “dash soup universe,” “anisotropic stiffness steamed shrimp,” “negative stiffness honeycomb octopus,” “cell cultured tuna,” “powdered sintered uni” and “squid castle.” When customers make a reservation, it’ll trigger the system to automatically send them a biodata kit in the mail, which requests urine, saliva and stool samples. The results will determine the exact creations you’re ultimately served when you arrive.

Here’s how they describe their process:

“Food Ingredient Cartridges: These will contain sustainable food ingredients such as seaweed and crickets, which are mixed with water, fiber, and enzymes for output. Nutrient Cylinders: 11 types of nutrients in cylindrical cartridges. Foods will be nutritionally optimized based on a Health ID. Alginate Fermenter: Produces spherical food in a chemical reaction between sodium alginate and calcium solution. Artificial light farm: Cultivates fresh vegetables in enclosed spaces through use of artificial light such as LEDs. Hot Water FDM: Items that cannot be formed at room temperature or in air can be realized by outputting them in hot water.”

“SLS: Laser Sintered 3D Printer. Powder-based raw materials are baked into specific shapes using lasers. FFM Control Interface: The brain of the entire machine, which combines various data to design and hyper-personalize food. Laser FDM: Thermolysis Laminated 3D Printer. The raw material is melted by heat and formed by stacking layers. Robot arm: The unit is equipped with an ultra-high precision arm. Chilled FDM: Outputs at ultra low temperatures to realize shapes impossible at room temperature. 6-axis CNC router: Cuts the material with a multi-axis router, enabling precise, elaborate modeling. Fermenter: Cultivates food ingredients in real time through precise management of water temperature and nutrients.”

Whether or not any of this actually sounds appetizing to you, the final result is certainly artistic, and perhaps a signal of what’s to come to the world of food in the near future as this kind of technology grows more accessible.