For years, users have had to look at their headphones to make sure that the L was in their left ear and the R was in the right and this was clearly proving too tricky.

Now a team of researchers at the Igarashi Design Interface Project have come up with an alternative.

Dubbed Universal Earphones, each one has a proximity sensor fixed to each earbud that knows which ear it has been inserted in, then adjusts the channel accordingly.

According to Digital Trends, it can also test to see if one ear belongs to another person, because sometimes people like share a headphone with a friend. If the ear pieces detect this, then they will broadcast a mono signal to each headset. The next idea it is to set them up so that when you pull them from your ears they will turn the music off.

There are no plans yet to make the Universal Earphones a commercial product, but since the sensors only cost a dollar a pair to make it would be surprising if someone didn't take them up on it.

Perhaps the world of science will then move on to something a little more pressing, like a slipper which can tells if it is on the left or right foot.

Nanowires are being developed as a vital component for quantum computing - the smallest ever silicon nanowire is in the works. However, there are other applications for nanowires in mesh form.

One of the problems with creating the electrically conductive meshes is that conventional production methods can damage the nanowires. To achieve the criss-cross pattern of a mesh it's necessary to apply heat or pressure, and this can cause havoc with the nanowires.

By shining a light over the wires, you can create a hotspot precisely where the wires are in contact, meaning that they fuse without ruining the rest of the quantum patchwork.

This essentially stops the wires from getting damaged, as well as the underlying material which the annowires can then be attached to.

The production method is apparently quicker and more efficient than traditional methods, as well as creating stronger and more conductive meshes.

Most interestingly though, it opens up a range of further applications, with the potential to be stretched over flexible devices.

The researchers at Stanford Univeristy - where work into artificial skin based on nanowires has been conducted in the past - demonstrated the method by spraying a cling-film like material with silver nanoparticles.  They found that their method left a thin layer of nanowires that appeared fully transparent.

The researcher reckon that this could lead to applications such as covering windows with a see-through solar cell that could simultaneously reduce the glare for those inside.

Touchscreens applied to thin and flexible materials could also be possible, should the method work at a commercial level.

A collaborative effort between Southampton University and Penn State in the US has led to the development of potentially revolutionary fibre optic materials.

Up until now, one of the problems with sending vast amounts of data hurtling down optical fibres is that once they reach the semiconductor based electronics they bottleneck, leading to a slow down.  This is a problem that many research labs are currently trying to fix.

While the light can speed its way down an optical cable, for instance in a cross-Atlantic video call, the information has to be converted from the fibre cable to conventional electronics. In changing the light signal into a working, viewable image, problems crop up like connecting a round fibre to a flat semiconductor.

Rather than continuing with the square peg in round hole approach the research team attempted to create an optical fibre that already incorporates semi properties.

Essentially, the team has incorporated the necessary junction into the fibre, which is done by depositing tiny layers of semiconducting materials, under high pressure, into holes in the optical fibres.

According to the team, this opens up possibilities for a range of applications, for example with photovoltaic solar cells. Cost benefits could be there too.

Developments are at initial stages so it will be interesting to see if there are major headaches with commercialisation.

If not, the integrated electronic properties could well help in creating even faster and cheaper communications in the future.

David Bowie's planet looks like it has been completely arid for over 600 million years, according to researchers at Imperial College London, which has made it far too hostile for life to survive on the surface. A team of researchers has been pouring over data from NASA's 2008 Phoenix trip to Mars, where Phoenix landed and searched for any signs that the planet was habitable. It was also used to analyse ice and soil it could collect.

Unfortunately for sci-fi buffs, the results of the soil analysis point to Mars having been arid for hundreds of millions of years. That is despite the ice on the planet. Prior research showed that Mars could have had a warmer and wetter climate in its history but that would have been over 3 billion years ago.

Of course, Phoenix was only able to trawl a portion of the planet, but satellite images, along with previous studies, do suggest that the same soil can be found across the whole planet - meaning the team's findings could be applied to all of Mars.

Dr Pike, lead author on the study, said: "We found that even though there is an abundance of ice, Mars has been experiencing a super-drought that may well have lasted hundreds of millions of years."

However, Pike did say the team thinks Mars is very different now than in its earlier history. Future NASA and ESA missions, he said, will dig deeper to explore the possibility of life underground.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have successfully managed to decode speech heard by patients when turned into brain waves, opening up the possibility that the same technique could be used to ‘hear’ our thoughts.

Work into brain computer interfaces has been going on for some time now, and this latest step shows real promise by decoding the electrical activity in the temporal lobe of a brain via a computer.

This involved predicting the words heard by a patient, but, intriguingly, the researchers are saying that it may be possible to use a similar technique to listen in on thoughts.

If this mind-reading trick is possible then it would have some tremendous applications; being able to communicate with ‘locked in’ patients suffering from paralysis or in a coma, not to mention putting creepy magician Derren Brown out of a job.

Peering into the future has its drawbacks.  We can only imagine Google rubbing its hand with glee at the thought of the ultimate method to permeate our personal lives,  mining our thoughts and having adverts popping up inside our craniums.

