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.

Frozen Steller Twins Discovered: Orbits in Binary Star System

Pooja Kashyap

Lately a binary star system has attracted attention of many space scientists. This binary system consists of twin stars, mutually orbiting around a common center of mass. Situated around 3,000 light years away from Earth, astronomers’ expecting that it could shed some information regarding similar Earth like bodies floating in space. The planet weighs twice that of the Earth and orbits, in binary system, one star. Distance between the two corresponds to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. However, unlike the Sun, the planet’s host star is dimmer…

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Titan’s Ice Shell overlies Salty Ocean: As Salty as Earth’s Dead Sea

Pooja Kashyap

NASA’s Cassini mission has given strong confirmation regarding the saltiness of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Space scientists have even compared the salt content with Earth’s Dead Sea. The result corresponds to 10 years observation, where Cassini was busy accumulating the gravitational and topographical data. Researchers organized this information and developed a model based on Titan’s structure. This resulted in gaining better insights of the moon’s exterior ice shell.

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Ericsson 5G delivers 5 Gbps speeds: Connectivity across Telephony to Applications

Pooja Kashyap

Unlike any international tech event, this year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona people showed an intensive interest on the use of 5G networks. As expected, the 5G network would be offering exponential gains over its predecessor 4G in terms of the two main things, speed and capacity. Anyhow, 2020 is the anticipated year for the implementation of the 5G networks however lately, Ericsson, the Stockholm-based communications technology and services company has demonstrated the pre-standard 5G network technology by displaying its ability of achieving 5 gbps speed.

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Online Interactive Visualizations: New Learning Tool for Robots

Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at the University of Washington have come up with an approach where robots would be working or learning new skills via collaborating working by shooting a set of query to a larger online community. Rajesh Rao one of the lead scientist asserted that they are taking the one to one interaction to the next stage where the machine would be asking help from the whole world in case it happen to stuck at some problem or a puzzle. Until now, robots could only acquire learning through imitating humans, which…

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Interview: David Henrichs, Co-Founder at DH Product Design in Germany

Pooja Kashyap

David Henrichs is a German designer whose design philosophy is very well depicted in all his works – beauty combined with sustainability. He lives and works in London, Munich and Berlin. His work demonstrates a combination of geometric and natural forms. His designs not only are simple to look at but also run on futuristic lines and colors. Very deftly, he is able to fuse fashion in his unique collection, which does not override the aesthetics of his products. There’s more to this creative individual, we are pleased to offer…

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Tracking Time and Task using Lego Bricks: Gamification Facilitator

Pooja Kashyap

The other day I was having an interesting conversation with my peers on Quora on the topic of merging Gamification and Lego, I know it sounds li’l offbeat but the idea stuck me with an interesting concept, which I thought of jotting them down in a structured form. Think for a second of measuring the daily todo list with lego bricks, stacking one over the other with different colors and forming an architectural structure. Let’s make it simpler, take a look at the following example.

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Polymer for a Shatterproof Smartphone Touchscreen: Copper-based Flexible Display

Pooja Kashyap

Polymer scientists at University of Akron have developed an electrode, which is transparent in nature. Researchers aim to create shatterproof screens for smartphones with this newly fabricated layer of electrode. It’s been quite some time now since, researchers were looking for alternatives to conventional indium-tin oxide, the ITO technology used for making the touchscreen. Brittleness is one of the major flaws with smartphone screens made up of ITO technology. Another equally important reason for looking at its alternative is its scarcity. Moreover, escalation of smartphone and tablet market is fueling…

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Fully Autonomous Vehicles: Profit Center for Chipmakers

Pooja Kashyap

IHS Technology envision that market for MCUs and processor units would touch half a billion dollars by 2020. Similarly, revenues from optical sensors would escalate 7 times by the same year. Google has already rolled in its driverless car and by the end of 2014 we would be witnessing more such autonomous vehicles from robot manufacturers as well, as in robocars. As of now, these cars are not functioning as fully autonomous vehicles and they do require human intervention, especially to avoid unanticipated events. In fact, they are being operated…

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The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

Pooja Kashyap

I bought this book just because I saw Taleb eulogizing the book right on the book cover and so I fell for it. If you have read The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb then I would strongly re-commend do NOT go for the book but if you haven’t dipped into the ocean of Taleb’s thoughts then this book is for you. More or less, The Art of Thinking Clearly harps on the same line of thoughts, as is the case with Black Swan.…

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Interview: Jinwoo Han, Founder at Ahhaproject in Seoul

Pooja Kashyap

Jinwoo Han is an alumnus of the prestigious Domus Academy, Italy. In the year 2010, he was globally ranked amongst the Top 25 young designers by Azure. His works have been featured in periodicals and across major design magazines and books. During the same year, he founded Ahhaproject with the aim of creating products. He has worked at New York and Osaka however, the company has two base workstations, Munich and Seoul. He specializes in designing products that are technology and consumer based and has clients like Lego, Samsung, Sylvania…

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Biomimicry: Baby Elephant with Parallel Mechanism Legs

Pooja Kashyap

Until recently, most robots were designed to assist humans, right from the kitchen to their office premises we have seen these bots performing multi-tasking. Many fascinated machines have been fabricated keeping the nature in mind and this has led to a new field within robotics called the biomimicry. Every now and then, researchers come up with mind blowing ideas and concepts which creates an awe amongst the masses and this time, researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China has created the same wave with their ‘baby elephant’. The robot…

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MindRider: Brain Monitoring Systems for Mapping Mental Experience

Pooja Kashyap

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are working towards creating a novel helmet system that would reflect bike rider’s mind in the real time. It will be able to mind map rider’s engagement level from relaxed state to focused level while navigating through the routes. Mapping Mental Experience Sensors are embedded within the foam of the helmet that would act as a bridge between the brain waves and translating those ripples into the display of level of engagement. The technique is based on EEG (electroencephalography) where the embedded sensors act…

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The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose

Pooja Kashyap

I am not an avid reader of WW books and so this happens to be my second book first being War of Nerves by Jonathan B Tucker. The latter was based on chemical warfare from WWI to Al-Qaeda. The Pacific delves into the literature of WWII, starting from Pearl Harbor. Initially, I thought reading a war book won’t be that interesting that watching the movies but Ambrose proved me wrong. Majestically he illuminated the harrowing incidents of war and American history in front of my eyes.

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MagnetoSperm Microrobots for the Nanoworld: Biomimicry

Pooja Kashyap

Nature does not stop us marveling at its splendor be it at macro level or micro scale. There are limitless options to investigate and get inspired. Biomimicry is one such field in robotics, which is completely drenched with nature’s splash. Researchers do not leave any stone unturned when dealing with robos inspired from nature, lately a concept is put forward by experts at the University of Twente, Netherlands. They have taken inspiration from nature’s locomotion at microscale and have combined the process of two micro-scale entities like magnetotactic bacteria and…

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