Science

Scientists are constantly looking for inspiration when it comes to revolutionary ideas. For decades, Hollywood movies provided original and innovative material for technology industries. A San Francisco-based company named Anki, tried to steal a little bit of that Hollywood magic and bring it into our everyday lives. As a result, a tiny robot with a big brain and an even bigger personality was created. His name is Cozmo and he is a palm-sized robot, based on Pixar’s character WALL-E.

Some regions of the United States, such as California, face severe water shortage in the summer months, owing to reasons such as climate change and poor infrastructure. Statistics show that the drought-stricken west coast of America relies on snow water from the mountains, which itself could diminish in the next decade or so. This justifies the need to create sustainable systems and environments to address the crisis.

There is always room for improvement! Using this motto, roboticists have taken on the challenge of producing advanced robots with unique characteristics and functionalities. In order to achieve this aim, researchers are employing specialized tools, and building models specially to benefit areas of healthcare, medicine and the rescue operation domain.

There seems no end of applications for 3D printing – ranging from house building to medicine, it’s certainly shaping into a seriously flexible technology. Now, scientists have developed a 3D printed heart which they hope will eventually help some of the 26 million people worldwide suffering from a variety of cardiac conditions. There is a shortage of donor hearts and as such, there is a real demand for a functional artificial heart.

In a bold move which signals their commitment to both reducing the impact of climate change on our environment and meeting customer demand, Volvo announced that all cars manufactured from 2019 will have an electric motor – with the range to choose from including hybrid cars, mild hybrid cars and fully electric cars.

Worldwide, the number of people suffering from depression is startling. Every year, it affects over 300 million people, with around 800,000 of those committing suicide. Whilst our environment and experiences certainly play a role, our genes also have a central part to play. As a result, a team from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, led by Dr. Mary Kay Lobo, has been working to determine exactly which genes could be responsible for depression.

How would it feel to be able to participate in research against Alzheimer’s? A new online game allows the general public to contribute to the scientific community and help them search for a cure. Anyone, with zero knowledge on the subject, can now help scientists spot clogged capillaries, or stalls, where blood is no longer flowing.

Worldwide, animal poaching is a serious problem for our endangered species, with many species facing extinction. Unfortunately, poachers are now armed with a new and dangerous tool from an unexpected source: scientific journals.

In our digital age, the majority of scientific research is now published online. This often includes location details of either newly discovered or endangered species. This has led to the very real problem of poachers and dealers trawling the internet for the latest published research about rare species before targeting them for poaching.

Currently, there’s two main ways to access the energy needs that your household requires. Either connect to the national grid, or go off-grid and meet them through a combination of renewable energies. If you live off-grid, solar panels and wind turbines, or often a combination of the two, are currently the most popular choices. There’s many people who would love the chance to either generate their own electricity or use a more environmentally friendly choice but for various reasons, do not have the option of installing their own off-grid system.

When the blazing summer sun is out and you’re stuck in a city, there’s nothing quite like diving under the cooling canopy of a tree. These urban trees provide a vital function by increasing evaporative cooling as well as offering a shady refuge from the sun, particularly important in tropical cities.

The internet, one of man’s greatest discoveries, is now literally at our fingertips. Though it is highly developed and talks of a progressive society, there are some downsides too: cyber-crimes that affect the lives of many. It has recently come to light that such issues can also extend into areas of medicine.

Early efforts to build artificial silicon cochlea have largely been driven by their potential applications in hearing aids, cochlear implants and other portable devices that demand real-time, low-power signal processing for audio events recognition, including speech. With the recent advances in robotics, the topic has gained even more interest, as equipping robots with human-like sensory capabilities provides the ground for the future evolvement of robotics.

Scientists have been researching Parkinson’s for many decades and have this week come one step closer to a better understanding of the condition. Their research confirms the inkling that scientists have had for nearly 100 years, namely that a ‘faulty’ immune system is partly to blame. This finding is significant because it raises hope that the nerve death associated with Parkinson’s could be prevented by therapies that focus on the immune system.

As you sit in your garden on a summer’s day, you may well enjoy the gentle humming of honey bees diligently collecting pollen in the background. Would you miss that sound if it was no longer there, or think about the consequences? Whilst many of us are now aware that a wide variety of bee species are in decline, we don’t often think about the implications of their potential extinction.

But, if we don’t protect these little insects the future may not look that bright for us either.

The CRISPR system can be inserted into a scientist’s favorite cell or organism to eliminate a specific gene. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeat.

With tinkering, it can shut down transcription from a gene, edit a gene, and even theoretically at least, wipe out a species. CRISPR may have important medical applications, eliminating or repairing disease genes.

Volcanic eruptions are incredibly dangerous, especially those from volcanoes with magma containing a high percentage of silica, as this tends to give rise to more explosive eruptions. Scientists have been looking for ways to better predict the possibility of these eruptions, with one technique centering on tracking the way in which the magma within the volcano has been heated in the past.

Many areas of the universe where stars form are also known to contain complex organic molecules. These molecules contain six or more atoms, with at least one of these being a carbon atom. A group of these complex organic molecules are known as prebiotics, the structures of which are closely linked to molecules essential for life, including amino acids and sugars.

Google’s project, Magenta, uses artificial intelligence to create great compositions. Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence exhibited by machines. So, with the appropriate scientific and technological innovation, we can have an extended evolution in the field of music.

NASA has just announced further details about their new mission to fly into the sun’s atmosphere.

Remember how the stress buster massage ball of the 90s became a sensation for use in treatments and therapy? Likewise, the last few months have seen popularity soar for a device called the fidget spinner, named simply because it spins when you fidget with it!

Kids can’t stop playing with this new toy, whilst some parents, teachers and experts are calling it a distraction (to the extent of imposing Fidget Free Zones and bans). We also can’t help but wonder whether it is advantageous, at all, and whether or not these spinners actually have any science behind them.