Author: Pooja Kashyap

A CPD certified Fitness Trainer, Pooja also likes to spend time reading and blogging the latest research and discoveries in science and how technology is shaping the world. Besides writing, she enjoys reviewing books and taking interviews of creative/innovative people. Currently, she is located in Noida, India, where she actively participates in marathons as well. She is also on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor

Pooja Kashyap

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is beautifully woven and presented by Stephen Batchelor in form of a written collage, as he himself mentions at the end of the book. Although the book is in narrative mode yet no where we found it a story presented by the writer in fact, while I was into the book, I felt as if Stephen is talking to me and describing the sequence of his life’s events which led him towards Buddhism and finally his discovery of motif in life.

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ECOSTRESS: The New Thermometer for detecting Earth’s Temperature

Pooja Kashyap

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a space-based instrument for detecting transpiration within plants so that the flora can effectively use water. ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment (ECOSTRESS) is the name of the device that will be docked on the space station for monitoring the water loss through nano-pores occurring within leaves.

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Nanodiamonds to be used for Delivering Drugs and Cancer Therapeutics: New Imaging Modality

Pooja Kashyap

Capturing ongoing processes within living cells in real time is usually done with fluorescent dyes made up of a fluorescent chemical compound, fluorophore. The compound’s unique property of re-emitting light upon excitation makes it the most deserving candidate for imaging cellular processes, however, with the passage of time, the compound becomes toxic thereby renders havoc to the cells in close proximity.

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Yardarm delivers wireless Firearm Telematics: Gun Technology

Pooja Kashyap

Yardarm Technologies, a California based firearms technology company has developed an innovative product that has an ability of delivering the real time track record of using firearms, by police personals or security officers. With the use of a wireless sensor for firearms, the company has taken machine-to-machine (M2M) capabilities to a higher level. 

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A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Pooja Kashyap

Advanced mathematics coupled with severe mental illness, this is what the book, A Beautiful Mind is about. Sylvia Nasar professor of journalism at Columbia University, has done full justice in surfacing Nash’s life, his youth, college life, his work before and after he earned his doctorate and finally to his breakdown then illness and eventually his recovery. A Beautiful Mind juxtaposes sadness and the will to succeed despondency and depression.

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Lighting Sheets to replace Bulbs: OLED, the Next Generation Lights

Pooja Kashyap

How about customizing light source in our rooms, something that resembles the photo frames. Sounds interesting, ain’t it? Researchers have already been working in the field of light and they have come up with an approach that targets the efficiency in half amount of energy being consumed by regular bulbs by developing ‘glowing sheets’. Technology used in these light sheets would resemble the mega thin TVs and smartphones as the sheets are expected to include organic LEDs or OLEDs.

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Musk unveils ‘the D’: Model S Dual Motor is Super Fast

Pooja Kashyap

The much-awaited Musk’s Tesla Model S Dual Motor (D) is finally unveiled. The beast has four-wheel drive (4WD) along with a second motor for enhancing the extra axle at the rear. This helps in propelling the car from zero to 97 km/h in mere 3.2 seconds. The electronic machine system tosses torque between the front and rear wheels from one millisecond to the next hence perking up on both, the grip on territory as well as energy efficiency. With an aim of outperforming gasoline-powered cars, the new Model S delivers…

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Interview: Robert Cheek, Director Biz Dev at Yujin Robot, South Korea

Pooja Kashyap

Lately GoCart, a service robot from the vault of Yujin Robot Innovation Team, South Korea has hit the headlines across the globe. The bot opens up a new level of human-machine interaction where the machine will replace people in doing the everyday mundane and heavy piles of monotonous tasks, thus leaving the humans to provide emotional support, a task, which a machine can never accomplish. In order to get more in-depth analysis of the robot and its future implications, we tried to get in touch with Robert Cheek, Director Business…

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Electrical Pulses used to reinstate Movements in Paralyzed Rats: Epidural Stimulation

Pooja Kashyap

In Frankenstein effort, Gregoire Courtine, a researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, has developed a process that has helped a paralyzed rat in walking with a precise cadence. The neuroscientist has employed electronics to reinstate realistic movements to the disabled animal. With an aim of resurrecting life in the paralyzed limbs of people, the researcher has zapped spinal cords with electrical pulses. These undulations will substitute the commands being sent by brain in normal condition however, the signals are disrupted with an injury in the spinal cord.

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On/off Switch for Aging Cells Discovered: Telomere Homeostasis

Pooja Kashyap

Newly divided cells of the human body have an ability of replenishing certain organs including lungs, skin and liver consistently. However, majority of these cells have an expiry date, which means, they cannot perform the function throughout, since each division also corresponds to shortening of chromosomes. Upon reaching a certain stage telomere, the area of repetitive nucleotide sequences situated at the peripheral of each chromatid, stops the dividing process. This leads to degeneration of organs and tissues and eventually aging. However, in the presence of telomerase, an enzyme that rebuilds…

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Mangalyaan beams back Images from Mars: India’s First Successful Mission to the Red Planet

Pooja Kashyap

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission after positioning itself successfully into the orbit, took some images of the red planet. The image reflected the planet’s crater-marked surface. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) circulated the images across its network via its facebook page. Pictures containing orange surface with dark holes were taken at a height of nearly 4,536 miles. ISRO’s lead researcher V. Koteswara Rao confirmed that the spacecraft is working absolutely fine and that it has been able to click couple of pictures of the surface and its surroundings. Soon enough,…

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Interview: Michael Kerbow, Founder at MK Studios, San Francisco

Pooja Kashyap

Michael Kerbow is a San Francisco-based artist who works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, assemblage, and digitally-manipulated photography. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in multiple publications. He left his regular job at print advertising only to pursue his passion for painting and drawing. He is of the view that the role of an artist is to distill the world they inhabit for others to see the things that may elude them.…

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Interview: Jessica Nebel, Founder at JN Design Studio, Germany

Pooja Kashyap

Jessica Nebel is an entrepreneur / designer heading her own eponymous firm in Germany, Jessica Nebel Design Studio. Her firm provides design and consulting services to start-ups, corporations and leading international design agencies, some of them include Huawei Technologies, Designaffairs, icon incar and Pilotfish. Before founding her own studio, she had worked for international and renowned clients like BMW, BMW MINI, Schwarzkopf, Sennheiser, Bayer MaterialScience, Dell, TomTom, B/S/H, British Telecom and Asus at various design consultancies in UK and Germany such as Frog Design and Pilotfish. She earned an MA…

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PIBOT will be the next Flying Captain: Humanoid Learns to Fly Real Airplanes

Pooja Kashyap

Last week, we talked about NAO, the humanoid learning to steer wheels and now we have a similar humanoid that is learning to fly real planes. PIBOT is the name of the small and affordable humanoid that is ready to take off our expectations into the skies. PIBOT has been fabricated to operate a toned down, simulated aircraft cockpit. The intelligent synthetic creature is able to make out and use the entire controls comprising of buttons and switches present in the cockpit of a light aircraft that is especially designed…

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