32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow To see an interactive version of this list, click here. By Richard Morgan Physicists at Wake Forest University have developed a fabric that doubles as a spare outlet. When used to line your shirt - or even your pillowcase or office chair - it converts subtle differences in temperature across the span of the clothing (say, from your cuff to your armpit) into electricity. And because the different parts of your shirt can vary by about 10 degrees, you could power up your MP3 player just by sitting still. According to the fabric's creator, David Carroll, a cellphone case lined with the material could boost the phone's battery charge by 10 to 15 percent over eight hours, using the heat absorbed from your pants pocket. Years away: 0-2 By Oliver Strand Soon, coffee isn't going to taste like coffee - at least not the dark, ashy roasts we drink today. Big producers want uniform taste, and a dark roast makes that easy: it evens out flavors and masks flaws. But now the best beans are increasingly being set aside and shipped in vacuum-sealed packs (instead of burlap bags). Improvements like these have allowed roasters to make coffee that tastes like Seville oranges or toasted almonds or berries, and that sense of experimentation is trickling down to the mass market; Starbucks, for instance, now has a Blonde Roast. As quality continues to improve, coffee will lighten, and dark roasts may just become a relic of the past. By Gretchen Reynolds Your spandex can now subtly nag you to work out. A Finnish company, Myontec, recently began marketing underwear embedded with electromyographic sensors that tell you how hard you're working your quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus muscles. It then sends that data to a computer for analysis. Although the skintight shorts are being marketed to athletes and coaches, they could be useful for the deskbound. The hope, according to Arto Pesola, who is working on an advanced version of the sensors, is that when you see data telling you just how inert you really are, you'll be inspired to lead a less sedentary life. By Clay Risen The problem with laptops and tablets, says Mark Rolston of the design firm Frog, is that they're confined by a screen. He wants to turn the entire room into a monitor, where you can have the news on your kitchen table while you place a video call on your fridge. And when you're done, you can swipe everything away, like Tony Stark in "Iron Man." Years away: 2-4 By Nathaniel Penn This 15-minute shampoo treatment begins when you lean your head back into a machine that looks like a sink at the salon. First it maps your scalp, then it shoots streams of warm water and foam shampoo from its 28 nozzles before 24 silicone "fingers" work up a lather. One conditioning mist, scalp massage and light blow-dry later, you're done. By Tom Vanderbilt Traffic jams can form out of the simplest things. One driver gets too close to another and has to brake, as does the driver behind, as does the driver behind him - pretty soon, the first driver has sent a stop-and-go shock wave down the highway. One driving-simulator study found that nearly half the time one vehicle passed another, the lead vehicle had a faster average speed. All this leads to highway turbulence, which is why many traffic modelers see adaptive cruise control (A.C.C.) - which automatically maintains a set distance behind a car and the vehicle in front of it - as the key to congestion relief. Simulations have found that if some 20 percent of vehicles on a highway were equipped with advanced A.C.C., certain jams could be avoided simply through harmonizing speeds and smoothing driver reactions. One study shows that even a highway that is running at peak capacity has only 4.5 percent of its surface area occupied. More sophisticated adaptive cruse control systems could presumably fit more cars on the road. BUILDING A BETTER BIKE: Rob Vandermark of Seven Cycles imagines his dream commuter bike. By Alex French Anti-theft handlebars. Here's an old idea whose time has come again. The bearing system that allows the bike to turn can be locked so that a thief can't steer his stolen bike. The lock is internal, meaning that he'd have to destroy the bike to ride it away. Years away: 4+ No more greasy chains. An updated shaft drive - which replaces the chain with a rod and internal gear system - would be perfect for urban riders. They're popular in China right now, but new versions will be lighter and have more sophisticated gearing. One-piece plastic and carbon-fiber frames. Plastic frames were tried back in the "90s, but they were too heavy. The materials and technology have improved. Thermoplastics are cheap and practically impervious to the elements. By Tamara Warren