The health of a drone may not have been something scientists paid much attention to earlier, but with Amazon having declared that they are going to start using drones to deliver packages, this has come to the forefront. A drone on a short leg 30 minute mission to deliver a package may not need to worry too much about its health, but what about a longer distance delivery.

When a drone needs to fly out for a long distance it should be able to monitor its systems and check in case there is a problem with aspect. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with an algorithm that allows drones to do their own health check up on the way.

The number of things that can go wrong with a drone delivery are large. The safety of the drone, the correct address to make delivery at, the climatic conditions like rain and heavy winds, so many variables come into play. It is not possible for a drone to deal with a situation as it arises on the fly.

Serious amount of research goes into the programing of an algorithm that can help the drone cope with any emergency that may arise. It will be interesting to see if these experimental drone deliveries will actually match expectations or will they be yet another failed science project.

The fact that the sun’s outer atmosphere is hotter than its actual surface has puzzled scientists for a while now. The sun’s visible surface is called the photosphere. The photosphere is some 6,000 Kelvins in temperature. The outer atmosphere or the corona should be cooler. However the corona regularly reaches temperatures which are 300 times hotter than the photosphere.

A number of theories have been put forward, but researchers feel that the actual reason has now been uncovered. This reason is the Nanoflares! Nanoflares are a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating which occur on the sun, none of which can be individually detected.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory took pictures of the Sun in the month of April which showed Solar Nanoflares in the form of bright loops. These are the phenomenon that cause the sun’s surface to stay cooler than the sun’s atmosphere.  These pictures are from the EUNIS mission which was launched to study the particularly active parts of the sun.

While researchers are not giving up on other theories altogether, this set of photographic evidence has certainly given the nanoflare theory a major boost. It will be interesting to see what else the EUNIS mission manages to uncover for NASA scientists to study during this science project.

Surgeries are nothing to look forward to. Most people dread them and with good reason. One additional problem after surgery is a Surgical Site Infection or SSI. The good news is that if you take antiseptic showers with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) 24 to 48 hours before admission you reduce the risk of SSIs considerably.

The bad news is that most patients, while wanting to comply with these instructions from their surgeons, usually end up forgetting to take these showers. This naturally results in a much higher rate of SSIs than necessary. So the American College of Surgeons wondered how they could get more patients to remember to take these showers prior to surgery.

They conducted a science experiment with Charles E. Edmiston, PhD, professor of surgery and hospital epidemiologist, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee as the head. A group of 80 people were divided up into sections and some were sent no reminders while others got reminders in the form of email, voice mail and text messages to take the CHG showers.

Close to 66% of the people who got the reminders ended up taking the showers which was a significantly higher number than the other group who did not get reminders. Also 80% of the people preferred the reminder to come in text message form. So based on this science experiment, perhaps surgeons all over the world should now consider texting their patients about taking the CHG showers a couple of days before the surgery to reduce SSIs.

Our planet Earth is situated in the galaxy known as The Milky Way. The closest, visible, neighboring galaxy is Andromeda. To find out the weight of a galaxy is difficult enough, but try comparing two of them to see which one is heavier? That is a real science project undertaken by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.

Matthew Walker published a new paper demonstrating a new method that they have developed to measure galaxies. The team of researchers headed by Walker first gathered data available on the Local Group of each galaxy. The Local Group includes all those systems that lie in and right outside an area.

Then they combined their knowledge of gravity and expansion  to arrive at the mass of each galaxy. By studying two massive galaxies that are close to each other and the galaxies that surround them, we can take what we know about gravity and pair that with what we know about expansion to get an accurate account of the mass contained in each galaxy, said Walker.

The mass was calculated to include ordinary, visible matter and the invisible dark matter in the two galaxies. It was found that Andromeda had twice as much mass as the Milky Way. Incidentally in both the galaxies 90 percent of the mass was made up of dark matter as per the findings of the science project.

Pictures from the NASA spacecraft Cassini have revealed the geysers occurring on the moon of Saturn called Enceladus. For the last seven years Cassini has been studying and sending back images of Saturn and her moons for researchers back home. Now it is photographing the geysers on Enceladus to reveal that liquid water comes forth from some underground sea on the moon.

The icy moon, Enceladus, shows a geological basin on its south polar region which resembles tiger stripes. About 101 geysers have been spotted breaking out of these tiger stripe shapes regions. It is believed that the friction and tides caused by the unusual orbit of the moon around Saturn may be the reason why ice cold water turns into hot geysers.

The study also revealed that the geysers were not a near-surface phenomenon, but have much deeper roots. Specially since the greatest geyser activity was seen to coincide with times of greatest thermal radiation. Researchers found that narrow pathways through the ice shell of the moon’s surface remained open from the underground  sea all the way to the surface, if filled with liquid water.

