Science, Not Magic, Guarantees You’ll Never Get Lost Wearing This Pendant

In what could be the most stylish camping accessory ever created, Meister designed this gold and titanium pendant that transforms into a functioning compass. So whether you're deep in the woods, or strutting down a runway, you'll theoretically never get lost with some basic survival skills. That, and just over $3,000 for the pendant. I'll stick with hunting for moss on a tree. More here.

This Desk Assembles With Nothing But Manual Labor

If you end up doing more harm than good when tools are around, you'll love Fraaheid's collection of easy-assembling tables designed by a trio of Amsterdam-based architects. Cut from a single sheet of plywood, the tables use a series of strategic slots and grooves to assemble in less than three minutes without the need for a single hammer, screw driver, or roll of duct tape.

Ranging in price from $165 to $1,156 you'll pay dearly for convenience here. But the use of exposed seams and visible t-shaped joints on all of the tables in the collection at least ensure you'll have a unique piece in your home or office. And all of your fingers intact. More here.

UAE Opens Biggest Solar Power Station In The World

The Shams Power Company opened their Shams 1 concentrated solar power station this week in Abu Dhabi. The station generates 100 MW and can power 20,000 homes while reducing CO2 emissions by 175,000 tons per year.

Not to be outdone, two companies in California proposed solar towers yesterday that will generate 500 MW and power about 200,000 homes. But the Shams 1 project still holds the biggest solar station title for now. The project took about two years and $600 million to build. Shams 1 has 258,048 parabolic mirrors that collect sunlight which hits heat-transfer fluid and then flows through tubes to a heat exchanger. This process creates steam, which powers turbines to generate electricity.

On the energy front, the United Arab Emirates is mostly known for oil and natural gas, but that doesn't mean they can't build the largest solar station in the world in two years. Look, if you have the desert space you might as well go big. More here.

An iPhone in Different Colors Looks Fantastically Fun

People want choices! People want colors! People want to obsess over the perfect hue of yellow, have dreams about how to describe cyan and flash their Ferrari red iPhone on the street. I'm sure if Apple ever released these phones, a black or white iPhone would look as outdated as a black and white TV. Okay, maybe not that bad. But still, dripping the iPhone in any sort of colored dye would make those people who slap chintzy cases from China go nuts.

Would you want an iPhone to come in different colors? What about at least having the option to choose a different color? More here.

Geometric Coat Racks Play Tricks on Your Eyes

These coat racks are deceiving. On first glance, you can't quite tell if they're 2D or 3D, as if you'd lost all depth of field.

The collection—designed by John Tony from +tongtong—is called Les Ailes Noires. It includes 11 different geometric-shaped racks that are supposed to stand alone and lean against the wall or lie on a flat surface. They're so simple, but the way they react to light and shadow draws your eye to them. If only geometry had been this interesting—and practical—when you were learning it in school. More here.

Making Salt Water Drinkable Just Got 99 Percent Easier

Access to steady supplies of clean water is getting more and more difficult in the developing world, especially as demand skyrockets. In response, many countries have turned to the sea for potable fluids but existing reverse osmosis plants rely on complicated processes that are expensive and energy-intensive to operate. Good thing, engineers at Lockheed Martin have just announced a newly-developed salt filter that could reduce desalinization energy costs by 99 percent.

The Reverse Osmosis process works on a simple principle: molecules within a liquid will flow across a semipermeable membrane from areas of higher concentration to lower until both sides reach an equilibrium. But that same membrane can act as a filter for large molecules and ions if outside pressure is applied to one side of the system. For desalinization, the process typically employs a sheet of thin-film composite (TFC) membrane which is made from an active thin-film layer of polyimide stacked on a porous layer of polysulfone. The problem with these membranes is that their thickness requires the presence of large amounts of pressure (and energy) to press water through them.

Lockheed Martin's Perforene, on the other hand, is made from single atom-thick sheets of graphene. Because the sheets are so thin, water flows through them far more easily than through a conventional TFC. Filters made through the Perforene process would incorporate filtering holes just 100 nm in diameter—large enough to let water molecules through but small enough to capture dissolved salts. It looks a bit like chicken wire when viewed under a microscope, John Stetson, the Lockheed engineer credited with its invention, told Reuters. But ounce for ounce, its 1000 times stronger than steel.

"It's 500 times thinner than the best filter on the market today and a thousand times stronger," Stetson explained to Reuters. "The energy that's required and the pressure that's required to filter salt is approximately 100 times less."

Lockheed is reportedly already ramping up production efforts for the filters—and trying to find a way to keep them from tearing—though there are no announced plans on when they'd hit the market. More here.

We Don’t Actually Know Why Plants Are Green

Measuring Beakers Make Your Kitchen Into the Lab You Always Wanted

Baking is pretty much basic science, so you might as well use some measuring beakers in the process. And they're a lot more exciting than your run of the mill measuring spoons and cups.

The awesome, colorful set comes in 1-ounce, 2-ounce, tablespoon, and teaspoon sizes for $10. It's made by Oxo, the same company behind plenty of clever cooking accessories. You might never be a chemist, but you can at least play one in the kitchen. More here.

Here Are the Samsung Galaxy S IV’s Guts

Samsung is just about to announce the Galaxy S IV but the same Chinese site that showed us in clear detail what the S IV will look like on the outside has decided to pry open the giant superphone and expose its innards too. An 8-core processor, 13 megapixel camera and motion detector too. You can peep all the guts here.

These Earbuds Will Make It Look Like a Pencil Is Sticking Through Your Brain

When someone puts on earbuds, they're pretty much telling the rest of the world to not bother them. It's the universal symbol for shut the hell up. But if someone put on this Magic Pencil earbuds? That's a conversation starter. I mean, these earbuds make it look like a pencil has been stabbed in one ear and out the other. They're hilarious!

