I’m told, by a biologically inclined friend, that many medicines work at certain times of day and are largely ineffective at others. Having to take tiny amounts of pharmaceuticals at precisely timed intervals is not an easy regime to adopt. Today’s invention offers an alternative.

A container, in the shape of a large pill, contains a variety of drug material, a small iron core, a dispenser and an electronic timer. The pill would obviously need to be coated in a biocompatible material.

Once swallowed, a user would attract the pill to the wall of their stomach, using a strong external magnet. When it was in place, turning the magnet would cause a suction cup on the pill’s outer surface to attach itself to the inside of the stomach.

The electronic timer would dispense the right drugs at the right times and then release the suction cup, allowing the pill to be excreted (and reused if necessary).

Now that smoking is outlawed in public places, it’s time to do something about the trash which smokers feel it’s ok to jettison in their wake. The crowds which gather outside foyers seem frequently to ditch their stubs and packets for the rest of us to walk through.

Today’s invention is a vending machine which allows smoking but which retains all the associated detritis.

Users would select a cigarette brand from an illuminated panel and make their payment. Each would then be allowed to unroll a length of hose with a crimped end forming a mouthpiece. A cigarette would be lit within the machine and the smoke pumped from inside to the smoker.

When they were finished, the hose would be withdrawn automatically, cut off and binned for recycling.

The vending machine could support several smokers simultaneously and might be located within a shelter with a fan in the roof in order to retain the exhaust fumes.

As we’ve seen recently in Australia, when a railway line gets really hot, the thermal distortion can be severe and result in permanent damage to the track. Similarly, in cold conditions, lengths of welded track can pull themselves apart, due to contraction. Such sections are commonly inspected on foot, when the weather is severe.

Today’s invention is a mechanism to limit the potential damage to railway track in extreme conditions.

A very small, light cart runs with its center of mass barely above the level of the track. This is semi-autonomous and travels at over 100mph. The cart contains:

The cart will oscillate over considerable distances, changing the temperature a little at each transit. When a train needs to get past, it will automatically rotate off the track and then replace itself again. Many of these cheap units might operate in concert, together maintaining a great length of track.

Lifts in tall buildings tend to be very energy efficient. This is because the design involves installing massive counterweights which move downwards when a lift compartment is moving upwards.

Today’s invention involves replacing the counterweight with another lift. Joined by a cable, the itinerary of one lift would therefore be the complement of the other ie in a 100 floor building, lift 1: 1->2->4->60 lift 2: 99->98->96->40.

These rolling itineraries would be displayed near each lift door so that people would have an extra choice of waiting for the next one moving in their preferred direction or grabbing the additional lift.

An even smarter system would allow travellers to enter their destination floor at the keypad and then calculate what their best option was (possibly also taking into account the widespread psychological preference for moving, anywhere, rather than waiting -and also the possibility of approximation: taking the lift to within a stair-walkable distance of their target floor).

Today’s invention is a system which might best be used on railway engines.

If an individual wheel is sensed to be losing traction (often a problem on icy tracks or when under emergency braking conditions), its contact pressure on the rail can be temporarily increased by pumping a measured amount of heavy fluid (perhaps lubrication oil) from a central reservoir into a circumferential channel within the wheel.

This would also have the effect of suddenly increasing the moment of inertia of the wheel and thus reducing its rotational velocity when starting to spin. The volume of flow to each wheel could be precisely controlled in order to ensure an optimal distribution of grip and rotational inertia.

In addition, the frictional heating of the wheels could be lessened by withdrawing the fluid from them when the train had halted.