Droughts are devastating to farmers, killing off scores of crops thanks to a total lack of rain over a long period of time. But this years James Dyson Award winner is the Airdrop, an "air harvester" that promises to make droughts less of an issue in the future.

In the age of touchscreen smartphones, it's strange that people still turn dials to control their heat and air conditioning. The Nest thermostat aims to change that.

The X-Prize-winning team known as Edison2 has continued to push the envelope in the realm of electric vehicles, this time unveiling its mileage-crushing new electric Very Light Car (eVLC).

It's a bold statement to be sure, but Google is making it in the company's first public disclosure of its total energy use: the company has had a carbon footprint of zero for well on four years now. That's even more impressive when you consider that Google needs a quarter of a nuclear power plant to keep all of its searches and gmails and whatnot going.