Tag: Science & Technology

BANGALORE (TIP): The human population on planet Earth is more than 7 billion years old. We share the planet with as many as 8.7 million different forms of life, according to what is being billed as the most accurate estimate yet of life on the planet. Earth was formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface in the past 1 billion years. Scientists proved our planet has been rotating in the same direction for the past 4 billion years, and that the Earth’s magnetic polarity does change every few hundred thousand years.

The last time there was a change in this polarity was about 400,000 years ago, but there is no evidence to suggest it’ll happen again anytime soon. With these staggering figures, it’s surprising to see rumours about Doomsday and the world will come to an end today. It’ll require a catastrophe of unimaginably huge proportions to snuff out planet Earth in a matter of a few hours or as doomsayers’ predict, ‘in a day’. However, scientists worldwide agree that life on Earth will end one day. The good news is that this is unlikely to happen for another 4 billion years or so. It’d be safe to say we can go about our daily routine and make plans for the coming holiday season and the New Year and beyond.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Nasa’s Johnson Space Center has released its own spoof video of singer Psy’s cross-over Korean pop hit, in one of the newest in line of ” Gangnam Style” parody. The space centre’s parody, “Nasa Johnson Style,” uses footage from the International Space Station and scenes from the center itself to highlight some of the work researchers do on the campus, which is home base for Nasa’s astronauts. Some astronauts have even made cameos in the parody video.
Astronaut Mike Massimino — a veteran of two space shuttle missions, both of which visited the Hubble Space Telescope, is seen giving the Psy impersonator a disapproving look for a little less than two minutes, ‘SPACE.com’ reported.

Clayton Anderson, a member of the Expedition 15 mission to the International Space Station, can be seen dancing, while Tracy Caldwell Dyson, who lived aboard the station for 174 days in 2010, pops up a few different times lip synching from inside a space capsule.

A couple of the other guest stars include astronauts Michael Coats and Ellen Ochoa. This isn’t the first time the US space agency has participated in a viral video phenomenon.

Earlier this year, Nasa’s JPL Curiosity team released their own take on LMFAO’s “People of Walmart (Sexy and I Know It)” with the much more subdued, “We’re Nasa and We Know It (Mars Curiosity).” The original “Gangnam Style” music video first went viral a month after its release in August, and since then has been watched more than 900,000,000 times, overtaking Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as the most viewed video ever on YouTube near the end of November, the

WASHINGTON (TIP): Astronomers have observed deeper into space than ever before and identified seven new galaxies that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, including one that may be the oldest to date. Using Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers uncovered a population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 4% of its present age.

The deepest images to date from Hubble yield the first statistically robust sample of galaxies that tells how abundant they were close to the era when galaxies first formed, Nasa said. The Hubble’s observations support the idea galaxies assembled continuously over time and also may have provided enough radiation to reheat, or re-ionize , the universe a few hundred million years after the theorized big bang.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Nasa scientists have spotted the longest extraterrestrial river system ever – on Saturn’s moon Titan – and it appears to be a miniature version of Earth’s Nile river. The river valley on Titan stretches more than 400 kilometres from its “headwaters” to a large sea, a Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory statement said. In comparison, the Nile river on Earth stretches about 6,700 kilometres.

Images by Nasa’s Cassini mission have revealed for the first time a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere other than Earth. Titan is known to have vast seas – the only other body in the solar system, apart from Earth, to possess a cycle of liquids on its surface. However, the thick Titan atmosphere is a frigid one, meaning liquid water couldn’t possibly flow.

The liquids on Titan are therefore composed of hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, Discovery News reported. “Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea,” said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, Utah. “Such faults – fractures in Titan’s bedrock – may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves,” Radebaugh said. In Titan’s equatorial regions, images from Cassini’s visible-light cameras in late 2010 revealed regions that darkened due to recent rainfall. Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer confirmed liquid ethane at a lake in Titan’s southern hemisphere known as Ontario Lacus in 2008. “Titan is the only place we’ve found besides Earth that has a liquid in continuous movement on its surface,” said Steve Wall, the radar deputy team lead, based at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This picture gives us a snapshot of a world in motion.

Rain falls, and rivers move that rain to lakes and seas, where evaporation starts the cycle all over again. On Earth, the liquid is water; on Titan, it’s methane; but on both it affects most everything that happens,” Wall said. The radar image taken on September 26, 2012 shows Titan’s north polar region, where the river valley flows into Kraken Mare, a sea that is, in terms of size, between the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea on Earth.

