The U.S. Patent Office granted nearly 3900 patents this week. These five are the most interesting.

This week, the U.S. Patent Office approved 3898 patents. Each patent adds a little new knowledge to the treasure trove of human knowledge, but we cannot list all the patents and only select the five most interesting patents for readers.

Facebook may replace character emojis with user photos

United States Patent Number: 20160219006

Emojis are quite popular on the Facebook. Earlier this year, Facebook introduced some new emojis to allow users to better express their emotions and intentions. These new emojis include "love" (heart symbol), "funny" (funny face), "shocked" (surprised face), "sad" (sad face) and "angry" (very angry face).

A recent patent application filed by Facebook suggests that it may allow users to replace various character emojis with photos of themselves. For example, replace ":)" with a photo with a smiling face ".

Users first need to upload their own photos to the Facebook, and then use these photos to customize various emojis. After that, when the user enters the characters of the emoji, the Facebook will automatically replace the corresponding photo.

This will definitely make Facebook user experience more fun and personal.

Technology that can use magnetic levitation technology to levitate houses in the event of an earthquake

United States Patent Number: 9399878

ArxPax is an innovative company known for Hendo hoverboards. Hendo hoverboard may have been inspired by the film "Back to the Future", which is the world's first skateboard that can actually float above the ground. It uses magnetic levitation technology.

The company plans to use the same magnetic levitation technology to keep buildings airborne for about 2 minutes during an earthquake. In this way, the connection between the building and the ground can be cut off and the impact of the earthquake can be avoided. This technology has the potential to save countless lives and a lot of resources during an earthquake.

This technology, called "magnetic field architecture" (MFA), can achieve the effects of lifting, pushing and controlling, and is very cost-effective and simpler than traditional magnetic levitation systems.

If this patented technology had come out earlier, maybe Robin Williams wouldn't have died.

United States Patent Number: 20160210703

Suicide is always shocking, because not only does it take a toll on the family and friends of the person who committed suicide, but the behavior is difficult to predict.

If there are signs of suicide, it is also very subtle and usually only detectable through long conversations with suicidal people.

The probability of suicide is actually very high. When you finish reading this article, many people in the world have committed suicide. Obviously, the various methods that humans have mastered to find and help suicidal people are not very effective. But that could soon change.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has developed an innovative technique that can predict whether a subject will commit suicide based on the analysis of his/her blood samples.

The technique involves measuring levels of specific compounds in the blood, which they call "biomarkers". When the levels of these biomarkers are below or outside the normal range, it indicates that the subject is likely to want to commit suicide.

The technique could also be used to test the risk of suicide, a side effect of antidepressants, in depressed patients taking antidepressants.

In addition, this technology can also predict other mental depression and monitor the patient's response after receiving certain treatments, reducing the risk of suicide.

Patented Map Marker Aggregation Technology

United States Patent Number: 9401100

Generally, the map application will display various information punctuation points on the map to correspond to various related data points. However, information punctuation is not intuitive to use, which reduces the practicality of the map. This patented technology allows users to display various content such as pictures, videos, emoticons and so on on the map. The patented technology was obtained by a company called Adtile Technologies in San Diego, California.

The patent application was filed with the U.S. Patent Office in 2011. Interestingly, with the rise of various location-related services, all the popular mapping applications are starting to use this feature, such as Apple Photos, Facebook and Periscope, which use similar location-based tagging technology. Whether Adtile will take these companies to court? We'll see.

You can print your own diamond jewellery at home

If you think it's cool to design your own jewelry, you'll be even more excited to see this patented technology. Because you will soon be able to not only design your own diamond jewellery, but also print them. Printing diamond jewelry is not difficult at all, you can do it at home.

Lockheed Martin has invented a 3D printer that can print diamond objects of any shape. As an airline company, Lockheed Martin invented this 3D printer mainly to make a variety of complex shapes of drill bits. But the use of this technology is very wide, it can also be used to make custom diamond jewelry.

Although the printing materials used by most 3D printers are usually plastics, ceramics and metals, the printing material used by this 3D printer is a polymer.

When printing 3D objects, the printer will put ceramic powder and polymer into it, and then heat the temperature to more than 100 degrees. High temperature will let the polymer cracking, forming polycrystalline diamond. In addition, this technology can also use nano-diamonds to create diamond-made objects.

When this technology hits the consumer market, you'll be able to make your own unique engagement ring.