The mains outlet hasn’t changed much in 100 years. With the exception of adding grounding, the outlets are pretty much the same that your great-granddaddy encountered. A new Kickstarter project for a neat new outlet — called the Inlet — seeks to transform your outlets into safer, greener, and more attractive hubs in your household. Here more »

Thanks to a grant from NASA, Captain Pickard’s “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” command might soon be a reality. NASA has given $120,000 to Systems & Materials Research Corporation to begin research on a 3D food printer that can create a variety of edibles from common materials. The device would take proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and flavoring and layer more »

We all know that LED light bulbs are vastly more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs, but there’s a quirk in that efficiency that most folks may not realize. As higher currents are fed to LEDs, past a certain point they become way less efficient — a phenomenon known as “LED droop.” Researchers James Speck and more »

Imagine walking down the street at night, your pathway illuminated not by buzzing, harsh street lights, but instead by the warm glow of the trees lighting the road. Or an intimate dinner with your sweetie, illuminated not by candlelight, but by the bouquet of roses on the table between you. We may be quite some more »

Some readers at Treehugger didn’t quite take the hint (and didn’t know what NSFW means), so let me spell it out ahead of time: this post is naughty. If you’re at work, hanging out with your mum, or just can’t handle a bit of lascivious innuendo, don’t click play on the video embedded below. If you’re not averse to a more »

Mention Sharp and LEDs in the same sentence, and like most people, I expect, your mind drifts immediately toward LCD TVs. The company announced yesterday, though, that it’s introducing a line of “digital LED lighting products for commercial, industrial, retail and hospitality applications.” You might have noticed the lack of “residential” in that list, but more »

Treehugger has an intriguing new article about a new radiative cooling solar structure developed by researchers at Stanford University that can provide cooling for buildings — even in direct sunlight — by reflecting energy back into space. Unfortunately, the article is a little light on actual scientific explanation, and the actual paper that it cites is behind more »

According to Engadget, LG is working on a washing machine that doesn’t require water at all. Of course, exactly how that works is still a mysterious trade secret. A little less mysterious is LG’s Styler, a cabinet you can put clothes in to “freshen” them without actually washing them. The press release further explains: “The more »

Let’s face it: most of you reading this probably gave up on DVD a long time ago as source of entertainment, aside from the rare disc not yet released on Blu-ray. Aman Russom, senior lecturer at the School of Biotechnology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, though, claims that his team has found a new more »

Hydrogen fuel cells are often touted as a panacea for our environmental problems, but the hydrogen used on those cells primarily comes from one of two places: Fossil fuels or electrical separation from water, which requires power, usually generated from — you guessed it — fossil fuels. The Air Force has apparently been working on more »