Hailey Dawson, a seven-year-old girl with a rare defect that left her without three fingers on her right hand, wants to throw out the first pitch at every MLB ballpark. Today, her dream got a lot closer to reality.

A team of UNLV students is building a solar home that will compete with other colleges across the country. The students designed a 990 square-foot home called "Sinatra's Living," combining accessibility and comfort with wireless technology.

Some hard work is paying off for students at UNLV after they design and build a solar-powered house for an international competition. "It's a wonderful feeling," said project engineer Adam Betemedhin. The 990 square foot home took more than 18 months of planning, designing and building.

A 7-year-old with a 3D–printed hand wants to throw out the first pitch at every MLB stadium. And Major League Baseball teams want to make it happen.

The whole moment has many reminding themselves of the "good" of social media. And the baddassery of Hailey.

Hailey Dawson, a seven-year-old girl with a rare defect that left her without three fingers on her right hand, wants to throw out the first pitch at every MLB ballpark. Today, her dream got a lot closer to reality.

It all started with a shipment of sweaty sex toys.

It was a hot and humid day in August 2003 and Jennifer Pritchett and her then business partner were days away from opening Minneapolis’s first feminist sex shop, Smitten Kitten. They had sunk all their money into their first shipment of products, but as they excitedly opened the boxes of toys, packing peanuts flying everywhere, they knew immediately that something was wrong. The toys were leaching an oily substance. It was coming off the products, out of the clamshell packaging, through Styrofoam packing peanuts, leaving big greasy spots on the cardboard box. What, they wondered, was wrong?

When 26-year-old Amber, a Las Vegas transplant, realized her dog ate her favorite vibrator, she headed to Las Vegas’s Adult Superstore. Amber grew up in a small Midwestern farming town of 6,000 people, a place where sex “was shunned” and sex toys were never discussed. If she wanted to find a sex-toy store back home, it would mean driving 40 miles to St. Louis. Now, at the Adult Superstore, a large sex-toy emporium — think clothing retailer H&M but for sex toys — she knows that she’ll not only have many options to choose from, but once there, she’ll be treated with respect by a knowledgeable staff. But it wasn't always this way.

You never forget your first vibrator. According to a 2009 study by Indiana University, almost 50 per cent of American women have played with the pulsating devices. That number has undoubtedly climbed thanks to pop-culture phenomena such as Fifty Shades of Grey and marked changes in the “adult industry”. Gone are the days when all sex shops were dives hawking crotchless polyester knickers and sticky men’s magazines, with a dodgy peep show in the back. The sex-toy business has boomed into a purportedly $15 billion (£11.5 billion) a year trade that is increasingly high-end, sophisticated in design and aggressively courting female consumers.