Imagine a train in your local metro running down he rail tracks and then suddenly instead of going horizontal, the train changes to a vertical track and runs up a skyscraper! Does that sound like a scene out of a science fiction movie? Well it may be reality by the year 2075.

With limited space available in most urban areas there is a lot of pressure on the availability of land. Most city planners find it difficult to carve out the area required for railway stations. This is what led to the radical proposal of a vertical train that will climb up skyscrapers. The station will be located within the building saving space.

The train would work horizontal like a traditional train and as it went vertical the carriages would pivot rather like a Ferris Wheel to keep the passengers on an even keel. The futuristic project called “Hyper Speed Vertical Train Hub” would prove a major blessing for metros in crowded cities of the future.

The proposal was made by London residents Christopher Christophi and Lucas Mazarrasa. It got an honorable mention in the 2014 e Volo Skyscraper competition. The actual building of these trains of the future running up buildings will be a challenging science project to take on.

Alternative fuel sources should be renewable and plentiful. With that reasoning solar power is one of the best alternative power sources available. So there was little wonder when the world’s largest solar power generating plant was recently opened up in the Mojave Desert. The system was run by a combination of 350,000 mirrors about the size of your garage door, aiming sunrays at three 40-story-tall towers.

The sunlight boils water in these towers, generating steam that drives special turbines to produce 392 megawatts. That is enough energy to power 140,000 homes for a year. Then came the unwanted side effect on the environment. It seems that the power generating towers of the solar plant are a hazard to the local birds.

The birds that fly into the zone between the the mirrors and the towers literally get burnt to death. The scorched birds have been found lying dead on the ground by the researchers running tests on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. The dead birds found over the last few months include a peregrine falcon, a grebe, two hawks, four nighthawks and a variety of warblers and sparrows.

While it is clearly impossible to stop the advance of the solar power plant, there has to be some solution to ensure that the birds do not fly into the blaze zone and get burnt. This is a problem that researchers working on the science project never imagined they would have to solve.

Alternative power sources have been a robust area of research for the last couple of decades as the fossil fuels that power our world are fast coming to an end. Amongst the most popular alternative power sources being researched is solar power, or harnessing the power of the sun.

There have been a number of innovative inventions that use solar power to cook food, heat up water, and even drive a car. However there is nothing quite as unique as the solar powered toilet that has been developed by Karl Linden, a environmental engineering professor and his team of students at the University of Colorado.

“Sol-Char” is a solar powered toilet in which waste is scorched by fiber-optic cables powered by solar concentrators on the roof. The byproduct it makes is called “biochar”. This is a sanitary charcoal briquette-like material that can be used as a fertilizer in agriculture and also as a soil amendment.

Here’s how it works. 8 parabolic mirrors aim the sun’s rays onto a stamp-sized collector, this is passed on to the cables which then heat up the “reaction chamber” where the poop gets scorched. The science project is still being tweaked for better efficacy, but it will be interesting to see how it finally emerges from the laboratory.

Ever since the first Mars rover landed humankind has been waiting with baited breath to find evidence of life on Mars. The closest planet may have our closest alien life forms. While the researchers have found no little green men running around the red planet, there is a lot of small stuff that can not be ignored.

A meteorite from Mars discovered in the Yamato Glacier, Antarctica, by a Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2000, has been under study at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Analysis of the meteorite showed that it was formed on the surface of Mars 1.3 billion years ago. Then some powerful impact event caused it to blast off into space along with other parts of the Martian crust.

These chunks then traveled through space eventually falling to Earth as meteorites. One of these samples,  named Y000593, were recovered from the Antarctic region and it shows speroidal features embedded in a layer of iddingsite, a mineral formed by action of water.

It could be evidence of some ancient biological process that was taking place on Mars so many centuries ago but does not conclusively prove that life on the red planet does indeed exist. Perhaps the Mars rovers will have better luck than this science project in answering that question.

All animal life on earth is supposed to be distantly related to plant life as per evolution. So it may be possible for some aquatic living beings to confuse scientists as they try to classify them into plants and animals. One such being is the sea anemone.

Sea anemones are classified as being animals traditionally. However two new genetic studies conducted on them have found that they are technically half plant and half animal. While no one is rushing to change their traditional classification as an animal, researchers are open to discussing their more plant like traits.

Ulrich Technau  from the University of Vienna, was the project leader of one of these genetic studies conducted on cnidarians. He say that cnidarians are from an animal lineage and include corals, sea anemones, jellyfish and hydras. They branched off very early and so have retained many plant-like ancestral traits, Ulrich said, hence, in terms of the regulation of gene expression, they are somewhat mixed.

Cnidarians appear to use a plant-like system to regulate typical animal genes, many of which are shared between the sea anemone and humans. Now it does seem like a long shot to call a sea anemone cousin, but hey, this science project shows that it just may be possible.

