Summers would be so much cooler without the heat. In Florida, summertime means spending most of the day inside to avoid sweltering temperatures and sweat-inducing humidity. Hell, if it wasn’t for air-conditioning, Florida would probably still be a balmy, pristine, practically uninhabitable tract of land jutting out from the United States.
So it makes sense that a couple Floridians recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for what may be the next evolution in air conditioning — the Airwirl.
Taking the form of a fortified 7-Eleven Big Gulp, the Airwirl is actually a personal cooling (or heating) device that is small enough to fit in a cup holder and big enough to pack a punch of cool (or hot) air into your face, providing much-needed (albeit temporary) relief when temperatures reach certain extremes.
“Unlike battery operated fans, misters, or evaporative towels, Airwirl actually changes the ambient air temperature into refreshing, ice-cool air when it’s hot, or cozy, warm air when it’s chilly,” Steve Herweck, Airwirl’s co-creator, told Digital Trends.
The device features a cup and a lid, and works using thermal convection. Load the cup up with ice or activated heat warmers depending on your needs. Within the lid is a motorized turbine fan system and elongated air post that pulls air out of the chamber and sends it through a nozzle in the lid. An attachable hose allows for more flexible control. An insulated foam insert helps keep the cup’s contents at a steady temperature.
“By use of a turbine fan built into a motorized lid, ambient air is drawn inside a double-walled, vacuum-insulated container,” said co-creator Michael McCarthy. “When ambient air is allowed to flow through this system with ice cubes inside, the thermal energy causes a change in air temperature as it leaves the unit.”
The Airwirl is available through pledges of $129 through a Kickstarter campaign and 280 backers have pledged nearly $42,000 at the time this article was published. The Airwirl creators said they have heard interest from Disney World, postal workers, and bus drivers whose vehicles don’t have functioning AC.
As with any Kickstarter campaign, we suggest you read our explainer article on how to avoid getting burned by scams and fails before throwing your money out there.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.