It's already commonly thought that a warm bath before going to bed helps improve your sleep. A new meta-study has apparently confirmed this to be the case, however, and has even come up with exact figures regarding the best times and temperatures.

• Bath
• Circadian Rhythms
• Sleep
• University of Texas

Back in March, the first Tokyo 2020 Robot Project helpers were revealed. Now Toyota has pulled back the curtain on its full line-up, with mascot bots, full-sized humanoids and field support bots joining the delivery and human support robots already announced.

• Assistive Technologies
• Olympics
• Robots
• Toyota

Casa Parásito (Parasite House), by El Sindicato Arquitectura, is the latest in a long line of parasitic architecture we've covered and offers an interesting take on tiny living. Rather than sitting on wheels like most tiny houses we come across, this model is installed on the roof of an existing inner-city building.

• Home
• House
• Micro-House
• Tiny Footprint

Back in 2011, Christoph Kemper introduced guitarists to a powerful digital amplifier that could accurately recreate the sounds of any other amp and store loads of them in one place. Four years later, players were offered the ability to switch Profiler models using their feet. And now the two have been merged into one with the introduction of the Kemper Profiler Stage.

• Amplifiers
• Guitar
• Guitar Effects

The OmniFob is designed to be the last fob you'll ever need. A universal remote of sorts for your keychain. This teachable, versatile device is more than just a key-tracker that can open your garage door or send an SOS, it can integrate with your Smart Home systems and even start and lock your car.

• Internet of Things
• Keychains
• Kickstarter
• Remote Control
• Smart Home

One of the largest natural sources of renewable energy could be right under our feet – literally. The Earth itself is a big warm ball just waiting for us to tap into it, with vast stores of geothermal energy lying beneath Australia, the United States and plenty of other areas. Now researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Sanoh Industrial have developed a new type of battery cell that can directly convert heat energy into electricity.

• Battery
• Energy
• Geothermal
• Renewable Energy
• Thermal
• Tokyo Institute of Technology

Now in its fourth instalment, SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition continues to bring out the very best in student engineering teams from all around the world, with the 2019 edition again pushing the boundaries of the experimental transport technology. The reigning champions from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) returned to fend off their challengers, setting a new speed record in the process.

• Hyperloop
• SpaceX

A massive umbrella study, encompassing 277 clinical trials, into the effects of nutritional supplements and dietary interventions has concluded almost all vitamin and mineral supplements play no role in protecting from cardiovascular disease, or extending one's lifespan.

• Cardiovascular
• Health
• Johns Hopkins Medicine
• Minerals
• Nutrition

As important and durable as it is, the heart has quite a lot of difficulty in repairing itself after sustaining damage. But now, researchers from the University of Calgary have found a previously unidentified cell population in the fluid that surrounds the heart, which seems to help heal injuries.

• Cardiac
• Cells
• Heart
• Heart attack
• Heart Disease
• University of Calgary

The art of minimalist photography involves stripping an image back to just a few key compositional elements – be it a color, shape or texture. The images celebrated in this year's Minimalist Photography Awards highlight how beautiful, and compelling, this deceptively simple aesthetic can be, across an impressively broad variety of categories.

• Awards
• Competition
• Minimalist
• Photography