LONDON (TIP): Archaeologists believe they are about to unravel the enigmatic smile behind Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece Mona Lisa after discovering what may be skeleton of the woman who posed for the world’s most famous painting. Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, is recorded as buried in Saint Ursula convent and the team of Italian art historians archaeologists believe they have her remains.

The team led by Silvano Vinceti, a former TV producer , is attempting to exhume and identify Gherardini’s remains by sending the bones to universities in Italy and abroad, where they will be checked against the DNA of two confirmed relatives of Gherardini, the Daily Mail’ reported. “Once we identify the remains we can reconstruct the face, with a margin of error of 2%-8 %. By doing this, we will finally be able to answer the question art historians can’t : Who was the model for Leonardo?” Vinceti said.

It remains one of the greatest mysteries of the art world — what is the secret behind the mysterious smile boasted by the woman in the Mona Lisa, the world’s most famous painting. There has been centuries of debate over the 77cm by 52 cm picture, also know as “La Gioconda” . Most modern historians agree that the lady in the painting was Lisa del Giocondo, who became a nun after her husband’s death.

However, Vinceti is not certain whether the painting that now hangs in the Louvre in Paris is of her. “When Leonardo began painting the model…, he did not draw that metaphysical, ironic, poignant , elusive smile, but.. he painted a person who was dark and depressed,” he said. Vinceti believes the famous smile was added later and may belong to da Vinci’s assistant Gian Giacomo Caprotti , also rumoured to have been his lover.

LONDON (TIP): British architects have proposed the concept of ‘smart’ houses that can metamorphosize into eight different configurations to adapt to seasonal, meteorological and even astronomical conditions. For instance, in the summer plan, bedroom one faces east and watches the Sun rise as its inhabitant wakes up. It can then rotate so that the user is constantly in sunlight, while the house generates energy through its solar panels.

The revolutionary house is based on the work of an early 20th century mathematician who discovered a way to dissect a square and rearrange its parts into an equilateral triangle. The flexibility of the house allows adaptation from winter to summer and day to night by literally moving inside itself.

Thick heavy external walls unfold into internal walls allowing glass walls to become facades; doors can become windows, and vice versa. The layout consists of two bedrooms, an openplan living room and a bathroom, but it too can be adapted to suit the needs of different living situations.

British architects David Grunberg and Daniel Woolfson launched the D Haus company to develop the concept. The shapeshifting home was first conceived as part Grunberg’s graduation project. The design, called ‘D Dynamic’ , is based on the work of English author and mathematician Henry Dudeney, a leading puzzle creator, wo in 1903 invented a way to cut an equilateral triangle into four pieces that could be rearranged into a square, a conundrum he dubbed the ‘Haberdasher’s Puzzle’ .

LONDON (TIP): Researchers are using the imprints of raindrops preserved in a 2.7 billion-year-old rock to figure out what the atmosphere was like on the early Earth. Scientists used the depressions that the drops left to calculate how fast they were going as they impacted the ground.

It allowed them to determine the density of air in ancient times, the BBC News reported. This ‘palaeobarometry’ approach will help constrain the models that try to simulate conditions in Archaean times. About 2.7 billion years ago, the Earth spun much faster, the Moon was closer and the Sun was much weaker . There were no animals or plants in existence as the air was simply not breathable. “There was probably quite a bit of nitrogen in the atmosphere but no oxygen,” said Sanjoy Som from Nasa ‘s Ames Research Center. Som said the “fossil raindrops” were discovered in Ventersdorp in the North West Province of South Africa in the 1980s. They consist of lots of pits in the surface of a rock that started out as volcanic ash-fall. The pits should reveal something about ancient air pressure.

LOS ANGELES (TIP): The unstoppable Voyager 1 spacecraft has sailed into a new realm of the solar system that scientists did not know existed. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have been speeding away from the Sun toward interstellar space, or the space between stars.

Over the summer, Voyager 1, which is farther along in its journey, crossed into this new region where the effects from the outside can be felt. “We do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space,” said chief scientist Ed Stone of the Nasa jet propulsion laboratory, which manages the spacecraft. Stone presented Voyager 1’s latest location at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Voyager 1 is on track to become the first manmade object to exit the solar system. Exactly when that day will come is unknown, partly because there’s no precedent. Stone estimated Voyager 1 still has two to three years to travel before reaching the boundary that separates the solar system from the rest of space. Scientists were surprised to discover the unexpected region at the fringes of the solar system. For the past year, the team has seen tantalizing clues that heralded a new space environment.

