A study was conducted at Harvard Medical School on the consumption of energy in households by Hossein Estiri. The computational demographer authored a paper in which he found that energy consumption rose in the age group of 30 to 54 years when people got married, moved to larger homes and raised children. Then the use of energy stabilized for people in their 60s, while surprisingly the use of energy increased in the 70s and continued to go up.

Despite changes in income groups and housing styles, the trend of increased energy consumption in the 70s seemed to apply across the board. Energy consumption in warmer regions was really elevated for older age group people. This could be attributed to more need for air conditioning. Also older people may not be able to maintain their homes well enough to conserve energy.

Another possible factor would be that the appliances they use may be older and less efficient compared to the technology being used by their younger counterparts. Think of old refrigerators, toasters and microwave ovens. There may not be actual need for more energy, but a science project may prove that if the gadgets being used by the people are changed, they may need less energy in the future.

If you have cringed at the amount of food that gets wasted each time at a large gathering of humanity, you may now be able to salve your conscience. Yes, while you may not be able to deliver the food to people who are starving in other parts of the world, you can still help put this wasted food to good use by converting it into a source of energy.

At the University of Waterloo in Canada, scientists feel that wasted food can be converted into a clean substitute for fossil fuels, at an economically viable rate. They used the natural fermentation process of the food to produce a biodegradable chemical which may be used as a source of alternative energy.

Hyung Sool Lee is an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo who wanted to find a better way to utilize wasted food to mitigate the damage caused by fossil fuels. This is what led to the development of this new technology which allows scientists to extract numerous useful chemicals and potential fuel from the waste food.

The science experiment collects and recirculates leachate through food waste in tanks. This is a microbial cocktail of microorganisms and nutrients. It stimulates bio-degradation by intensive mixing. Chemicals are then extracted from this mixture.

A sedentary lifestyle at work is quite common for most office employees. They usually have to sit in one place for a number of hours in front of their computers. What was once uncommon for mankind, has now become the norm for most people. The only movement is made for a couple of short breaks in the day and is hardly enough to meet the daily exercise requirements for the human body.

Getting exercise is very important for a person to stay healthy, as researchers conducting a new scientific study in Columbia University found out. Keith M Diaz, one of the authors of the study said that their findings showed that how you spent time outside of work may matter more when it comes to heart health. This means that even if you are stuck at a desk during work, you need to make the rest of the hours more active.

The study was conducted over eight and a half years on 3592 people. It found that leisure time sitting, such as for watching television, was a major contributor to poor heart health. Moderate to vigorous exercise was much more likely to show a positive health for the heart. Those who exercised were also seen to be at less risk for death due to heart disease.

Wristwatches have been the natural selection for wearable tech. Fitness bands are able to calculate your step count and monitor your heart rate simply by having the sensor in the base read the electric impulse on your skin. They have become a necessary tool in athlete training and now researchers are hoping to take wearable tech into areas beyond physical fitness. 

At the Lancaster University in the United Kingdom researchers are working with smart materials to create prototypes of wrist watches that can aid people with emotionally affective disorders. The strap may change color or the watch may begin to vibrate as emotions get heightened in the wearer. The low cost prototypes provide a large variety of possible emotion readers.

Knowing what your emotions are is the beginning to mastering them, says one of the lead authors of the scientific study. It is a complex skill that people with depression, anxiety disorder, or bi-polar disorder are unable to handle. Using this wearable tech may help them create real time changes in handling emotional out bursts in an easier manner. 

While there is no prototype ready to market as on now, it is easy to see how a device like this would be a game changer in the mental health industry. Maybe one day soon care givers to mental disorder patients will be able to use the advantage of these smart wrist watches to help their patients.

Some people are thin all their lives. They never have to worry about obesity. They don’t feel compelled to think about what their next meal is going to be. The researchers told us that it’s because they have unusual metabolism rates that allow them to digest all they eat. Now some fresh research in Britain brings out a new reason.

It seems that these people carry a genetic alteration that tends to mute their appetite. The study was based on data from the UK BioBank and included a half million people in the age group of 40 to 69. The gene modification allows these people to reduce the chance of getting diabetes and heart disease as well.

Sadaf Farooqi, professor of metabolism and medicine at the University of Cambridge and Nick Wareham, an epidemiologist, led the study of appetite dulling mutation. The gene named MC4R was studied and it was found that those people who had a mutation in this gene were likely to be obese. Nearly 300 different types of mutations have been recorded in scientific study.

