Dear Car Manufacturers, Every vehicle has a horn - usually used to express anger, frustration or as an alert of danger. Sometimes these have a purpose. But the car horn as it currently exists does not do a good job of saying ?thank you?. Please invent an additional car horn that allows you to say thanks. A friendlier, more pleasant sound - to be used when someone lets you in, gives way to you, backs up for you or lets you have a car space you?re both after. At night, it?s hard to see whether someone gives you a wave of thanks, but a ?thank you? beep would do the job. It can also be a goodnight beep for when you?re leaving a friend?s place. Something that doesn?t annoy the neighbours. Let there be lots of thank you beeps and less angry beeps on our roads!

A team of Chinese scientists has developed a new process that could ignificantly reduce the time needed to extract rare earths from ore, and it could also cut industry pollution. Extracting the trace metal elements is difficult and takes days to complete, but researchers have found a way to shorten the process to minutes. The 17 trace metal elements in rare earths are critical to the manufacture of nearly all hi-tech products, from semiconductors to smartphones and stealth fighter jets. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3012641/chinese-scientists-find-faster-way-extract-rare-earths-may-also

Adidas just introduced running shoes made from 100 percent recyclable material. They allow customers to return the shoes to the company instead of throwing them away. The 'used' shoes are then washed, ground to pellets and melted into material for components for a new pair of shoes. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/25/business/adidas-recyclable-shoe/index.html

Uber is testing its self-driving cars in a fake city it built in Pittsburgh, called Almono. The fake city has a giant roundabout, fake cars, and roaming mannequins that jump out into the street without warning. Uber also uses Almono to train vehicle operators before allowing them to monitor the cars in the real world. www.businessinsider.com/ubers-fake-city-pittsburgh-self-driving-cars-2017-10

Wireless Ad hoc System for Positioning (WASP) has the potential to reduce dangers in dangerous work environments such as oil and gas, drilling and processing. WASP provides high risk work environments with the ability to track movement of people or vehicles, predict collisions, pinpoint dangers like gas leaks and direct people in emergencies. It also allows people to verify what happens in an incident. WASP has been supported by the ON Accelerate program at CSIRO. http://www.oninnovation.com.au/en/ON-teams/ON-Tribe/Accelerate1/WASP