The amount of high-energy cosmic rays streaming in from outside the solar system spiked. Meanwhile, the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside the solar system briefly dropped. Because there was no change in the direction of the magnetic field lines, scientists were confident that Voyager 1 had not yet broken through. They have dubbed this new zone a kind of “magnetic highway.” The Voyagers launched 35 years ago on a mission to tour the outer planets. Though Voyager 2 – currently 9 billion miles from the Sun – launched first , Voyager 1 is closer to leaving solar system behind.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Building on the success of Curiosity’s Red Planet landing, Nasa has announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars programme , including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020.

The announcement comes a day after Nasa released the results of the first soil tested by the Curiosity rover, which found traces of compounds like water and oxygen that are necessary for life, the US space agency said. “The Obama administration is committed to a robust Mars exploration programme,” Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover with a launch in 2020 comes only months after the agency announced InSight, which will launch in 2016, bringing a total of seven Nasa missions operating or being planned to study and explore the “Earth-like neighbor”.

BEIJING (TIP): Chinese astronauts may grow fresh vegetables in extraterrestrial bases on moon or mars in the future to provide food and oxygen supplies to astronauts, an official said after a successful lab experiment.

Deng Yibing, deputy director of the Beijing-based Chinese Astronaut Research and Training Center, said that the recent experiment focused on a dynamic balanced mechanism of oxygen , carbon dioxide, and water between people and plants in a closed system
According to Deng, a cabin of 300 cubic meters was established to provide sustainable supplies of air, water and food for two participants during the experiment, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Four kinds of vegetables were grown, taking in carbon dioxide and providing oxygen for the two people living in the cabin. They could also harvest fresh vegetables for meals, Deng said. The experiment, the first of its kind in China, is extremely important for the long-term development of the country’s manned space programme, Deng added.

LONDON (TIP): The Cambridge University is set to open a centre for ‘terminator studies’ where leading academics will study the danger that robots pose, with experts saying in future machines may be an existential threat to humans. Its purpose will be to study the four greatest threats to the human species, artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear war and rogue biotechnology. The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) will be colaunched by Lord Rees, the astronomer royal and one of the world’s top cosmologists, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported. Rees’s 2003 book ‘Our Final Century’ had warned that the destructiveness of humanity meant that the species could wipe itself out by 2100.

The idea that machines might one day take over humanity has featured in many science fiction books and films, including the Terminator, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a homicidal robot. In 1965, Irving John ‘Jack’ Good wrote a paper for New Scientist called ‘Speculations concerning the first ultraintelligent machine’.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Super-Earths could have oceans of liquid metal and life-protecting magnetic shields, scientists say. Under the heat and pressure that exist inside super- Earths, magnesium oxide and other minerals commonly found in the rocky mantles of the terrestrial planets, transform into liquid metals, laboratory tests have shown, Discovery News reported. Super-Earths are planets beyond the solar system that are bigger than Earth but smaller than gas giants like Neptune.

The research has implications for understanding conditions on super-Earths, including whether they might be favourable for supporting life. Scientists zapped a piece of magnesium oxide with highpowered lasers to simulate the heat and pressure that would exist on planets roughly three to 10 times as massive as Earth. They discovered that the clear ceramic mineral first morphed into a solid with a new crystal structure, then completely transformed into a liquid metal.

In that state, the liquid mineral may be able to sustain a physics phenomenon called a “dynamo” action, which is responsible for generating magnetic fields.

WASHINGTON (TIP): A NASA spacecraft is keeping tabs on a vast dust storm on Mars that has spawned changes in the Martian atmosphere felt by Curiosity rover on the Red planet’s surface. The Martian dust storm was first spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on November 10 and has been tracked ever since, the space agency said. Using the orbiter’s Mars Colour Imager, Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, began observing the storm and subsequently reported it to the team operating NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

The storm came no closer than about 1,347 kilometres from Opportunity, resulting in only a slight drop in atmospheric clarity over that rover, which does not have a weather station. Halfway around the planet from Opportunity, the NASA Mars rover Curiosity’s weather station has detected atmospheric changes related to the storm

Sensors on the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), which was provided for Curiosity by Spain, have measured decreased air pressure and a slight rise in overnight low temperature. “This is now a regional dust storm.

