Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “like a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused: “But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”

It was a rare — indeed unique — occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout’s day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated （充气的） tyre.

So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse （椭圆）. Throughout, the tyre remains inflated.

Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane — minus wheels, of course — as hand baggage.

Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.

Bryan started snapping pictures of his son, Noah, from the moment he was born. When Noah was about three months old, Bryan noticed something odd. The flash on the digital camera created the typical red dot in the center of Noah's left eye, but the right eye had a white spot at the center, almost as if the flash was being reflected back at the camera by something.

A white reflection instead of a red one is a telltale sign of retinal cancer, and that is exactly what Noah had. He endured months of chemotherapy and radiation, but doctors ultimately could not save his eyes. Retinoblastoma, the scientific name of Noah's tumor, is treatable if caught early.

Bryan couldn't help but wonder whether there were signs he'd missed. He went back over every baby picture of Noah he could find and discovered the first white spot in a photo taken when Noah was 12 days old. As time went on, it appeared more frequently. By the time he was four months old, it was showing up in 25 percent of the pictures taken of him per month.

It was too late for Noah's eyes, but Bryan was determined to put his hard-won insights to good use. He created a database that charted the cancer's appearance in every photo. He also collected photos and compiled the data from eight other children with retinoblastoma. Armed with that data, he began to work with his colleagues to develop a smartphone app that can scan the photos in the user's camera roll to search for white eye and can be used as a kind of ophthalmoscope.

Called White Eye Detector, it is now available for free on Google Play and in Apple's App Store, “I just kept telling myself, I really need to do this,” Bryan told People. “This disease is tough to detect. Not only could this software save vision, but it can save lives.”

A business school in Paris will soon begin using artificial intelligence and facial analysis to determine whether students are paying attention in class. The software, called Nestor, is used in two online classes at the ESG business school beginning in September.

The idea, according to LCA founder Marcel Saucet, is to use the data that Nestor collects to improve the performance of both students and professors. The software uses students webcams（网络摄像机）to analyze eye movements and facial expressions and determine whether students are paying attention to a video lecture. It then formulates quizzes based on the content covered during moments of inattentiveness. Professors would also be able to identify moments when students’ attention declined, which could help to improve their teaching, Saucet says.

Advocates for AI in education say that the software is actually unable to teach a course, but the technology could be used as a digital tutor that would adapt to a student’s individual needs, and help develop more effective studying habits. Such software could also help teachers by providing feedback on the effectiveness of their teaching, advocates say.

Saucet says Nestor won’t store any of the video footage it gets and that his company has no plans to sell any other data the software collects. In addition to facial recognition and analysis, the software can integrate（合并）with students’ calendars to suggest possible study times, and track their online behavior to pick up on patterns.

Rose Luckin, a professor at the University College London Knowledge Lab, says AI could unlock the “black box of learning” by providing information on how and when learning happens. Luckin says a program like Nestor could be useful for students who take classes remotely, since “there isn’t a human there watching them.” And while some are concerned that AI may one day replace teachers, Luckin sees the technology more as an assistant, rather than a replacement. Saucet agrees. “Human contact is not going to go away,”   he says. “There will always be professors.”