The waste plastic that is thrown into the ocean off the shores of Australia is literally suffocating the natural coral reefs around the island continent. The Asia Pacific coral reefs are said to be inundated with a staggering figure of 11 billion plastic objects. Most of these plastic objects tend to have disease causing bacteria within.

Research has reveled that reefs with plastic waste are twenty times more likely to have diseased corals growing within them. Joleah Lamb, a marine biologist at Cornell University, says that plastic has pits and pores making it the perfect vessel for microbes to colonize. As these microbes get transferred from the plastic to the coral reef, they can cause a lot of damage.

Lamb’s team has been studying coral reefs since 2011 and has been to the underwater location of 159 reefs since that time. They have covered the areas from Thailand, to Indonesia and further out to Australia. There findings have shown that the more plastic that is found around a coral reef, the more likely it is to find diseased coral reefs.

The team projects that by 2025 there will be 40% increase in the amount of plastic found in the coral reefs around the world. This will lead to a major portion of reefs dying, which will then throw the ocean’s ecosystem out of sync. This is an alarming science project prediction.

There’s a lot about our own planet’s biological resources that we are still striving to understand. The virus being the most common biological entity about which not much is known. We still haven’t managed to figure out how to stop the common cold virus from taking root in the human body each season.

Viruses were discovered nearly a century ago and the study of virology has come a far way since then. Yet the researchers at the Portland State University are concerned about the fact that despite a number of viruses being found in space, there has been no consolidated effort to study them.

The branch of astrovirology intrigues Ken Stedman, a biology professor, who teaches at PSU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. As per him, there are more viruses present on Earth than any other cellular organisms. Researchers are just about trying to make sense of them. Space has a lot more viruses to study.

Stedman feels that it is important to study the effect that space has on Earth bound viruses, as well as to check what happens when the viruses found in space are brought down to the planet. He believes this is a scientific study that could provide invaluable information for future generations.

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.