It has covered a fairly extensive region with its dust haze, and it is in a part of the planet where some regional storms in the past have grown into global dust hazes,” said Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. “For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface,” Zurek said. Curiosity’s equatorial location and the sensors on REMS, together with the daily global coverage provided by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, provide new advantages compared with what Viking offered with its combination of orbiters and landers.

Each Martian year lasts about two Earth years. Regional dust storms expanded and affected vast areas of Mars in 2001 and 2007, but not between those years nor since 2007. “One thing we want to learn is why do some Martian dust storms get to this size and stop growing, while others this size keep growing and go global,” Zurek said. From decades of observing Mars, scientists know there is a seasonal pattern to the largest Martian duststorm events.

The dust-storm season began just a few weeks ago, with the start of southern-hemisphere spring. The Mars Climate Sounder instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter detected a warming of the atmosphere at about 25 kilometres above the storm.

Since then, the atmosphere in the region has warmed by about 25 degrees Celsius. This is due to the dust absorbing sunlight at that height, so it indicates the dust is being lofted well above the surface and the winds are starting to create a dust haze over a broad region.

LOS ANGELES (TIP): After playing in the sand, the Curiosity rover is poised to trek across the Martian landscape in search of a rock to drill into, scientists reported on November 15. The six-wheel rover has been parked for more than a month at a sand dune where it has been busy scooping up soil, sniffing the atmosphere and measuring radiation levels on the surface. Its next task is to zero in on a rock and that requires driving to a new location.

Mission deputy scientist Ashwin Vasavada expected Curiosity to be on the move in the “next few days.” “It’s the bedrock which really gives you the story of ancient Mars,” said Vasavada of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission. “The soil is a little harder to interpret because we don’t know how old it is or where it came from.” The car-size rover touched down in Gale Crater, an ancient depression near the Martian equator, in August on a two-year mission to probe whether the landing site once had conditions capable of supporting microbial life.

Armed with a high-tech suite of instruments, it’s the most sophisticated spacecraft to ever land on the red planet. During the first three months, a weather station aboard Curiosity detected brief drops in air pressure, a sign of whirlwinds in the region. “These events are starting to occur more and more often,” said Manuel de la Torre Juarez of NASA JPL. “We expect to see more in the future.” Previous rovers have spotted and even recorded dust devils dancing across the Martian terrain, but scientists said Curiosity has not yet seen evidence that the swirling winds have lifted dust.

Curiosity’s ultimate destination is a 3-mile-high (5- kilometer-high) mountain rising from the center of the crater floor that’s rich in mineral deposits. Scientists had hoped to drive to the base before the end of the year, but that doesn’t look likely after the extended stay at its current spot.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Researchers have designed a new paperthin bulletproof super material which can selfassemble into alternating glassy and rubbery layers. The nanomaterial could translate into safety beyond vests.

These advancements could accelerate progress on protective coatings for satellites and even jet engine turbine blades, researchers said. A team of mechanical engineering and materials scientists from Rice University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created special materials that were able to stop bullets in the lab.

The type of material, called a structured polymer composite, can actually selfassemble into alternating glassy and rubbery layers, the Discovery News reported. While performing ballistic tests on the material at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies , the 20-nanometrethick layers were able to stop a 9- millimetre bullet and seal the entryway behind it, according to a Rice University.

However, one of the challenges to making thinner and lighter protective gear is being able to test the materials effectively in the lab.

Researchers need to know precisely why those nanolayers are so good at dissipating energy, but analysing the polymer can take days. The MIT-Rice team also came up with an innovative testing method, where they shot tiny glass beads at the material.

Although the beads were only a millionth of a meter in size, they simulated bullet impacts. Under a scanning electron microscope the material’s layers look like corduroy so the projectile impact can be seen clearly.

The researchers deduced that a projectile hit their target 2,000 times faster than an apple falling one meter hits the ground, but with a million times less force. Because the projectile’s impact area is so concentrated, however , the impact energy is more than 760 times greater. “After the impact we can go in and cross-section the structure and see how deep the bullet got, and see what happened to these nice parallel layers,” Rice materials scientist Ned Thomas said. “They tell the story of the evolution of penetration of the projectile what mechanisms, at the nanoscale , may be taking place in order for this to be such a highperformance , lightweight protection material.”

LONDON (TIP): Early humans who roamed the African savanna three-and-a-half million years ago had a diet more like a cow than a great ape – comprising of grass and sedges, a new Oxford study has found. Researchers found that Australopithecus bahrelghazali chomped its way through rushes and grasses rather than soft fruits preferred by its chimpanzee cousins, thanks to its powerful jaws and big grinding teeth.

