The human shoulder is a truly complex joint which when injured can hinder a wide range of motion and abilities to work for the wounded person. Rehabilitation of this complex joint can also be difficult, but the researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in conjunction with the Center for Automation and Robotics may have just made it easier.

The robotic exoskeleton which has been developed by the scientists is able to help in the different types of rehabilitation therapies that an injured shoulder may need. The use of strength and motion sensors allows the exoskeleton to ascertain the level of recovery of the individual and customize the treatment process from the feedback gained.

Cecilia García Cena, the main researcher of the science project has said that the system is not just about replicating the shoulder joint but also the entire functioning of the skeletal system, muscles, tendons and ligaments all working together. At the same time, its a simple system which can be adapted to use for a number of patients quite easily.

The exoskeleton developed by the Center for Automation and Robotics researchers has helped to reduce the recovery time from a shoulder injury, as well as providing progress of the entire rehabilitation process. Needless to say this research project will have far reaching impact on the future of shoulder physiotherapy.

NAO is a twenty two inch robot which the researchers at the University of Delaware wish to use as a new approach to paediatric rehabilitation based on social interaction between robots and humans. Basically they let the young kids with disabilities play with the robot.

Children with motor disabilities require a lot of practice during rehabilitation. Many of the tasks that form this process are repetitive and  NAO can be programmed to personalize the experience for each child based on their ability and knowledge level. It will also react to the behaviors of individual children and deliver personalized interventions. Tanner says that this work has the potential to change lives by providing an immediate effect.

The science project is being called GEAR (Grounded Early Adaptive Rehabilitation) and will have robotics expert Herbert Tanner, mobility researcher Cole Galloway, and computational linguist Jeffrey Heinz working with researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Imaging Science.

The interdisciplinary approach is needed to make this rather unique program a success. Its not just the children who are learning in the current studies as per Heinz, who says that they can use insights from how children learn language to design robots that can likewise learn from their experience.

With the number of unmanned drones that will be flying through urban skies soon, it is little wonder that some people are already thinking ahead about the kind of safety protocols these will have to follow. Then there is also the very real possibility of rogue drones which are out to do more harm than good.

That’s why Mo Rastgaar, Associate Professor Michigan Technological University is already working on the science project which will give us a drone catcher. This is going to be a bigger, meaner drone that can follow and capture the ones that are acting like a menace to society. Or simply end up in the wrong air space, like over the White House for instance.

The idea is that if a rogue drone is spotted then a human on the ground can pilot this drone catcher and follow the rogue drone, eventually shooting out a net and capturing it. Its better than merely gunning it down, because using firearms may not always be a viable option. Plus the net entangles it very well, allowing the human handler to retrieve it and any data that it may have stored as well.

The drone once operational will come in handy against smugglers, terrorists, and even spies. Of course the science project is still in the basic stages of prototype testing and getting commercial models is a long way off yet.

With the advance in 3D printing technology some of the most unlikely things have ended up being printed. A sample of a fossil, fake one of course. Parts of the body that can be attached for the handicapped and a whole lot more interesting stuff.

Now if you got to thinking about what was the largest thing that had ever been printed, you may be pleased to know that it is actually a full room in a Canal House in Amsterdam. The printer which made the room possible is called “Kamermaker” which literally translates in Dutch into room maker.

The printing device is a scaled up version of the Ultimaker 3D printer. It is 6 meters high and is capable of fabricating entire sections for the room up to 3 meters high and 2 meters thick. It essentially uses melted plastic for its basic building block and layers the components by squeezing them together to form the final product.

Another large scale 3D printer is the Tennessee firm Branch Technology. They use a 3.5 meter robotic arm loaded on a 10 meter rail to attach the printer head to conduct their printing. This printer uses carbon fiber and plastic as its raw material. With more science projects coming out of the 3D printing stables, it will be interesting to see what you are printing next!

There is a tendency to consider that which is not easily available as precious. And gold is a rare metal. While a large amount of gold has been successfully mined and documented in the past, the quantity of gold now available in the Earth’s crust is just a few parts per billion as suggested by geological surveys.

Gold has been considered precious by older civilizations for its lusterous beauty as well its malleability which made it an easy metal to work with. As per the World Gold Council about 184,000 tonnes of gold is currently to be found in people’s personal collections, stored in banks and government reserves as of now.

If that seems a great deal, try this image. All that gold could be laid out on a football ground and will only be about a meter high. So yes, it’s rare. While hopeful optimists once thought about mining gold from sea water they were thwarted.

This was because a liter of sea water has just 13 billionth of a gram of gold. Extracting that just isn’t commercially viable. No, it may be alchemy that finally solves the problem. After all if you find the perfect science experiment to make gold out of normal metals, it is hardly going to be rare anymore.

