Foldable bike helmet will be able to slip into a bag or backpack. The helmet will be designed to appeal to both men and women. Sturdy enough to provide proper head protection, it will also encourage helmet wearing by being easily carried and stored.

Many people try to cope with heartburn with the help of baking soda. Soda helps to get rid of the pain only for a while. If constantly used soda affects the mucous coat of stomach, violates the acid-base balance and can assist with disease progress. Prolonged heartburn can cause serious complications and even precancerous condition. People, who rarely suffer from heartburn, can remove the pain attack after drinking half a glass of alkaline non-carbonated water or milk. Decoctions...

The solar heated clothes dryer will use solar heated water to heat and dry the clothes. To create the heat, roof top solar-thermal collectors will gather the solar energy and transfer the heat to water in a stratified storage tank. Four pipes will lead from the tank to the dryer, which will move the hot water to a tumbler, which will heat it, and move the cooled water back out. A cold internal surface will cause condensation and extract the moisture from the clothes.

New inflatable floatation device will be about the size of a mobile phone, and will be quickly inflated to provide support to exhausted swimmers. The device will be small enough to be strapped to the waist or gear. Pulling the trigger will cause the canister of compressed air to fill the tube, which will be bright yellow to make spotting by rescuers easier. The device will be attached to the user by a tether, and can be deflated and reused.

My great problem is that I'm constantly "feeding" washing machines with my cell phones, watches, keys, etc. My idea is to provide laundry rooms or washing machines themselves with X-ray or some other method to detect electronic devices before they start running.

The idea is to develop a self-healing concrete, which could cut building costs by reducing the amount of steel needed to add structural support. Under strain, concrete will develop cracks that will eventually spread and weaken the structure. Why not mix the spores of limestone-producing bacteria and some nutrients into the concrete material. The spores will remain dormant until they are activated by rainwater, at which time they will eat the nutrients and produce limestone, filling...

More secure than eye scans and voice prints, brainwave-based passwords will let users access their data with only a thought. The brainwave password system will be based around a $100 Neurosky Mindset headset that will communicate with the computer via Bluetooth. Volunteers could be asked to wear the headset and imagine a series of specific actions, such as singing a song or kicking a ball, which will allow to recognize the specific brainwave patterns of each volunteer and provid...

The pocket molecular sensor can identify the chemical makeup of an item in two seconds - from the nutritional content of food to whether or not a plant needs water. The spectrometer gathers information about an item's chemical makeup in the same way as the larger, professional models: by shining near-infrared light on the object and then analyzing the light that is reflected off the excited molecules. The data is sent via an iOS or Android app to the cloud, where advanced...

Using a series of mirrors and sunlight, it is possible to develop a more cost-efficient way of harvesting hydrogen, which could help make hydrogen more attractive as an eco-friendly fuel. The solar-thermal system will be designed to concentrate sunlight onto a single point atop a tower using a huge array of mirrors. As the tower gathers the heat, which will reach about 2500 degree F, the heat will be transferred to a reactor containing metal oxides. Heating the metal oxides to such...

Bedbugs can be a serious concern, particularly to East Coast urban dwellers. The new trap will be made from an inverted pet bowl with the outer edges covered in double-sided black tape. The inverted bowl will have higher walls than other traps on the market, and the bait (spearmint and coriander oil) will be augmented with CO2 canisters, sugar and yeast, which will produce the bedbug attractant carbon dioxide. Although the trap will not kill the bed bugs, it will serve as an early...