GM foods are produced from genetically engineered plants. The plant may be modified to increase it’s yield, become more resistant to insects and pests, or provide more nutrients per piece as compared to the naturally growing cousin. The genetic modification is done by manipulating the natural genome of the plant by adding or eliminating genetic material to the plant.

Since GM foods are grown faster and provide better production rates, farmers are switching to these seeds. However, there is considerable concern about just how safe the foods from such plants are for human consumption. The technology is still rapidly developing and there have been no long term studies on the effects that genetically engineered plants may have on the environment as well as the effect that the GM foods may have on the human body.

Studies that have been conducted are mostly being done by companies that are into genetic modification and are looking for ways to be accepted into popular markets. Neutral studies that work on the affect of human health are still to come. However short term scientific studies conducted locally have shown that so far there have been no side effects or adverse problems from the consumption of GM foods such as tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and soy bean.

Empathy is not something one would usually associate with a robot created to work on artificial intelligence. However with Miko+ the game is changing. This robotic companion for children is supposed to provide  a fun-filled experience, containing impressive interactive technology that engages a child and a design that is extremely trendy and child-friendly as per Dr Mona Gajre, in charge of the Pediatric Neurodevelopment Centre in Mumbai, India.

Sneh Vaswani, CEO and founder of emotix, the company that launched Miko+ said that they wanted to develop a social robot that would provide benefits to them on a number of levels, giving children a technology interface that becomes a strong value addition to and not a substitute for the family unit, and that also enables parents to actively participate in their child’s developmental education.

The robot with it’s interactive features provides advanced companionship with learning and development benefits to children and, also enables closer interactions between family members. The empathy-centric social robot can monitored by the parents via an accompanying parental analytics dashboard. This science project can ensure that parents have enough say in managing their children’s responses to the robotic companion. It can actually enhance family bonding time.

In one science fiction story written over a hundred years ago by pioneer writer Issac Asimov there is the description of a medical robot that can shrink to a microscopic size. The robot enters the human body by being swallowed like a pill. Then travels through the body to reach the location of the medical problem. It rectifies the problem using the load of medicine and minor surgery as required. After which it expels itself with such force from the human patient’s nostril that it literally shoots out into outer space.

The reason why this particular short story comes to my mind today is because of the robotic exoskeleton that robotics experts at the Cornell University have come up with. The exoskeleton can rapidly change its shape upon sensing chemical or thermal changes in its environment. It is also capable of carrying an electronic, photonic and chemical payload to be delivered when the machine is programmed to. Now doesn’t this sound so much like the science fiction story above?

The shape changing robotic exoskeleton is about the size of a human cell. It is made of graphene and glass with the ability to bend when a stimulus like heat, a chemical reaction or an applied voltage is applied. This is one science project that’s going to revolutionize the future of robotics.

Recharging your smartphone can become a major errand when the battery is not able to keep up with your demands. With every generation of smartphones that has come into the market the batteries have been improved in terms of endurance, and time to charge has been reduced. However there are still enough people dissatisfied with the performance of their smartphone batteries and wish that they would last longer.

The scientists at the Binghamton University, State University of New York, have taken up the challenge to meet your future power storage requirements in a rather unique way. They, currently, have come up with a textile-based, bacteria-powered bio-battery, which could in the future be a part of the clothes that you wear. Assistant Professor Seokheun Choi, who lead the team at the Electrical and Computer Science Department, had previously made paper-based microbial fuel cells.

“If we consider that humans possess more bacterial cells than human cells in their bodies, the direct use of bacterial cells as a power resource interdependently with the human body is conceivable for wearable electronics,” said Choi. The fabric has been tested for it’s ability to continue functioning even when stretched and twisted repeatedly. As per Choi, textile-based bio-batteries will be potentially integrated into wearable electronics in a future science project. 

Data storage is of prime importance to the current generation of techno savvy gadget users. Ever so often the latest development makes us realize that the current capacity of our phone or computer to store data is now no longer enough. That now we need to update the hardware to be able to store and process even more date much faster than before.

Researchers at Kiel University have come up with a way to store data on a spin-crossover molecule that they have developed. The molecule stores information via its magnetic state. The storage density of the hard drives that we use today could, theoretically, go up by more than one hundred times using this new technique.

Quantum mechanics limits the miniaturization of current electronic storage devices. Simply placing such small molecules correctly on a surface to add data to them was an issue that was unsolved, earlier. By building this new type of  spin-crossover molecule, the researchers have made it easier to place them on surfaces so that data may be transferred. Needless to say, this is one science project that will allow you to enhance the data storage of your electronic gadget by many hundreds of units once a working prototype can be developed.

