There are some very good inventions which， for one reason or another， don't become popular. These inventions should be better known， even though I think that some of them are crazy. Let's have a look at some of these inventions and see if you agree that they should be more successful.

    The Australians had a great idea to stop people from drinking and driving. The idea was that if a driver wanted to start the car， she or he would have to blow into a bag first. If there was too much alcohol(酒精) in their breath， the car wouldn't start. It sounded like a great idea to me， but people said that they might need to drive the car in an emergency even if they had drunk too much alcohol. Another idea I liked was an invention by a scientist who thought his children watched too much TV. He linked the TV to an exercise bike so that the electricity to power the TV was generated(产出) by the bike. If the children wanted to watch a lot of TV， they had to pedal(踩踏板) very hard. I found another invention on the Internet which was intended (倾向于) to encourage good habits. Believe it or not， this invention was an ashtray(烟灰缸) which spoke to you when you lit a cigarette! The “voice” of the ashtray was activated (启动) by the heat from the cigarette and reminded you how dangerous it is to smoke.

    One of the strangest inventions I have come across is a bicycle which can cross rivers! The idea was that when you came to a river， you could inflate a huge plastic ball all around the bike. You would then get into the ball which would float on the river while you pedaled the bike inside the ball! Why not use a bridge instead? A friend of mine at school once bought a strange pair of football shoes. On the bottom of the shoes there was a rotating pad of studs (转动钉垫). The idea was that you would change direction more quickly if the studs rotated with you. The problem was that every time you stopped you changed direction whether you wanted to or not! I think he wore those shoes twice! One thing I would like is a baseball cap with a built-in radio so you can listen to sport all day with your hands free. While we are on the subject of sport， the Americans invented a kind of robot for sports fans. If you were watching your team on TV on your own， you could press a button and the robot would do “high fives” with you! Fantastic! I wonder if you have any good ideas for inventions like these.

    Are you still worried about how to get your phone charged (充电) ? Now, a 19-year-old teenager can help you to solve this problem. He has invented a phone charger which uses energy from your own body to charge your phone.

    Hand Energy, the wonderful invention of the inventor Miehael Vaga, allows you to charge your phone simply by shaking your hand, which starts the charger's gyroscope(陀螺仪) to produce electricity. And the electricity can then either be stored or used to charge a mobile immediately (立即).

    He said, " With each rotation (旋转) of your hand, the gyroscope's speed increases quickly and produces more power. The average (平均的) speed of the gyroscope is about 5, 000 rounds per minute. With this small charger, your physical energy can be turned into electrical energy and this means you can charge your phone. "

    Hand Energy can help you produce endless electricity.  You can use it everywhere you want. It is especially useful for people who have to spend a long time in the wild. What's more, it's friendly to the environment and helps you to exercise your wrists. It takes between 40 minutes and one hour to fully charge the batteries(电池) in Hand Energy.

    The invention took Vaga a year to develop. Now, the inventor from Minsk, Belarus, is ready to put it into production and send out the creative convenient chargers.

    Since the 1970s, scientists have been searching for ways to link the brain with computers. Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology could help people with disabilities send commands to machines.

    Recently, two researchers, Jose Millan and Michele Tavella from the Federal Polytechnic School in Lausanne, Switzerland, demonstrated(展示) a small robotic wheelchair directed by a person's thoughts.  In the laboratory, Tavella operated the wheelchair just by thinking about moving his left or right hand. He could even talk as he watched the vehicle and guided it with his thoughts.

    "Our brain has billions of nerve cells~ These send signals through the spinal cord(脊髓) to the muscles to give us the ability to move. But spinal cord injuries or other conditions can prevent these weak electrical signals from reaching the muscles," Tavella says. "Our system allows disabled people to communicate with external (外部的) world and also to control devices."

    The researchers designed a special cap for the users. This head cover picks up the signals from the scalp(头皮) and sends them to a computer. The computer interprets (translate) the signals and commands the motorized wheelchair. The wheelchair also has two cameras that identify (find or discover) objects in its paths. They help the computer react to commands from the brain.

    Professor Millan, the team leader, says scientists keep improving the computer software that interprets brain signals and turns them into simple commands. "The practical possibilities that BCI technology offers to disabled people can be grouped in two categories: communication and controlling devices. One example is this wheelchair. "

    He says his team has set two goals. One is testing with real patients, so as to prove that this is a technology they can benefit from. And the other is to guarantee that they can use the technology over long periods of time.

    Have you ever had trouble sleeping in a new place? Lots of people do. And now researchers from Brown University in Rhode Island think they know why. They found that one-half of the brain "remains more awake" than the other half when people are trying to sleep in a new place.

    The sleep findings were reported in Current Biology by Brown University. In their report, the researchers said many people report that they have a harder time sleeping the first night at a hotel or other places outside their home. They call it "first-night influence". "In Japan they say, 'If you change your bed, you can't sleep,'" said Yuka Sasaki, one of the report's writers. "You don't sleep very well in a new place. We all know about it."

    The researchers measured brain waves (测量脑波) for 35 volunteers over two nights in a laboratory. The two nights were a week apart(间隔).They found during the first night the left half of the brain was more active than the right half. This was during the first deep-sleep period, the researchers said.

    Sasaki said a lot of questions remain.

    Researchers did not keep measuring brain waves all night long. So, they don't know if the left half keeps "watch" all night, or whether it" works in shifts (轮换) with the right half later in the night" .They also do not know why the brain activity, at least during the first period of deep sleep, is always on the left half.

    For some, this research may be calming. It is good to know that our brain is "looking out for us" in a new place. But it may not help with sleep. That brain activity, at least according to this new research, makes it harder to get the sleep people need to wake up well rested in the morning.