Those clunky audio speakers in your living room haven't changed much in 75 years. That's because they're based on conventional piston-cone design. NXT's distributed-mode loudspeakers, however, include a panel that resonates from multiple points instead of through a single cone. This design makes the speakers lightweight and wall-mountable, without sacrificing great sound. They can be as thin as half an inch, yet span 50 square feet or more.
Engineers foresee foldout wings on PCs, talking billboards, even audio ceiling tiles.
Once considered too exotic and expensive, germanium and gallium arsenide are starting to nudge out silicon as the new substrate for chips. When the first transistor came out of Bell Labs in 1947, it was crafted from germanium. Because electrons travel through germanium faster than silicon, it is a superior semiconductor. However, researchers soon discovered that it was a difficult material to work with on a large scale, and so germanium stayed in the lab, while silicon went on to conquer the world. Now, the tide is turning back.