What started as a status symbol in the 1960s has become a 30 billion dollar market in this century. Developing new breeds of resilient flowers through genetic modification and science experiments is indeed a global business today. Successful breeding of a species of flowers can involve the elimination of many thousands of varieties.

The seasonal blooms that graced the garden have now been replaced by cut flowers from hot houses. You no longer have to wait for a specific season to buy a specific flower for you vase at home. The global flower markets have ensured that you can get just about any bloom that your heart desires in any month you want it, as long as you can pay the right price for it.

More than half of the world’s cultivated hot house roses come from northern Germany near Hamburg. Flowers grown in the hot houses of Kenya will survive 2 weeks as they are transported and sold in the wholesale markets of Europe. And now China has decided to enter the flower market with the aim of taking over the sales in the Asian segment of the flower market.

In monetary figures the global flower market is larger than the global music industry. The constant research to improve quality offers plenty of opportunity in the field. So you may just want to try your hand at a science project based on glowing flowers.

Each species on our planet has its own unique survival techniques. A number of science research projects have proved that these techniques are often inborn. Some of them are learned behavior that the growing organism picks up but more often than not, survival is embedded in its genes.

Take for instance the cooperation of the of the Meerkats of Africa. These distant cousins of the raccoon are no more than 30 cm tall. They live in groups in underground tunnels. However they show major traits of cooperation. When the group comes out of the tunnels to forage for food one member stands on sentry duty. While the others eat this sentry keeps an eye out for danger in the area.

The sentry is usually on higher ground such as a rock or a tree top. It may seem that the Meerkat on sentry duty is more vulnerable than the rest of its group close to the ground, but his warning cry help save more members of the group. At the same time the sentry is amongst the first to jump to safety after giving the warning cry. So its behavior of cooperation is not always totally altruistic.

In a similar manner human groups also enlist cooperation for survival. It may not be as clearly evident in our lives today as it was in the lives of the cave men ages ago, but the trait has ensured our survival. Maybe an interesting science project would be to list the ways human society still cooperates, but uses money to make it more of a transaction rather than a helpful action.

That stubborn fat that refuses to budge no matter how hard you try to lose weight was recently the object of a scientific study. In this science project conducted by a collaboration of Indian and Australian researchers a new fat busting method was experimented with.

The idea was to test if fat would burn faster if it was moved to a location of the body that was more active. So fat tissues of white rats were taken from their less active body regions and transplanted on the chest and thighs to increase the glucose insulin based metabolism.

Sure enough the glucose insulin rates more than doubled after the transplant of fat in the rates. This meant that the fat was being metabolized twice as fast as before leading to faster reduction of the fat. Now the researchers claim that a similar technique would allow human beings to treat not just obesity but also diabetes.

Of course the entire science project is in a very nascent stage as of now and it will be years before the process can be tested on a human being. However the idea for a revolutionary new fat loss technique may just have been planted in many more fertile researcher brains. Who knows what new way to burn fat the future will bring?

Human activities have been affecting the climate. The degree to which they do so have been argued about by various researchers based on their science project findings. There have been many recorded instances where pollution has caused harm to the ecosystem, and now it seems that air pollution may cost us the rainy season.

Some researchers at Princeton University published a paper in the September 2011 edition of Science. The paper recorded a 5% reduction in rainfall during the monsoon season in India over the last five decades. As per the scientists it was the result of aerosols formed by wood burning and car emissions that were to blame for this drastic climate pattern change.

Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the air which tend to reflect sunlight back into outer space. This reduces the heat of the sun and disrupts the process which would bring rain to the Indian subcontinent region. However just how the human activity affects the monsoons is not discussed.

There have been other studies which have said that the air pollution is responsible for increasing the intensity of the rainfall during the monsoon season. It is difficult to tell which study to believe at this stage, but one thing all these science projects do prove is that the human beings are irrevocably changing the climate.

What can two such different processes possibly have in common?One in the laboratory, the other in the kitchen. If you think about it you will agree that conducting a science experiment is rather like following a food recipe.

Both include step by step directions on how to proceed and both can turn into perfect disasters if you ignore some key instructions. Also both can be tweaked to get slightly different results from the original.

At the same time you can be literally playing with fire if you mess up with either. The key to a good outcome in either an experiment or a recipe is the preparation time that you spend on them before you actually get down to doing the deed.

Just as it helps speed up the cooking process if you wash and chop your ingredients in advance, it can speed up your experiment process if you have all the material required lined up and easily available to you.

