Lens fogging (镜片起雾) has been troubling glasses wearers for as long as glasses have existed; it happens more often to those needing to wear masks (口罩). Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland may have finally come up with a lasting solution to the problem that works whether someone is wearing a mask, or they’ve just come inside from the cold.

There’s no real mystery as to the foggy lenses. It happens when moisture (水分) in wet air, or from someone’s breath, hits a glasses lens that’s colder than said moisture, which then becomes obvious drops. It happens a lot in the winter, when people are coming in from the outside to warm places, or when people breathe out with masks, the warm, wet air goes upwards.

It’s also a problem that plagues car windows, making it hard for a driver to see. The simple solution there is to see. The simple solution there is to heat the windows. But adding electric heaters to glasses, which are designed to be lightweight and comfortable to wear, isn’t really a choice. So ETH Zurich researchers came up with another way to heat glasses lenses. They rely on a new type of glass coating that effectively does the same thing.

The coating is made from very thin gold in such small amounts that the added cost would be very small. The gold takes in a kind of light from the sun, causing glasses lenses to heat up by up to eight degrees. By doing this, it can prevent moisture in the air from forming on the glasses. The coating also cannot be seen by human eyes, not influencing people’s views. Because it’s so thin, the coating can even be applied to surfaces that are not flat.

But this method isn’t perfect. As the gold draws the energy it needs to heat lenses from the sun, the coating won’t do much good in the winter months, when it starts to get dark by late afternoon. But the researchers believe that even a small amount of electricity, like from a battery hidden away in the arms of a pair of glasses, would be enough. And with gold being one of the most valuable metals on earth and still in high demand, the researchers are looking for other metals to replace it.

A home science experiment recently took the world by storm. Two teens from Toronto, in Canada, sent a Lego man rising above the Earth and captured their tiny astronaut’s trip on film.

Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, used a weather balloon to launch their plastic lego model 16 miles above the Earth. This is inside a part of Earth’s atmosphere.

The two teens were inspired by a similar project performed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). The MIT students had launched a weather balloon with a camera into near space and taken many unusual images of the Earth. Mathew and Asad then spend four months figuring out how to launch their own spacecraft into the space.

Travelling to space is expensive for NASA, but Mathew and Asad worked hard to keep their costs down. They bought much of their equipment used and even sewed the Lego man’s parachute by hand. In total, the project cost only$400.

“We had a lot of anxiety on launch day because there were high winds when we were going up,”Mathew told reporters. They had to pump extra helium(氦）into the balloon so that it would rise quickly and avoid being blown too far off course by the strong winds.

The toy astronaut’s journey lasted 97 minutes before the balloon broke and he fell back to Earth. Mathew and Asad then spent two weekends looking for their spacecraft. It had landed 76miles away from the launch site.

The student scientists are currently finishing up their final year of high school and applying for colleges. They are also looking into more do-it-yourself space projects.

“I guess the sky is not really the limit anymore,” Mathew told reporters. “We never knew we’d get this far. It’s been a lesson for us that hard work pays off.”

In the near future, we may be using our eyes to operate our smart-phones and tablets, even when it comes to playing popular games like Fruit Ninja(水果忍者).

The Gaze Group has been developing eye-controlling computer technology for nearly 20 years. But those devices(设备) have been firstly designed to help those with disabilities, and are very expensive.

“After a while, we figured out that probably the best way is to go for a mass-market way,” says Gaze’s Sune Alstrup Johansen. “where everybody would have this available.”

Johansen and some of his colleagues have formed a new company, the Eye Tribe, which is hoping to develop the technology on a mass commercial level.

The technology works when combined with the computing device toward the user’s face. After making sure of the user’s eye movements, the technology is then able to easily find where a person’s eyes are moving, and then allow the eyes to control a cursor (光标).

“Our software can then determine the location of the eyes and know where you’re looking on the screen to make sure what you’re looking at,” reads an explanation on the Eye Tribe site.

There has been a gradual change toward hands-free technology in recent years, particularly in the gaming(电玩游戏) world. Recently Xbox released the Kinect device, which lets users control their Xbox and play certain games using only their hands, legs and voices. But still, most of these devices have been more of a trick than a practical way to use one’s hands to control a mobile device. Johansen said a replaceable filter (滤光器) would be a cheap, convenient way for most consumers.

And even as companies like The Eye Tribe work to create such a product for the average user, making the eye-controlling technology more accessible and less expensive will have similar benefits for physically disabled users.

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