Plastics are man-made materials that have made living much easier for human beings. The ease with which things can be built out of plastic makes them very useful. Unfortunately the structure of the molecules is such that no plastic is easily degraded. In fact it can take millions of ears for a single plastic bag to be completely broken down into elements that can be reabsorbed by the earth.

This is why you can find plastics choking the planet as they lie landfills. It is the single biggest threat to the environment from human activities. The problem is worse because people are still using plastic indiscriminately all over the world. In a science research project by the University of Plymouth it was found that a  single plastic grocery bag could be shredded by marine organisms into 1.75 million microscopic fragments.

This does not mean that the amphipod Orchestia gammarellus, disintegrated the plastic. No. It means that microscopic bits of plastic that coat their feces are now floating in the sea. This is a way that marine wildlife actually is contributing to the spread of micro-plastics. The physical and chemical breakdown of plastics takes so long that by the time we actually understand what harm this layer of plastic in the sea is doing, we may not have any clue how to stop it.

Besides the fact that beer is generated from a renewable resource while petroleum comes from a fossil fuel, there is also the sheer excitement of taking something that you drink and using it to run your car. The researchers at the University of Bristol have come up with the initial steps to create a sustainable fuel from the popular drink.

Alcoholic drinks are an ideal model for industrial ethanol fermentation broths. Ethanol for fuel is essentially made using a brewing process. The Chemists have been working on an alternative fuel source to replace petrol and have come up with a concoction that uses beer as it’s primary ingredient. They have converted the ethanol in the alcohol into butanol. While bio-ethanol has been used as a fuel alternative it is not as good as butanol.

Eventually they will have to scale up production and will not be using beer as a raw source. They will get the ethanol from other fermentation processes rather than competing with food grains that will be required to feed the many billions on the planet in the future. This is a science project  that shows great potential to creating a sustainable alternative fuel to petrol.

Auroras are a natural electrical phenomenon which is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the sun with atoms in the upper atmosphere. The Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights are a spectacular light show in the Northern Hemisphere close to the magnetic pole. The same conditions that cause the Aurora Borealis in the north, are responsible for the Aurora Australis in the Southern Hemisphere.

Dr. Melanie Windridge is the author of the book ‘Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights’. As per her the possibility of viewing the Aurora Australis from New Zealand is about as good as trying to view the Aurora Borealis from Scotland or England. Most people do not know of the Aurora Austalis as they occur mainly over the ocean. The best locations for sighting the Aurora Australis as per her, are in the Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Ushuaia, and South Georgia Island.

The vibrant color display in the atmosphere is actually dependent on the composition of the air at the place. When the sun’s rays strike atoms in the atmosphere and cause the electrons to move into a high energy state, the color they emit depends on the type of molecule it is. Oxygen molecules give out green or red light, while nitrogen is responsible for the blue and purple shades. It would make an interesting science project to list just what color each gas molecule would emit at the high energy state.

The Darvaza Gas Crater in Turkmenistan is alarmingly close to the mythological descriptions of the depths of Hell. The fire and brimstone of lore have nothing on this scorching place in the Karakum Desert. The ironical part is that the smoking hot crater is actually a creation of man’s folly.

In the early seventies Soviet geologists in the area were hunting for oil fields. In 1971 they were drilling on top of a natural cavern filled with gas. As the ground collapsed they found natural gas escaping. In order to prevent the toxic gases from harming the local population, they set a flame to them.

This process is called flaring and usually burns out the toxic gases contained in a cavern within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately the area of the crater at Darvaza never stopped burning since it was ignited. The reserves of natural gas must be fed from a leak in the earth’s crust and continue to feed the never ending fire.

The 60 by 20 meter tourist attraction is known as the “Gates to Hell” and is most spectacular when visited at night. The crater is located 250 km south of the capital city of Ashgabat. Regular tours are organised to visit the location. It would make an interesting scientific study to determine just how long the Gates of Hell are going to stay ablaze.

Most of us known the idom, lightening never strikes the same place twice. This is a way of saying that an extraordinary thing is unlikely to happen to the same person twice in a row. It is based on the fact that during a storm lightning is rarely going to hit the same target on the ground a second time.

That is true, unless you happen to be in the mouth of the Catatumbo River at Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. The area is renown for it’s lightning storms. In fact climatologists have decreed that a storm rages here 297 nights a year. This is because of some very unusual topographic conditions.

The huge Lake Maracaibo is surrounded by warm swamps and both are circled by the Andes mountain range. As the sun heats the lake the water vapor content in the atmosphere increases. The cool air blowing down from the Andes forces the warm, water laden air up high to form the dense cumulonimbus clouds.

Cumulonimbus clouds are also known as lightning bearing clouds. As their density in the area above the lake increases, the possibility of a lightning storm does as well. It would make an interesting science project to study just which month has the most storms.