The study shows the ancestral human diet diverged from that of the apes much sooner than previously thought, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported. Experts analysed the amount of carbon in teeth from A bahrelghazali specimens dug up from a fossil site in Chad with the help of a laser that freed carbon from the enamel. This showed the creature’s diet would have been rich in C4 plants such as grasses and sedges.

LONDON (TIP): Researchers have discovered a new gene which they say helps explain how humans evolved from chimpanzees . The gene, called miR-941 , is carried only by humans and it appeared after humans evolved from apes and played a crucial role in human brain development and could shed light on how we learned to use tools and language.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh compared it to 11 other species of mammals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, mice and rats. This finding, published in Nature Communications , brings us closer to answering one of science’s leading questions: What makes the human body different from other mammals? A previous study that also analysed the differences between apes and humans found that the evolutionary genetic advantages that help humans live longer than apes also make them more vulnerable to diseases of ageing, including heart disease , cancer, and dementia. Scientists led by Dr Martin Taylor at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine showed that miR-941 had an important part in the development of the human brain and can even help explain how we acquire language and learn to use tools. This new gene is the first known gene to be found in humans and not in apes. According to the team, it appears to have a certain purpose in the human body.

Pigs hold clue to human diseases

Scientists have sequenced the pig’s genome, showing the swine and humans share 112 DNA mutations linked to a range of disease like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s , which may help in fighting diseases. Researchers, who undertook the largest ever study of the pig genome, found that swine are adaptable, easy to seduce with food and susceptible to domestication — much like humans.

LONDON (TIP): A 1,400-year-old ‘vampire’ skeleton with metal spikes through its shoulders, heart and ankles, has been discovered in Britain, a new report has claimed. The skeleton dating from 550-700 AD found buried in the ancient minster town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire has shed light on rare ‘vampire’ burials in Britain.

Long dismissed as myth and legend, the vampire is associated with spooky stories, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported. It is believed to be a “deviant burial”, where people considered the ‘dangerous dead’, such as vampires, were interred to prevent them rising from their graves to plague the living. Only a handful of such burials have been unearthed in the UK till now. The discovery is detailed in a new report by Matthew Beresford, of Southwell Archaeology. The skeleton was found by archaeologist Charles Daniels during the original investigation of the site in Church Street, which revealed Roman remains. Beresford said when Daniels found the skeleton he jokingly checked for fangs.

“Throughout the Anglo-Saxon period the punishment of being buried in water-logged ground, face down, decapitated, staked or otherwise was reserved for thieves, murderers or traitors or later for those deviants who did not conform to societies rules: adulterers, disrupters of the peace, the unpious or oath breaker,” said Beresford. “Which of these the Southwell deviant was we will never know,” he said.

MUMBAI (TIP): A total solar eclipse will envelop parts of the US, Australia and New Zealand on Diwali day. Festivities in India will continue as usual given that the celestial event will not be visible in this part of the world.
Scientist Bharat Adur who heads the Akash Ganga observatory Mumbai says the solar eclipse will begin at 1.08am IST on the intervening night of November 13-14 and end at 6.15am. Diwali Amavasya falls November 13, while Lakshmi puja will be performed the following day.

Acharya Ravindra Nagar of New Delhi says, aœThe total solar eclipse will not affect Lakshmi puja in India since its shadow will not span our country. Where it is visible people may defer the rituals until it passes.a

Adur points out that the western world will have the opportunity to see two eclipses this November. A fortnight after Diwali Amavasya, a lunar eclipse will occur on Purnima day, November 28.

LONDON (TIP): A UK man has been fitted with a ‘Terminator-like’ carbon fibre mechanical hand which he can control with movements in his upper arm. Nigel Ackland, 53, from Royston, Cambridgeshire lost his arm in an accident six years ago and has now been given a new lease of life by a hi-tech bionic hand which is so precise that he can type again. The Bebionic 3 Myoelectric hand, made from aluminium and alloy knuckles, moves like a real human limb by responding to Ackland’s muscle twitches , the Telegraph reported.

The twitches in his upper arm are detected by sensors that trigger one of 14 pre-programmed grips, mirroring human movements . They include a clenched fist, a pointed finger and a pincer and a lighter and heavier depending on how the user tenses his upper arm.

The robotic arm is so sensitive that he can touch type on a computer keyboard , peel vegetables and even dress himself.