I'd totally extend this motif and get an arrow, a knife, a sword, a lightsaber and whatever else long and slender object to make it look like my brains been sliced. $50 at Fancy. More here.

Build This Lego Leica M9-P Hermes and Save Yourself $49,962

Lego master builder Chris McVeigh has cooked up a playful alternative to Leica's obscenely and pointlessly expensive $50,000 M9-P ‘Edition Hermès'. The Lego version doesn't actually take photos, but you'll also pay only $38 for a kit if you can't scrounge all the parts needed to assemble it.

Or, if your Lego stocks already have every piece you need, you can save yourself even more money by just downloading the PDF build instructions McVeigh has kindly provided on his site. Oh and if you don't like the Hermes Edition, you can always build the standard model by just switching up your color palette. More here.

Bear Grylls and Kyocera Torque do the Business of Survival

Adding Spinning Dials To a Rubik’s Cube Is Downright Evil

Unless you're some kind of prodigy who can solve one while juggling, making pancakes, and whistling Dixie, the Rubik's cube is already difficult enough. So why on earth would someone go and add a numbered, spinning dial to each side? That's just sadistic.

You could argue that Brando's $80 Roulette Wheel IQ Cube is actually a simpler version of the standard Rubik's Cube since it only features four segments per side. But it's the addition of that dial that takes the difficulty level from child's play to Mensa challenge. However, no matter how scrambled it might become, as long as these manufacturers keep cheaping out and using decals instead of paint, it's just a couple of hours of peeling and re-sticking to easily 'solve' it again. More here.

Clip-On Recorder Simplifies Everything But the Legality Of Recording a Phone Call

Recording a conversation on your smartphone isn't as easy as you think it would be. Varying state-by-state laws make the legality a bit of a gray area, and if you don't have access to the free Google Voice service, you're going to have pay a monthly fee to capture a call. Or, put up with the U2 Mobile Recorder hanging off your handset.

In a round-about way the $134 U2 Mobile Recorder simplifies the act of recording a call on your iPhone or Android-based device. You just plug it into the top-mounted headphone jack of any phone except the iPhone 5, and hit record. Four gigs of non-expandable storage should be able to hold up to 144 hours of conversations, and a USB port allows the recordings to be dumped off to your PC. It's also got its own headphone jack for immediately transcribing a conversation, and on a single charge it can record or play back for about 20 hours. Which is perfect for even the most long-winded of snitches. More here.

Electronic Sensor Tattoos Can Now Be Printed Directly Onto Human Skin

Thanks to the same people that brought us the stick-on electric tattoo and stretchable battery, we're now looking at a future of electronic sensors that can be printed directly onto human skin.

At least for now, it seems like the sensors will be mainly used for medical purposes; they'll be able to monitor skin hydration, temperature, and any electric signals from muscle and brain activity. And unlike their stick-on precursor, these skin-printed tattoos don't use the easily-washed-off polymer backing, which as it turns out, wasn't even necessary in the first place.

Instead, the Rogers research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that, by printing the electronic mesh directly onto skin, the sensor (which is held together and remains flexible thanks to special serpentine wires) becomes 1/30 the size and even conforms better to that body's natural bumps and curves. With the help of a "very robust" spray-on bandage, that sucker has a good two weeks before it begins to flake off. Of course, a longer shelf-life would require embedding the device underneath the top layer of skin, just like a real tattoo. In which case—uh oh—I'm pretty sure I know how that movie ends.

Still, with these advances and the current massive interest in wearable, body-monitoring tech, it's only a matter of time before health-tracking diehards demand taking wearable to within. What's more, these sensors could even be hooked up to interact with any number of external devices. The possibilities are truly exciting, and in a certain light, mildly terrifying. But whether we're ready for it not, the future, it seems, is here. More here.

A Snail USB Drive Is the Most Adorable USB Drive

The 8BG drive is $22. At first glance, you don't even really expect it to be a tech accessory. It's all one piece—the mouth of the critter is the cap on the drive, so you don't need to worry about losing the top, which always seems to get away. It's functional, and more importantly, very adorable. More here.

How Your Blender Uses Physics to Make a Smoothie

4-In-1 Measuring Spoon Leaves You One Thing To Wash

On one hand, the Dash 4-in-1 measuring spoon from Umbra reduces drawer clutter, leaves you with just a single tool to wash, and looks pretty snazzy in the process with its avocado finish. On the other hand, if you've multiple ingredients to measure, particularly wet ones, at some point you're going to probably end up getting your hands dirty touching this. Then again, at $8 a pop you can always just buy two. More here.

The Science of Aging

Carry a Tiny Supernova In Your Pocket With the Ultra-Bright LED Lenser F1

You might think all flashlights are created equal, but don't tell that to a flashaholic. There are large online communities of flashlight aficionados who take their illumination very seriously, and there's a good chance even they'll be impressed by LED Lenser's new F1 which manages to squeeze a whopping 400 lumens from a single CR123 battery.

It's true that CR123 batteries aren't as easy to find in stores as regular old AAs, but it's a fair trade-off. What you sacrifice in convenience, you gain in longer runtimes and greater illumination. CR123 batteries use a lithium-cell inside instead of alkaline, and output three volts instead of the 1.5 volts from a AA battery. So it allows flashlights like the F1 to blast an impressive 400 lumens while still boasting excellent battery life.

Of course you don't have to run the F1 at full power. You can extend its battery life even further by dimming its LED bulb to its lowest setting. But if you're going to drop $80 on it, you might as well go big or go home. More here.