We are a long way from such a scenario.  Anyone worried about someone having an unauthorised peek into the chundering cogs of our inner mind has little to fear for the moment, as the procedure involves implanting electrodes with direct brain contact.

Getting power into embedded or sensor systems is currently preventing such gadgets from taking off.

Now the technologists from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are looking for an ambitious answer to the problem as part of a programme to develop power technologies that could bolster system power output from today's 1 GFLOPS/watt to 75 GFLOPS/watt.

In a statement, DARPA says that the world needs at least 50 GFLOPS/w, and requirements of at least 75 GFLOPS/w can be confidently anticipated. The best that can be managed so far are on GFLOPS/w and industry trends will provide power efficiencies that are well short of required performance.

The programme has the catchy title, the "Power Efficiency Revolution For Embedded Computing Technologies" or PERFECT for short. This indicates that DARPA spends far too much of its resources coming up with funky acronyms.

The statement said that the PERFECT program will use industry fabrication geometry advances to 7nm. It should address embedded systems processing power efficiencies and performance, and are not concerned with developments that focus on exascale processing problems.

People do not have to build operational hardware, all that will need to be done for the project to be considered a success is to simulate the hardware and demonstrate progress.

Nearly every week a strange new application is found for graphene, which continues  to exhibit some incredible attributes. Not only is the atom-thick material the thinnest known, it is the also the strongest, stiffest, most flexible and the best conductor of heat and electricity.

Since its discovery scientists across the world have been working flat out to find useful applications for the technology.  Now though it seems that they have finally cracked it.

According to the Nobel prize winning professor from the University of Manchester, who actually discovered the super-material, graphene can be used to distill hard liquor.

Professor Sir Andrew Geim, one of the sticky tape wielding graphene discoverers, revealed that he has been cooking up some graphene moonshine in labs recently.

Geim discovered that a membrane of graphene oxide placed over a container of water was able to stop any gases or liquids passing through, apart from water that is.   He was surprised to discover that the membranes – hundreds of times thinner that human hair – would let nothing but evaporated water molecules through while blocking everything else out.

Perhaps reliving his old student days, the Professor then set up a home brew kit and used the membrane to distill some vodka.  Geim, who says he did it all “for a laugh”, found that the vodka became stronger and stronger over time as the water evaporated out.

Whether graphene will be used in to give your drink an extra kick anytime soon, we don't know, but we can certainly see some applications for the park bench liquor connoisseur.

It is thought that it could be 2020 before graphene starts getting used in microchips, so we can expect a graphene-based cocktail to hit swanky bars around that time too.

The team has developed an easily-made, more conductive silver ink that can be used in fine-nozzled inkjets.

According to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which we get for the spot the ionic bond competition, the ink will sort out some of the problems of printing on flexible substrates which are getting more popular with thinner electronic gadgets, wearable devices, and flexible screens.

Hans Thurnauer, professor of materials science and engineering, and Jennifer Bernhard, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, developed the ink which is comprised of silver acetate dissolved in ammonia to give a clear solution.

This is a better system than other inks which are particle based and less predictable. In the reactive ink, the silver remains in solution until the solvent evaporates, leaving a conductive silver deposit.

But the good part is because it is a solution, the ink can be used in inkjet heads or airbrushes with nozzles that are only 100 nanometres in diameter. This is far smaller than is possible with particle inks. It can also be drawn using a pen if you have to.

The other advantage is that the ink remains stable for very long periods. For fine-scale nozzle printing, "that's a rarity."

Another use of the ink could be to create mobile phone aerials which could improve reception in lower signal areas, and there are also applications for RFID technology. It will be useful for flexible connectors and also of use for batteries, sensors, and solar energy arrays. 

Researchers are creating even more intricate MEMS systems, with silicon based devices used for applications such as detecting chemical on an atomic scale being discussed by scientists at the University of Purdue.

As the stubby-fingered Lego enthusiasts among us will know, manipulating tiny components is difficult to do with finesse.

To upon the doors to MEMS devices of much greater complexity, Purdue researchers have developed, and provisionally patented, a set of ‘microtweezers’ that can build tiny structures such as those hidden in your iPhone or in your car.

MEMS components could be used to create devices by being individually manipulated with the silicon prongs of the microtweezers.

So far, the team has managed to manipulate polystyrene spheres measuring 40 micrometres, which we can imagine would make Hasbro's Operation a breeze.  However, the researchers claim it is as simple as selecting a melon at the supermarket.

While there have been other attempts to create working microtweezers, the researchers believe they have distinct advantages in that no electrical power source is needed, and Purdue's is considerably easier to manufacture and function.  The tool also involves only one movable ‘spring’ piece, rather than a complex set of components.

The team believes that it could also be possible to study individual stem cells in isolation by separating from the large groups that they are currently able to be view.  Furthermore, there are potential applications in precision printing of chemical or protein dots, or conversely coated in chemicals to attract specific materials to the microtweezers.