To master a recipe you need to cook it repeatedly, in the same manner most scientific norms advice that any science experiment should provide the same outcome at least three times for it to be considered stable.

So when you get down to the basics you will agree that any science experiment you conduct can actually be treated at par with a new recipe that you want to try out.

Should you chose to do a science project which includes the responses of an animal you will have to bear in mind safety rules for both the animal involved and yourself. It is a big responsibility to care for an animal whom you are involving in a science project.

The two main components that you have to look after for the animal are housing and food. The place you keep the animal should be safe and comfortable for the animal. Of course the size of the animal will determine the actual location you can house it in. You may need to look into fences or cages as well.

The animal should also be provided with adequate and appropriate food as per its needs. Some animals need special food which can not be obtained easily at the local supermarket. So you may want to look into buying food supplies from specialized stores before you get the animal.

At any point of time if you feel that the animal is unhealthy, you must immediately contact a vet. Your science experiment must also not be inhumane to the animal.  Handling animals can take a lot of effort as those of you with pets would already know. Actually conducting an experiment with them can be even more taxing.

Any science project that you get involved with is bound to have some level of experimentation. An experiment by definition will have some expected and some unexpected results. It is important to ensure that you stay safe when you conduct your experiments.

Three things that contribute to the safety of the experiment would be the location you pick to conduct the experiment, the nature of the experiment and the safety gear you use. It never hurts to have a good supervisor monitoring your efforts as well.

Before you begin any experiment it is a good idea to go through any possibilities of things that may go wrong. Also have an emergency plan in place so that if something does go wrong you know exactly what you need to do. Don’t panic and seek out help immediately.

If you are not sure about how a specific experiment is likely to end up, its a good idea to have a teacher, or mentor present when you handle the experiment. Any potentially dangerous element in the experiment such as fire, electricity, a laser, or chemicals must be handled with great care. Remember you are striving to make a science project, not end up as one yourself for the local hospital.

The facts support the belief that robotic surgery is safer than normal surgery. Sustained science experiments have made it possible for a robotic aides surgery to be less invasive and far more effective than regular surgery. So what is robotic surgery and how is it different from regular surgery?

Unlike the image that comes to mind, a robot does not actually perform the surgery on a human being. Rather it is a human doctor who is aided by a high precision robot to complete the surgical procedure. This makes it possible for the surgery to gain the expertise of the doctor and the steady hands of a robot.

The robotic surgical system which is most commonly used is the Da Vinci Surgical system. This involves a simple to use robotic interface for the doctor, good imaging systems with minute cameras which allow the doctor to see what he is doing in the operation and an instant feedback system on the condition of the patient on the operating table.

The truth of robotic surgery is that a human and a robot work together to give the patient the best treatment possible. It is the culmination of years of research and many science experiments that this medical system represents. It is also what the future promises to hold.

For a number of years the denizens of Earth have hoped to contact creatures living on other worlds. Many science projects have been based on contacting alien life form, and yet if there truly are other life forms out there, will they be able to understand our message?

After all a simple sentence like  “Are you out there?” is not likely to be understood even by humans who do not speak the English language. The language barrier can quite often prevent human beings from communicating with each other.  So how do you expect an alien life form to make sense of the sounds that it hears.

In fact how can you be sure that the alien life form even has the the ability to hear? Can you be sure that the alien will also develop all the five senses that human beings use to perceive the world around us? They may have a couple of abilities more or less than us.

That is why even designing a simple message to beam out into space for possible contact with aliens can be quite a difficult task. It needs to be easy to pick up, and self explanatory. Does this sound like a science project that you would be interested in?

At first the snake and a rescue worker do not seem to have anything at all in common, but if you consider an interesting science project at the Georgia Institute of Technology you see how the reptile could inspire the building of a robotic rescue worker.

A group of mechanical engineers at the university have been studying the locomotion of a snake so as to produce it in a robot. The kind of robot that they have in mind will be better than a human rescue worker as it will be able to cling to a surface like the side of a wall.

What’s more the robot will also be fitted with equipment which allows it to find victims buried in rubble in the rescue operation with ease. The design is great in theory but the practical construction of this reptile inspired robotic rescue worker has been giving the research team some tough times.

The texture of the snake and the ground it moves on is what they are trying to replicate in what they termed the “Snakebot.” While the science project is no where near complete the research done so far does not make the finished product seem very unrealistic.