Fish Eating Spiders Discovered: Arachnid’s New Diet Supplement

Neha Shukla

It is a well known fact that spiders are insectivorous and part of their diet also includes plant material like pollen. But not everyone knows that spiders like to go for fishing too. According to a study conducted by Martin Nyffeler who is a spider expert and Zoologist at the University of Basel, Switzerland and Bradley Pusey, a fish expert coming from the University of Western Australia discovered that a few large sized spider varieties include small fish in their diet too. They have recorded incidents of spiders hunting fish from all the continents except Antartica. Majority…

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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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Oxytocin can Rejuvenate Muscle Regeneration: Beneficial Metabolic Effect

Neha Shukla

Until now, we knew Oxytocin as the hormone which is associated with sex, childbirth, maternal nurturing and other kinds of social bondings. But researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, now claim that Oxytocin has a bigger role to play and have found to be majorly contributing in repairing and maintaining healthy muscles in elderly mice. 

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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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Stenocara beetle Inspired Hygroscopic Scaffold: Nanotubes for Storing Water

Neha Shukla

Water is essential for survival of almost all kinds of lives on Earth, hence it is imperative to conserve it at any cost. Researchers from around the world are working to find new and innovative methods to conserve water, especially in areas which are short of water resources. Inspired from an insect, researchers from Rice University have come up with an innovation method of water collection. 

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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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