In thin people the gene MC4R is always turned off instead of on, leaving them with no real hunger or appetite to eat. This means that their brain is always telling them that they are satiated, they have no need to eat.

One would believe in this day and age where people are aware of cyber security, they would be a bit more careful about choosing the passwords they use. However it seems that millions of people still use the extremely generic 123456 as their account password.

The study was conducted by the National Cyber Security Centre in the United Kingdom and BBC reported that the first cyber survey analysed public databases to see which words, phrases and strings people used most commonly. Nearly 23 million accounts used 123456 as the password.

Other popular strings included “123456789”, again easy to crack, “qwerty”, “111111111” and “password”. They were found in the top five passwords being used by people. Ian Levy the technical director of NCSC said that using such passwords left people open to being hacked.

Another trend was to use famous football teams such as Liverpool and Chelsea as the password. Also popular was the name Ashley followed by Michael, Daniel, Jessica and Charlie. The scientific study shows that people are not as concerned about their cyber security as they should be.

A strong password is always a combination of words and numbers. A few random characters may be added so that it may not be cracked easily. The longer a password is, the more difficult it is to hack.

The unhealthy trend of obesity that is running through our society is causing a whole new bunch of health issues for the population. Most doctors agree that these so called lifestyle diseases would all be eliminated if people paid attention to just two things – their diet and the exercise they get. It is recommended that an adult gets 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous workout activities per week to stay fit.

A study carried out by the University of Liverpool in the UK has come to the conclusion that dog owners are four times more likely to meet their recommended physical activities guidelines than their peers. Having a pet dog ensures that you get out of the house at least twice a day and are more physically active.

Out of the 385 households that participated in the study conducted by Carri Westgarth, the dog owners were much more active physically. They also recorded relatively better physical health than their non pet owner peers. So as per this science study if you want to get more regular with your exercise regime, go adopt a dog!

The HIV virus was responsible for so much death and destruction in the human race that it was considered the villain of the story. However now researchers have used the virus in an altered form to help eight babies who were born with a very rare immunity disorder known colloquially as the Bubble Boy Disease.

This name comes from a famous case study of SCID or severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome in the 1970s, where a boy in Texas lived for 12 years inside a protective plastic bubble to isolate him from potentially fatal infection caused by germs. Children born with SCID don’t have a working germ fighting system and any infection can be threat to their very lives.

The research based treatment carried out at the St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis used the HIV virus to help normalize the immunity system of the babies born with SCID. Since the rare disorder usually kills the children born with the disease within the first two years of birth, it is heartening to know that the results of this science project have been extremely positive.

Genetics have been changed on mice, pigs, sheep, chickens, goats and butterflies during research projects in the past decades. However reptiles have been pretty much untouched when it came to scientific research so far. With tools such as the Crispr making gene editing much easier to manipulate, students at the University of Georgia decided to give reptile genetics a make over.

The first nearly transparent Anolis Lizard has the claim to fame of being the subject of this scientific study in which graduate student Ashley Rasys participated. She was floored when she saw the lizard as she didn’t really expect to be successful. The lizard broke through it’s thick egg shell to reveal the albino trait that had been modified into it’s genes. The trait was chosen by the students as it was a visual marker.

Douglas Menke is the director of the Department of Genetics at the university. Douglas says that they can now create two to four mutant lizards from just a day’s work. With one successful gene editing tweak under their belts, now one wonders what the researchers will experiment with next.

Getting all permissions from the civil aviation authority, allowed the Google Parent company Alphabet Inc to make it’s first commercial air delivery on 9 April, in the province of North Canberra, Australia. Wing, the company’s drone delivery arm is hoping to expand it’s service to a set of eligible homes in the suburbs of Crace, Palmerston and Franklin. Wing hopes to extend the drone delivery service to Harrison and Gungahlin later on.

The blog on Wing said that they have been testing drone delivery in Australia since 2014. Over the past 18 months they have delivered food, small household items, over the counter chemist products and more. More than 3000 deliveries have taken place in the testing phase to houses located in Fernleigh Park, Royalla, and Bonython communities. It’s taken considerable time and effort to get Wing ready for commercial deliveries.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority of Australia has said that Wing meets the acceptable level of safety and works within the guidelines for commercial drone operators flying over 2 kgs weight. What was once simply a pipe dream has now come true. The various science projects that have been part of this process have proved that when you want to, you can bring the future into your present.