Your emotions are closely linked with your moods. Suppose your clothes were able to reflect your mood, it would make social interactions a lot easier. Anouk Wipprecht is a Dutch designer who has come up with the ultimate fashion statement. Clothes that can beam your feelings for the world to see.

Her clothes combine digital technology with haute couture. In essence the built in sensors of the clothing is able to track and blink in time with the heartbeat of the person wearing it. Quite literally showcasing your heartbeat and it’s underlying emotion. It’s like a fashion accessory with a medical attachment.

If you get angry and your heart races, you can’t maintain the cool facade with your clothes blinking rapidly. If you have a crush on someone, and they come close to talk with you, your hastened heartbeat will reflect in the blinking of your clothing. Think of all the situations and moods that can get your heart racing, now imagine everyone seeing your heart racing thanks to your clothes.

Anouk wants the clothes to do away with our deepest deceptions. She wants us to interact as honestly as possible. Her designs were shown in the sidelines of the Milan Fashion Week. While this science project has amazingly combined a body function with stylish clothing, it’s not clear how many people would be comfortable broadcasting their mood through their clothing.

There’s a lot of interesting things to see in outer space and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope continues to bring these to our attention. Not all of them are very far away. A group of German scientists have recently studied an interesting phenomena in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System.

In September 2016 the asteroid 288P came close enough to the planet Earth for a detailed look at it’s physical features. What the astronomers saw was astonishing because it wasn’t just one asteroid, but a binary pair. The two asteroids seem to be of the same mass and size. They are orbiting each other at a distance of about 100 kilometres.

That’s not all that was special about the situation. Apparently the binary asteroid system exhibited comet-like features, including a bright coma and a long tail. This helped them classify 288P as the first known binary asteroid which is also considered a main-belt comet.

The study of main belt comets offers a great deal of knowledge about how the Solar System initially evolved. In fact it is believed that water reached the planet Earth via main belt comets. This scientific study of the binary asteroids will help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of the whole Solar System.

Harnessing Solar Power is a constantly evolving business. From requiring a full building top to be covered in solar cells to produce enough electricity to power a heater, to having a hand held solar cell that can power your remote controlled car, there’s been a constant shift in how scientists are harnessing the energy of the sun.

Now the scientists at RIKEN and the University of Tokyo  have come up with a new type of solar cell which can work even when drenched. The ultra-thin photovoltaic device is coated on both sides with stretchable and waterproof films. This allows the solar cell to keep providing electricity even when it is wet, stretched or compressed.

They are working on a way to make solar cells wearable on clothing so that they may be able to power health monitoring sensors. These could become early warning devices for patients who are prone to a specific type of ailment. So far it was not possible to have a cell that was robust enough to survive in both wet and dry conditions.

Now these energy efficient solar cells made of a material called PNTz4T, are likely to provide a solution to this problem. The commercial applications of this science project are many and varied.

Asteroids are minor celestial bodies floating through the solar system. They are made up of rocks and have been termed planetoids or miniature planets. The rock content of different asteroids may differ drastically, however everyone of them is rich in minerals. Being able to mine these untapped resources will have a revolutionary effect on Earth.

Right now there is a huge knowledge gap in what will be required to complete the mining process. Scientists will need to figure out an accurate way to identify exactly what minerals a particular asteroid contained. The next step would be to figure out what all equipment would be required to conduct a successful mining operation on the asteroid.

Would it be feasible to get all that equipment out into space and on to the asteroid with accuracy. How many people would be required to maintain the operation, both onsite as well as back on Earth to direct the mining operations. Then there would be a cost analysis to see if the amount of mineral mined would be worth the price of mining it.

Only if the entire science project was economically feasible would a business consider going through the entire process. Currently it may seem like science fiction, but we have seen stranger things come true in this decade alone.

Recently the Curiosity rover on planet Mars was able to discover boron at the Murray Buttes in Gale Crater. The presence of boron, which was found in light-toned calcium sulfate veins, has excited the scientific community considerably. That’s not just because we have more clues about what’s on the surface of Mars, but also because Borates play an important part in building life blocks.

Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory says that Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA (ribonucleic acid). Without RNA, you have no life. The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred.

Since the boron was discovered in a mineral vein, that means that it was present in groundwater. This would allow microscopic life as we know it to be possible under the given conditions. Basically it comes down to the fact that life may have existed on Mars, even if it was simple celled. This in turn bodes well for those of us belonging to the multi-celled species, especially those working on a science project to go live on Mars in the future.

