Month: December 2014

Electric Eel can remotely Control its Prey: Hijacking Neural Pathways

Pooja Kashyap

Recent research has surfaced eels’ ability of using shock waves to incapacitate as well as manipulate prey. The predators either discharge a single zap or produce high torrents of voltage causing fish to experience massive involuntary muscle spasms. In some cases, the shocking tactics is used by the eels to generate minor muscle twitches in prey only to get acquaint with their location, the working is similar to that of a sonar. Muscle powered biological batteries is what keeps these eels an edge of discharging nearly 600 volts. This is…

Read More

10 Images Captured by Orion: A View from Space at 32,000 kmph and 4,000°F

Pooja Kashyap

Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) finally made its successful re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere after a dramatic test flight that hovered around the Earth twice in nearly 4.5 hours. The spacecraft made a fiery re-entry with 32,000 km/h enduring temperature of 4,000°F. This happens to be one of the fastest NASA capsule missions after the Apollo program from 1969 to 1972.

Read More

Impression of Human Brain discovered on Mars: Athabasca Region of the Red Planet

Pooja Kashyap

Recent image received by NASA clarifies the fact that once the Martian surface was saturated by volcanoes. The image has a semblance of a human brain (pictured above) and it stretches over a distance of approximately 1.2 miles. The agency has called it the ‘circular island’ since it appears to be an island encircled by smoothly flowing magma.

Read More

Affordable Artificial Leaf to produce Clean Hydrogen Fuel: Nanowire Mesh for Direct Solar Water Splitting

Neha Shukla

Today nations across the world are trying to cut down their greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative energy sources are being tried and tested to replace non-renewable fuel sources and in this race, hydrogen fuel also known as zero emission fuel, definitely seems to have a promising future. Many automobile companies are doing R & D to come up with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the auto market. Unfortunately, availability of naturally occurring pure hydrogen on Earth is very limited and therefore, production of hydrogen gas requires tremendous energy. To overcome this…

Read More

Aircraft with Panoramic Pods: Passengers to share Pilot’s Eye View

Pooja Kashyap

Ever wondered how it would feel to sit in a cockpit while the plane is gliding through the clouds high above. Especially, imagining a view that only pilot’s are privileged to see is one of my most cherished dreams. I have always given a thought over it even when am not within a plane. Watching a plane from below have always struck me with the idea as of how would it feel for the person(s) who are steering the huge machine above.

Read More

World’s First Rope-Free Maglev Elevator System: The Z-Axis Travel

Pooja Kashyap

In an effort to reduce or make walking time obsolete, elevators are going to have an overall overhauling. Based on the technology of magnetic levitation, the revamped elevators would then be able to go sideways as well. By 2016, ThyssenKrupp AG, a German multinational conglomerate corporation is coming up with the two-axis travel that will usher the era of Maglev elevators within an intra-building infrastructure.

Read More

Electricity producing Trees: Plastic Leaves to Create Power

Neha Shukla

Very soon, we might witness our streets and garden lined up with electricity producing trees. Unbelievable but true. Couple of French engineers have designed an artificial tree that uses wind energy to produce electricity. The electricity producing, Wind Tree will be available in the market by 2015. Founder of start-up Parisian, Jerome Michaud-Lariviere says that he came up with the idea of wind tree when he saw leaves quivering in the absence of air currents, which means energy is coming from somewhere and it possible can be morphed into watts. 

Read More

Pepper selling Espresso Machines in Japan: Humanoid to collect Customers’ Opinions

Pooja Kashyap

George Clooney, the brand ambassador of Nespresso has a stiff competition now, I say stiff because the new face is cute, chatty & cuddly and it happens to be an android. Pepper is the name of the droid that Nestle has lately launched. It’s not just a single robot but a fleet to bots taking the Japanese stores. The four feet tall bot has a cute human like face mounted on top of a plastic body. The interface in tablet form is located at the chest of the machine while…

Read More