A dying battery is a huge annoyance for cell phone users. But for engineers? It’s an inspiration. “Can we design a smartphone which can make a phone call and have a conversation without the need for any kind of battery?”

Shyam Gollakota is a computer scientist at the University of Washington. He and his team have indeed designed a battery-free phone. It looks like a circuit board（电路板）, with touch-responsive number buttons. And it runs on just a few microwatts of power, which it harvests from light, and from the radio signals coming from a nearby wireless base station.

The team achieved the battery-free, energy-efficient design by abandoning two of power-hungry features of modern cell phones. One, it skips digital-to-analog conversion（数模转换）. And two, it does not produce its own wireless signals to make calls. Instead, when receiving signals, it absorbs incoming radio waves from the base station, and changes them directly into vibrations（震动）of its speaker. When sending signals, it uses the vibrations of its onboard microphone to change the way radio waves are reflected back to the base station. And it works.

This piece of equipment does have limitations：It can be only 50-foot away from the base station. The voice quality is pretty low. And you can’t check Facebook either. “Yet, we’re going to get there. This is again a first step. Think of it as like：you need to make a first move to basically get someplace where you can harvest power to do other operations,” said Shyam.“Andit’s those other operations that will be extremely important. Because, battery or not, you could argue that voice calls are by now just a completely basic feature of our smartphones.”

Though not as mainstream as devices like smartphones and fitness trackers, more companies are now experimenting with the concept of connected garments. Among the pioneers is London-based CuteCircuit, which has been creating fashionable smart clothing since 2004. The company’s latest creation is the “Sound Shirt,” which allows deaf people to “feel” live music by transforming the tunes into touch sensations in real time.

The fashionable jacket achieves the incredible function using software that changes the music into data and wirelessly sends it to the 16-micro motors fitted inside the clothing’s fabric. The devices shake in sync (同步) to the intensity (强度) of the music being played, allowing the wearer to feel each instrument individually. The series of touch-like sensations across the wearer’s body enables them to feel the entire works, resulting in a fully amazing musical experience.

To ensure the shirt is comfortable, the designers chose to leave out wires and instead wove conductive textiles (纺织品) into the garment’s fabric. Francesca Rosella, co-founder and chief creative officer of CuteCircuit, explains, “There are no wires inside, so we’re only using smart fabrics — we have a combination of microelectronics and very thin, flexible and conductive fabrics. All these little electronic motors are connected with these conductive fabrics so that the garment is soft and stretchable.”

CuteCircuit, which has been testing the Sound Shirt for three years, expects to make it available to the general public shortly. Priced at $3,673 (3,000 pounds), the smart jacket will not be cheap. However, twin sisters Hermon and Heroda Berhane, who lost their hearing at a young age, believe the hi-tech garment is a worthwhile investment, especially for deaf people with a passion for dancing. “It’s almost like feeling the depth of the music,” says Hermon. “It just feels as though we can move along with it.” Heroda agrees, adding, “I think it could definitely change our lives.”

This is not CuteCircuit’s first groundbreaking smart garment. Over the years, the company has produced hundreds of shocking connected outfits. Among them is an interactive concert dress for American musical artist Nicole Scherzinger that displayed tweets from her fans. Also fun is the HugShirt which enables people to send hugs to loved ones who are not physically in the same area.

Described as the world’s most environmentally friendly protein, Solein is made by applying electricity to water to release bubbles of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Living microbes(微生物) are then added to the liquid to feed on the carbon dioxide and hydrogen bubbles and produce the Solein, which is then dried to make the powder. It’s a natural fermentation(发酵) process similar to beer brewing. The dried Solein has a protein content of 50 percent and looks and tastes just like wheat flour.

“It is a completely new kind of food, a new kind of protein, different to all the food on the market todav in how it is produced as it does not need agriculture.” Dr Pasi Vinikka, the chief executive of Solar Foods told The Guardian. The process used to produce Solein — converting hydrogen and carbon dioxide to calories — is amazing, as the wonder food can be produced anywhere in the world. It’s also 10 times more energy-efficient per hectare than photosynthesis (光合作用), and 10 to 100 times more environment and climate-friendly in water use than animal or plant based food production.

“Solein also contains all the essential amino acids(氨基酸), but because it is produced using carbon dioxide and electricity, it does not require large amounts of land to produce,” the Solar Foods website explains. “Another unique characteristic of Solein is that it is able to take carbon directly from carbon dioxide without needing a source of sugar.”

While Solar Foods does not expect Solein to challenge conventional protein production methods in the next two decades, it does expect it to become a “new harvest” for humanity, which is significant considering so far we have only relied on plants and animals for sustenance. The Helsinki-based company plans to open its first Solein factory at the end of 2021 and scale up production to two billion meals per year by 2022.