A lithium ion battery is quite literally electronic gold. The holy grail of all gadgets that require charged batteries. Which is why scientists and researchers all over the world spend a considerable amount of time and resources trying to improve their quality. If they can improve the duration the battery lasts and reduce it’s production cost, they are bound to have a commercially successful product.

It is to this end that the researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a low cost chemical process that can use glass bottles to manufacture lithium ion batteries which are able to store four times more energy than what is currently the norm. These batteries have the potential to improve the range of electric cars, hybrid electric vehicles, and provide great value to consumers using personal electronic gadgets like cellphones, laptops and the like.

They hit upon the idea of using glass bottles as these contain high purity silicon nano particles. These are required in the construction of the batteries. Plus silicon anodes store up to 10 times more energy than graphite anodes. Although so far their expansion and shrinking during charging has made them rather unstable for use. This science project hopes to rectify that issue and come up with something better.

The smartphone is an invaluable tool. A way of life. A basic necessity now. So when you see that battery slipping away and you find a public charging station close by, you are most likely going to go plug in that phone to charge. After all if the juice runs out, you are going to be in serious trouble. How will you stay in touch with the world?

That action could be one of the biggest mistakes you ever make. Experts warn us that using public charging stations to charge your phone is a high risk activity. The USB cables that are provided at the location can actually be used by hackers to transfer data from your phone even while you are blissfully charging it.

At the New York Institute of Technology researchers were able to find out that hackers can access the smart phone plugged in via the charging cable. They did not require a specific data cable to see what websites the phone user has been visiting while the phone was charging. The charging station can be used for malicious intent if the hacker so desired. This science project proves that keeping a smartphone safe is quite difficult when hackers can expose so many vulnerabilities.

As the winter recedes and the heat wave of summer takes over, there is no denying the fact that the planet is getting warmer. While we may argue about the reasons for this Global Warming and just how much the urbanization of mankind has contributed to it, even the experts agree that the temperatures are really shooting up each year.

Last month, March 2017, was cited to be the warmest March in 137 years of modern record keeping of temperatures by NASA. The mean March temperature calculated in 1951 to 1980 was 1.12 degrees Celsius  lower than the temperatures we faced last month. Basically this means that we were 1.12 degrees Celsius warmer than we should have been in March.

Still not convinced the planet is heating up? The last two top March temperature related anomalies have taken place in the two previous years. All records are made available to the public by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The institute collects data on temperatures in 6,300 meteorological stations all over the world.

These include land based, ship based and buoy based instruments that constantly monitor and report the temperature. The regions covered span from sea surfaces in the temperate zone to Antarctic research stations. This is one thorougher science project in operation.

In a world where every aspect of our lives is getting “smarter” all the time, it should come as no surprise that Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science has come up with a “Smart Bandage”.  Just a plaster to place on your wound will not do. Now the question is just what does this intelligent bandage do?

Marc Clement, who led the research into the development of the smart bandage, says that the intelligent dressing uses nano technology to sense the state of the wound at any one specific time. Basically the bandage joins a 5G infrastructure combining it with your mobile phone.

Now it can keep track of how the wound is healing, inform the doctor about the details, and also let you know where you are, and just how active you have been lately. It can be tailor made to meet the needs of the individual patient.

The bandage will go on trial within the next year. The researchers working on the prototype hope that 3D printing will bring down the cost of mass producing these individualized bandages. This is one science project which will be able to directly communicate with your doctor when you are unwilling to.

If you take your account security seriously, you may be looking at the latest means to use encrypted passwords. However no matter how tough the password a system may generate for you, it can always be cracked.

What can’t be cracked is bio-sensor based passwords which would be unique to yourself. That’s why people started with face recognition software. Unfortunately this was not quite the success it was touted to be since it was relatively easy to fool with a disguise.

Then came the more advanced finger print password, wherein the same concept of having a unique fingerprint that solved crimes, was used to protect systems. However hackers were able to swipe the print and duplicate it to enter the system.

Now the scientists are speaking about using the unique pattern or brain activity when shown a set of pictures as the way to log in to a system or account. Having had a 100% success in identifying the 45 volunteers in the research study at Binghamton University, the system seems to be a huge improvement.

The current challenge for this science project is how to measure the brainwaves in an easier manner. Currently the participants need to wear a special hat stuffed with wires and bio sensors for the brain wave identification to occur. This is not commercially adaptable.

3D printing is making it easier to create a lot of stuff in a cheaper manner. The materials that have been printed with a 3D printer differ from replacement bones for human jaws, tissue material for skin damaged by burns, to things like blocks to use for building a canal house. There sheer potential of 3D printing is mind boggling.

The new item to be 3D printed is a musical instrument. The violin is a classical instrument which has traditionally been constructed from the finest sourced wood. The vibrations from the aucoustic violin require the wood to be a certain complexity of grain structure to give the best sound possible.

Does this mean that it is not possible to print any musical instrument? Not really. In fact an electric violin actually converts the vibrations of the strings into an electric signal which then is amplified into a musical sound.

In this set up there is no need for a resonating chamber. Needless to say a 3D printed electric violin will work just as well as a regular electric violin. The resonances and harmonics from a 3D printed violin are currently being tested by professional violin players to check if this science project has a commercial future!