When ancient man looked up into the sky and saw sights that he was unable to understand, he felt a strong need to be able to explain them. This is how the various myths about different pagan gods and goddesses began. Each natural phenomenon managed to produce yet another celestial being to be worshiped and at times feared.

A great many things that they believed in have since been explained by science and technology. Still every once in a while a natural sight takes your breath away and you again begin to think of the powers that could create it. One such sight was the perfectly circular halo seen surrounding the sun in Mexico earlier this year.

Halo around the sun or the moon is not really anything to do with pagan gods or witchcraft. Even though it may have you thinking about angels visiting the earth, there is a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for the phenomenon.  It is created by the hexagonal crystals of ice in the upper atmosphere as the sunlight is refracted through them.

A similar sight may also be created by water droplets in the atmosphere, but that halo will be smaller and have a whole lot more color in it. So that’s one more ancient mystery solved by the marvels of scientific experimentation.

When you drink something which claims to have zero calories, are you feeling somewhat self righteous and smug for not drinking sugary cold drinks? Guess what, you may still be harming your body. Apparently even the so called sugar free drinks have chemicals that can cause measurable damage to your teeth enamel.

A group of researchers at the University of Melbourne tested 23 different types of soft drinks for the Oral Health Cooperative Research Center. The findings of the study indicated that drinks with a low pH level even when the acidic additives were minimal still managed to damage dental enamel. The fact that they were sugar free didn’t seem to matter that much.

Now you know that just about any kind of cola, soda, soft drink and even sport drinks are really not that great for your teeth. No matter what claims the manufacturer may make. If you want to keep hydrated, it would seem that there was nothing quite as healthy as good old water. Considering that our bodies are made up predominantly of fluids, water is amongst the healthiest drinks that you could treat yourself with.

While the gimmicks of advertising tease you to try out new soft drinks and promise all kinds of outrageous things for your social life, they are really not healthy for you. Science experiments conducted by researchers all over the world have repeatedly come up with the fact that anything synthetically manufactured in a cold drink factory, will never be as healthy as a simple glass of water.

Navigating through a large and unfamiliar airport can be the cause of a number of hassles for passengers. Lost connections, unavailable instructions and generally a whole pile of frustration can put paid to the jolly holiday you were expecting. The researchers at the Orebro University are hoping to make this just a little bit easier at the Schiphol International Airport at Amsterdam.

They are coming up with a friendly robot who can help lost passengers find their way around the airport. Nicknamed the Spencer project, the robot needs to be tested in real time at the airport since the navigating constantly changes. The parked luggage trolleys, movement of passengers and suitcases are all temporary obstructions that the robot must learn to navigate through successfully. This means the team behind the robot needs to really make it flexible and good at navigating sudden, unexpected obstacles.

That is not a simple task and the collaboration between the University researchers as well as important business houses in five different countries know that extensive testing will be required before it is anywhere near ready for daily operations.

However as and when the robot can successfully guide passengers from one gate to the other, it will make life much easier for them. The initial tests have been scheduled for the month of March for this science project. It will be interesting to see how the robot fares in them. A dedicated guide at a busy airport would make the lives of a large number of people very much easier while travelling.

The battery in a pacemaker may no longer be required as technology catches up with it. M. Amin Karami, assistant professor at the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is involved with the designing of a pacemaker which will be powered by the very heart that they are regulating.

The most obvious benefit of such a pacemaker will be the elimination of battery replacements for the gadget that are currently made every 5 to 12 years based on the model. Also the new pacemaker is not like the old ones which required leads to be attached to the heart and deliver electrical signals that regulate the heart’s activity.

The new pacemaker has not got any leads. Its a wireless gadget that resides within the heart itself. The heart moves a significant amount on its own and now the researchers have figured out a way to harvest this movement and convert it into power that can run the pacemaker.

The successful testing of the new prototype, which is under construction, will lead to a great shift in pacemakers and heart health care. This science experiment based on the new pacemaker is likely to be tested on animals within the next couple of years.

The human ear has a limited range of hearing. The maximum range of human hearing includes sound frequencies from about 15 to about 18,000 waves, or cycles, per second. The general range of hearing for young people is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. As you age the hearing range depletes further as the hair cell’s hair-like stereocilia may get damaged or broken. If enough of them are damaged, hearing loss results which is often irreversable.

Noise induced hearing loss occurs at more than 80 decibels for human beings. The louder the noise the more instant the damage. A rough estimate of loudness of the Big Bang that created us all is between 100 dB to 120 dB. Naturally no human ear will survive actually hearing this sound. Still this is not the loudest noise known to humans.

Apparently the explosion of the Tunguska Meteor which occurred in the year 1908 was recorded at 300 dB making it the loudest sound that human beings know of. Of course there is always the possibility that somewhere out in space there is a planet collision, supernovae explosions or black hole creations which may be louder than this, but that is subject of a different space exploration science project for someone to tackle in the future.