Robots have long been associated with stiff and rigid movements. The smooth gait of live beings has been difficult to perfect in robots but with the advance of technology it has become easier. The movements of the latest generation of robots is not as jerky as it used to be. Perhaps the most difference can be seen in robotic fish at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

So what makes these robotic fish different from their predecessors? For starters they have soft material on the exterior which is more flexible than the rigid materials used in the past. And the main deal is the fluid flowing through flexible channels within the body of the fish.

This robotic fish can even manage an escape maneuver by convulsing its body to change direction. Just like a real live fish would do and the robotic cousin can do it in a fraction of a second as well. So far the main focus of motion planning in a robot has been to avoid collisions with the environment.

With the robotic fish and their soft bodies there is no danger of the robot being harmed or harming anything even if they do manage to collide with something in the environment. That’s another reason why this science project related to soft robots is picking up steam.

If you love your pizza you know its kind of difficult to eat it if its not fresh out of the oven. There may be some of you who argue that cold pizza from the fridge tastes just as good or even better. However we would all agree that the cheese in the pizza is not conducive for it to last a long time without spoiling.

Now what if you could have pizza that would last forever without going bad? That is exactly what the US Military is looking for. Well, while it may not last forever, this special pizza will have the ability to sit on the shelf for nearly three years and still be good to eat. Researchers at a U.S. military lab in Massachusetts are working on a recipe that doesn’t require any refrigeration or freezing.

The pizza is cooked, packaged and set down on a shelf till its consumed said Michelle Richardson, a food scientist at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center. The quest for this good pizza has become known as the holy grail at the Natick labs. Richardson has spent nearly two years developing the recipe in a large kitchen full of commercial equipment.

As per Richardson pizza is the most requested food that soldiers have mentioned when asked about what they would like to see in their rations. Hopefully at the successful completion of this science project, the soldiers will not be disappointed.

Having robots do the work of humans in inhospitable or hostile environments would indeed be a boon. That is why so much effort and energy is expended in developing perfectly functional robotic construction crews. So what activities does a robot like this need to be able to perform?

A study at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has outlined a set of functions that these robots must definitely be able to perform. These include the actions like moving forward, backward, and turning in place. Being able to climb up or down a step the height of one brick. Also the ability to pick up a brick, carry it, and deposit it directly in front of itself.

It should also be able to detect other bricks and robots in its immediate vicinity. It should also have the knack of keeping track of its own location with respect to a “seed” brick. In addition to these autonomous actions that the robot must perform it is imperative that the robot also be able to follow certain instructions as well.

These instructions could include obeying predetermined traffic rules for the robotic crew.  Circle the growing structure to find the first, “seed” brick for orientation purposes. Being able to climb onto the structure to obtain a brick. Then attaching the brick at any vacant point that satisfies local geometric requirements and climbing off the structure. It does seem like a complex science project to design.

There have long been science fiction novels and movies made about robotic construction crews that do the work of human builders and supervisors in the future. Now the scientists  at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University are hoping to make that robotic crew a fact.

The researchers have been working on an autonomous robotic construction crew which needs no supervisor, no eye in the sky, and no constant communication. Harvard’s TERMES system shows robotic crews building complex, three-dimensional structures without the need for any intervention. Each robot builds independently of the others. If it takes a break it does not affect the rest of the construction crew. A robot is fitted with four simple types of sensors and three actuators to help it do its tasks.

Inspired by termites in nature, TERMES robots can build towers, castles, and pyramids out of foam bricks. They can build staircases to reach the higher levels and add bricks wherever they are needed. In the future, similar robots could lay sandbags in advance of a flood, or perform simple construction tasks on Mars. The TERMES science project is definitely one to watch out for.

We are used to thinking about glass as a brittle and fragile object. If you knock it too hard it will crack and even worse shatter altogether. However the latest research being conducted by scientists at the McGill University is likely to end in the production of a type of glass which can be more durable in nature.

This highly shatter proof glass is likely to bend and dis-form  without breaking. The toughness of the glass will be greatly enhanced making it a viable option for a number of commercial uses. The inspiration for this new technology is said to be mollusk sea shells. These shells are made up 95% of chalk, which as you know is a highly brittle substance.

However the mollusk shells are made hard and durable by the inner coating of nacre. Nacre, which is also known as mother of pearl, is made up of microscopic tablets a little like Lego blocks. These provide the strong infrastructure to the shells that they need to survive in the sea.

Earlier attempts to replicate the nacre structure have not been successful. The challenge has now been taken up by the researchers headed by Professor Francois Barthelat. The science project they are undertaking will be a major learning process even if they do not manage to succeed in their mission.