NEW YORK (TIP): Now, Superman knows where exactly he came from.

A noted astrophysicist claimed to have determined the actual location of Superman’s fictional home planet — Krypton.
Krypton is found 27.1 lightyears from Earth, in the southern constellation Corvus, said Neil de-Grasse Tyson, director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York. Krypton, which is cooler and smaller than our sun, orbits the red dwarf star LHS 2520, Tyson said. According to the Superman mythos, the superhero was born on Krytpon but was launched toward Earth as an infant by his father, Jor-El , just before the planet’s destruction . After touching down in Kansas , Superman was raised as Clark Kent by a farmer and his wife.

“This is a major milestone in the Superman mythos that gives our super hero a place in the universe,” said DC Comics, the publisher of the Superman series.

LONDON (TIP): Researchers have developed a tiny camera that can be clipped to clothes or worn on a necklace, and takes a picture every 30 seconds, allowing users to record their daily lives.

The camera, called Memoto, is billed as “the world’s smallest wearable camera” has become the latest technological hit on Kickstarter, the “crowd funding” website. As well as a five megapixel digital camera, the device will feature a GPS chip to keep track of owners’ locations and automatically log and organize pictures via a specially-created iPhone and Android app, The Telegraph reported. Memoto makers claims the battery will last two days.

“Many fantastic and special moments become blurred together after a while and it feels like life just rushes by, too fast for us to grasp,” said the Swedish start-up behind the project. Memoto makers describe the project as “lifelogging” technology and plans to ship its first finished cameras in February next year.

“The camera and the app work together to give you pictures of every single moment of your life, complete with information on when you took it and where you were,” they said. “The way this works is that the photos are organized into groups of “moments” on a timeline,” they added .

“On the timeline, you are presented with keyframes (about 30 per day) each representing one moment. You can tap a moment to relive it in a stop-motion like video of all the pictures in that moment,” Memoto makers claimed.

“This enables you to not only browse your life the way you remember it, but to search for specific events of your life: who was it that you met at that party or what did the sunset look like in Lapland in June?” they added.

WASHINGTON (TIP): New vaccines being developed by scientists from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway may eliminate the need for needles as they can be delivered via a nasal spray, or as on oral liquid or capsule. Lead scientist Professor Simon Cutting, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, has developed the jabs through the use of probiotic spores.

He carried out fundamental studies into the biology of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis that attracted the attention of microbiologists due to its ability to form spores that can last millions of years before germinating under the appropriate environmental conditions. “The mechanisms by which this process occurs have fascinated microbiologists for decades making it one of the most intensively studied bacteria.

Its simple life cycle and ease of use make it an ideal laboratory subject,” Professor Cutting said. Professor Cutting discovered that the Bacillus spores act as ideal vehicles to carry antigens and promote an immune response. “Rather than requiring needle delivery, vaccines based on Bacillus spores can be delivered via a nasal spray, or as on oral liquid or capsule. Alternatively they can be administered via a small soluble film placed under the tongue, in a similar way to modern breath freshners,” he explained.

He added that, as spores are exceptionally stable, vaccines based on Bacillus do not require cold-chain storage alleviating a further issue with current vaccine approaches. As well as eliminating the pain associated with needles, oral vaccines provide greater benefits including being safer to administer, especially in developing countries where HIV is rife, being inexpensive to produce and easier to store and reducing concerns of adverse reactions.

Professor Cutting has carried out pre-clinical evaluation of Bacillusbased vaccines for a number of diseases including Tuberculosis, influenza and tetanus but most recently he has been investigating the potential for use of the vaccines against a disease of particular relevance to the West – Clostridium difficile. “C. difficile, is a gastrointenstinal infection that is commonly picked up following hospital stays and causes around 50,000 infections and 4,000 deaths per year in the UK, mostly in elderly patients. Currently, there is no vaccine against the disease, and although several approaches are currently undergoing clinical trials, none are expected to provide full protection, and new solutions are urgently needed,” said Professor Cutting.

“Bacillus based vaccines offer distinct advantages as unlike other approaches, oral delivery can cause a more specific immune response in the gastrointenstinal tract to fully eliminate C.difficile,” he added. Professor Cutting has recently received private seed investment to form a company, Holloway Immunology, to develop the bacillus vaccine technology and concentrate on three lead vaccines for Tuberculosis, C. difficile infection and influenza (flu). The company is currently looking for investors to help fast track the implementation of these jabs and contribute to the transformation of vaccine delivery around the globe.