This is what caused the sky high geysers to erupt when the radiation and heat increased. More images from Cassini will help the researchers continue working on this engrossing science project.

The bane of having to wear eye vision correcting glasses may actually have come to an end. If you need to wear glasses to read, you may be very interested in the new generation of gadgets that offer vision correcting displays. University of California – Berkeley researchers are coming up with display screens that compensate for a viewer’s visual impairments.

In other words the gadget creates sharper images that can be seen by a visually impaired person without having to wear eye glasses or contact lenses. The new generation of display can be easily transferred to gadgets such as smartphone, tablets, and computer screens. With some further research they may even be able to help people with more severe visual impairments.

The prototype of the vision correcting display was created in collaboration between researchers at University of California – Berkeley  and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The algorithm was developed by the former while the physical device for manufactured by the latter.

While these displays are a far cry from being available in the next smart phone that you purchase, the potential of the product is mind staggering. A whole lot more research is going to be done in this science project before it can be anywhere near ready for commercial production.

Diabetes is a lifestyle problem that has come up in a big way all over the globe in the last couple of decades. Type 2 diabetes involves insulin insensitivity which prevents blood glucose from being digested in the system. So far the only treatment available were minding your diet, exercising more and taking insulin shots.

Now researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered that the protein FGF1 injected into mice with diabetes can control their blood sugar levels for nearly two days. This treatment not only keeps the blood glucose under control but also insulin insensitivity in the mice.

Naturally the discovery has sparked speculation of making a drug that could not just control type 2 diabetes but actually cure it. The director of Salk Institute’s Gene Expression Lab, Ronald M. Evans, said that FGF1 offers a new method to control glucose in a powerful and unexpected way.

The new protein treatment is also likely to have less adverse side effects than the current methods of treating diabetes with insulin. Mice without diabetes showed no reaction when injected, but those with diabetes showed substantial improvement in glucose levels. Naturally it is still in experimental stages, but there is hope that at the end of this science project there may lie a cure for diabetes.

There were more than 1,344 student team proposals  made nationwide from which just 15 were selected to go into space. The NanoRacks-National Center for Earth and Space Science-Charlie Brown, and the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program (SSEP) came together for project which was set up to promote the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education initiative.

The experiments and proposals were of all kind. A set of girl scouts from Hawaii wanted to conduct a study to collect data on the viability of edible plants grown in microgravity. If crew members could grow edible plants in space they would have fresh food supply enabling them to maintain themselves independently. After going through a number of plants they picked arugula microgreens to grow hydroponically in water, rather than in soil.

They also designed an incubator where an LED would provide the microgreens with light and warmth required for growth.  Again after some debate a purple light frequency made up of red and blue was thought to be the best choice for the LED color. Then they wrote a computer program for the incubator and LED to function independently.

It was a great team effort that saw their science project being selected for launch into outer space. One can’t help but think what experiment would you pick to send to the International Space Station if you had the chance? Interesting thought, isn’t it?

The human race passes on the knowledge it has gained in previous years to its young. The process has been formalized in the institution of education. However schools have been evolving constantly through the years. From a single hall where all the town’s children went to be taught by a single teacher to huge buildings where classes of different grades are held for hundreds of students. Things have changed a lot and the future will see even more radical changes.

The mobile phone has evolved technology which allows a person to gain information where ever he may be. The SmartPhone applications allow you to learn new skills, get the latest news from around the world and practice whatever you want to become proficient in. A small two year old child can draw a picture on the screen, sing along with her favorite nursery rhyme, and watch the video of her favorite cartoon all on a tablet.

As the years go by and technology continues to advance, we may end up with a mobile phone or tablet which teaches you all you need to know. Sort of replacing the need to go to a fixed place like a classroom to gain knowledge. Now that is a science project that will take some time coming to the world, but its going to be here sooner than you think.

In any science fiction story we see human beings living on planets or spaceships far away from Earth. They run their lives as per different rules and human society grows in outer space. In the real world going to a distant planet may not be possible, but scientists are fairly certain that a small colony could be set up on a planet closer home, Mars.

A non profit organization called Mars One based in Netherlands has actually started short listing a group of people who will be the first to colonize Mars. They have been shortlisting candidates from all over the world and intend to use the winners as crew of an ambitious private mission. As per the mission four people will be sent to Mars to begin colonization in 2024, on a one way trip.

It may be a “once in a lifetime” opportunity that more than 200,000 people applied for in 2013 December, but would you want to be one of them? Considering that you will eventually end up dying on the red planet when your supplies run out, how many people would want to do that? At least with the NASA missions you have a shot at getting back home. Still its an interesting science project to read about.