Ever since Google first rolled out it’s autonomous cars, the world has been watching their progress. The safe cars, free of human error are expected to revolutionize the way automobiles are used. Some studies expect them to become the norm in under a decade in cities in the US.

The town of Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom test drove the cars for a public transport system that will travel between the town’s train station, commercial, and business districts. The cars are likely to have place to seat two passengers comfortably with their shopping bags and even has place for a baby stroller.

The cars in Milton Keynes will use a special lane and move at just 12 mph. However they are the precursor for things to come. Soon towns all over the world will have similar systems set up to enhance public transportation.

Self driven or autonomous cars pose a serious challenge to law makers around the world. Should this vehicle which is essentially a machine that operates itself, be involved in an accident, who is to be liable for the damages that it causes?

These are the problems that will keep law makers busy for a while. Even as the different science projects on autonomous cars make progress across the world, these legal issues continue to muddy the waters.

For most people who imagine the flying car of the future, it seems that cars would be given wings that are akin to air crafts. That may not be the most popular theory in the scientific community. In fact Massachusetts Institute of Technology based researchers are of the opinion that a Quadcopter which is essentially a drone may be the flying car’s most optimum future.

All that needs to be done is to add four wheels to the drone that allow it to be driven around when it is on the ground. Of course you will be speaking in terms of developing a much larger drone which can seat a pilot and a passenger comfortably.  The scale of which would have to be worked out.

Having a vehicle that can drive and fly is able to allow people to get to areas with obstacles much faster and easier. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology a science project has set up 8 sample quadcopters which can double up as cars. Tests have had them flying and driving over parking lots, driving through no-fly areas and landing on streets.

Although the combined drain of having to fly and drive reduced the quadcopters range and ability, it could still cover about 300 feet. The loss in performance efficiency is just one of the failures that the researchers will have to work through in order to create a car that can truly fly and drive through any terrain.

Being operated to remove a cancerous tumor is the sort of experience you would not wish on anyone. What makes it worse is the fact that sometimes the surgeon may miss removing the entire tissue and some may be left behind inside the body. This will eventually lead to a return of cancer as the cells of the contaminated tissue begin to multiply.

Now a new pen like device which has been nick named the MasSpec Pen may prevent this from happening to cancer patients. The small tool draws up molecules from the tissue of the patient during surgery to identify cancerous cells. This is done by identifying specific molecules known as metabolites.

The device is linked to a monitor which allows the surgeon to see if the tissue being tested is normal or cancerous. This ability to detect cancerous tissue in seconds allows the surgeon to remove all the affected portion along with the tumor. Naturally reducing the chance of the patient having a relapse at a later date.

The MasSpec Pen designed by University of Texas researchers has been able to help 253 patients with an accuracy of 96%. It’s ability to detect cancer cells is about a hundred and fifty times faster than existing technology. This is one science project that will have a huge impact on cancer health care.

In 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed his three laws of robotics. These were to guide robot-human interactions.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Today researchers at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK have developed a concept called Empowerment. It is to help robots protect and serve humans, while keeping the robots safe as well.

The concept of acting ethically is difficult to dilute to a computer program which will guide the behavior of a robot. Public opinion swings from enthusiasm about progress in AI to outright fear that the robots will take over the world one day. It is therefore important to have a clear understanding of what a robot should and should not be able to do.

Scientist Christoph Salge said, Empowerment means being in a state where you have the greatest potential influence on the world you can perceive. So, for a simple robot, this might be getting safely back to its power station, and not getting stuck, which would limit its options for movement. For a more futuristic, human-like robot this would not just include movement, but could incorporate a variety of parameters, resulting in more human-like drives.

Here’s hot and there’s really hot. Like for instance this exoplanet that was discovered by scientists at the University of Maryland to have a stratosphere with a temperature so high that it could actually boil iron.

For those of you interested the exoplanet is named WASP-121b  and is located about 900 light years from Earth. It tends to complete it’s orbit around the host star of it’s system in 1.3 earth days. It is as close to the star as possible without affecting the planet’s gravitational system.

The planet is a gas giant, akin to Jupiter in our own solar system. It was being studied through the NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, when scientists noticed glowing water molecules in it’s atmosphere. Spectroscopy was then employed as part of the science project to study the planet’s changing brightness at different wavelengths of light.

At lower temperatures water vapor blocks light from beneath it, but at higher temperatures, the water molecules glow. The water molecules give off radiation as they lose energy. This means that the atmosphere around the planet being observed is so hot that it can make regular water glow. Now that’s what hot is really like. Aren’t you glad that it’s not that hot out here?