Two nanotechnologies have been developed by the National Nanotechnology Center in Thailand (Nanotec) to cope with the floods that have plagued Thailand. One uses silver nanoparticles for a water filtration system that operates on solar power, called the SOS Water System. The genius of it is its portability—it’s shown mounted on a small boat, purifying water from the flooded river it’s floating on. Though small, the system is capable of purifying a remarkable 200 liters per hour.
Nanotec calls the second technology covered by a BBC video “n-SACK.” It’s basically a material that absorbs water. As shown, it creates a better sandbag—better in a couple of ways: Before absorption, it’s much smaller and lighter than a sandbag, and unlike one, it not only blocks floodwaters, it partially absorbs them.

Nanotec researchers were able to make a high-capacity water purifier portable and solar-based, on the one hand, and bringing the price down to $2 per “sandbag” in the other.
Source: http://www.nanotec.or.th/en/

"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists. He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself — an extremely fine distinction.

A proton-proton collision event in the Compact Muon Solenoid  experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. © CERN 2012

"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery.  We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson." The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to understanding why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. "This discovery opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe" 

Source: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/