Eggxactly Similar To Toaster for Eggs

Boiling an egg involves using a pot of water, along with the energy required to boil it.
What if there were a way to just heat the egg directly, with no need for water? Well, now there is, and it’s known as Eggxactly, Gizmag wrote.
Designed by British inventor James Seddon, who wanted to make the process of cooking an egg as easy as toasting bread, the device has been in the works for at least seven years. It features two stretchable silicone heating elements--one on either side of the egg--that are said to transfer heat to the egg very efficiently. Because the elements are so soft, they reportedly conform to a variety of sizes and shapes of eggs.
To use Eggxactly, you just stick in an egg, close the lid, turn the top-mounted dial to indicate how hard you want the egg cooked, then tap the device on top to start it. The cooker measures the starting temperature of the egg and heats it accordingly.
When the egg is done, you’ll be alerted with a beeping sound.
It has apparently proven quite difficult to come up with a practical method for producing the silicone-heating elements (as a rather awkward 2006 appearance on Dragon’s Den indicated), which is why product development has taken so long.

NASA Robot Can Extract Moon’s Water, Ice

Now that NASA is pretty sure there’s water on the Moon and Mars, the next step is extracting it for us to use. It’s not like NASA can just send some astronauts up with jackhammers, though: digging on the Moon will require a robot, so it’s a good thing NASA has just the right one for the job.
According to Dvice, RASSOR, short for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, is a tank-like robot with spinning digging drums for arms.
The 100-pound prototype robot is designed to dig up lunar soil and transfer it to a processing unit for automatic water and ice extraction.
The goal is to ultimately turn the chemicals within the soil into “rocket fuel or breathing air for astronauts working on the surface” of the moon.
RASSOR engineer A.J. Nick says that designing the robot has been challenging for a number of reasons. For starters, they needed to make sure RASSOR was light enough to launch on a rocket, but heavy enough to work in places where gravity is much lower than on Earth. Then there’s the matter of movement.
While RASSOR can use its drum arms to “flip itself over to get unstuck from fine soil,” its gears are also prone to getting trapped with pebbles and sand particles, which causes its rubber tracks to slip off.

Iranians Use Nanoparticles To Detect Hydrogen Peroxide

Iranian researchers have obtained the technology to produce a biosensor made of carbon paste modified with cytochrome C and manganese oxide nanoparticles to detect hydrogen peroxide in the cellular cycle of living creatures.
The biosensor has applications in medical, biological and food industries, Fars News Agency wrote.
Hydrogen peroxide is not only an important analyte in food, medicine, clinical, industrial and environmental fields, but also plays an important role as the product of enzyme reaction in systems containing enzymes. Therefore, a quick analysis technique for this material is very important.
Negahdari, one of the Iranian researchers, explained different stages of the project.
“Manganese oxide nanoparticles were first produced through chemical synthesis. Then, the modified electrode was produced by placing the protein and manganese oxide nanoparticles on the smooth surface of carbon paste electrode. All electrochemical detection and measurement stages were carried out in the phosphate buffer solution.”
The most important advantage of manganese oxide nanoparticles is increasing the ratio of surface to volume in materials in bulk form. This advantage increases reactivity and increases the rate of electron transference electrochemical processes, which consequently increase the redox peaks.
The use of biosensor is a rapid, precise and cost-effective method to detect hydrogen peroxide. This method can be applied in medical, biological and industrial diagnoses.
Results of the research have been published in December 2012 in the International Journal of Electrochemical Science, vol. 7, issue 12.

Sea Urchin ‘Trick’ Key to Capturing Carbon

Researchers say the natural ability of sea urchins to absorb carbon dioxide could be a model for an effective carbon capture and storage system.
Newcastle University scientists discovered by chance that urchins use the metal nickel to turn carbon dioxide into shell.
They say the technique can be harnessed to turn emissions from power plants into the harmless calcium carbonate, Science-News wrote.
The research is published in the journal, Catalysis Science and Technology.
Many sea creatures convert carbon dioxide in water into calcium carbonate, which is essentially chalk. Species such as clams, oysters and corals use it to make their shells and other bony parts.
When the team at Newcastle looked at the larvae of sea urchins, they found that there were high concentrations of nickel on their external skeletons.
Working with extremely small nickel particles, the researchers found that when they added them to a solution of carbon dioxide in water, the nickel completely removed the carbon dioxide.
“It is a simple system,” Dr Lidija Siller from Newcastle University told BBC News. “You bubble carbon dioxide through the water in which you have nickel nanoparticles and you are trapping much more carbon than you would normally and then you can easily turn it into calcium carbonate.”
“It seems too good to be true, but it works,” she added.
At present, most carbon capture and storage proposals are based around the idea of capturing carbon dioxide from electricity-generating stations or chemical plants, and pumping the stripped out gas into underground storage in former oil wells or rock formations. But there are still question marks about the possibility that the stored carbon may leak back out again.
The Newcastle researchers say that an alternative approach would be to lock up the carbon dioxide in another substance such as calcium carbonate or magnesium carbonate.
This can already be done by using an enzyme called carbon anhydrase but it is very expensive.
PhD student Gaurav Bhaduri, who is the lead author on the research paper, explained that using nickel would be a far more economic option.
“The beauty of a nickel catalyst is that it carries on working, regardless of the pH, and because of its magnetic properties it can be recaptured and re-used time and time again,” he said.

What to Eat When You’re Feeling Blue

Oranges and papaya are high in vitamin B6 and folic acid, both of which have been found to be lacking in studies in patients who suffer from depression.
Many people swear that these fruits, with their pleasantly tangy scent and cheery orange hues, help wake up the senses, Shine.yahoo reported.

Pick-Me-Up
Fish oil is famously high in polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential to brain function and cardiovascular health. While there is an established link between people with depression and low levels of these omega-3 fatty acids, scientists are still trying to definitively prove that the reverse is also true.
Some encouraging studies found that omega-3s have boosted the mood-elevating power of prescription antidepressants. In another large study, omega-3 supplements improved the symptoms of those diagnosed with depression but who do not suffer from anxiety (although this research was funded by the makers of the supplements).
Try sashimi of wild salmon, mackerel and arctic char, all of which have high levels of omega-3s and low levels of mercury.

Mood Enhancer
Saffron, a spice made from the dried stigmas of crocus plants, is popular in Middle Eastern, Spanish and Indian cuisines. It has also been used to treat depression (and right other internal wrongs) in traditional Persian medicine and as a nerve-calming medicinal incense in Tibetan healing practices. There isn’t a wealth of research to back up saffron’s effect on mood, but a series of smaller experiments from Iran, which produces most of the world’s saffron, showed promising results: Capsules of 30 mg of saffron were more effective at lifting depression than a placebo and were also found to be as effective as Prozac.

Chocolate Bliss
Most of us discovered the mood-boosting powers of chocolate by age 2. And it’s no surprise that we get hooked on it young: Studies have shown that chocolate contains chemical compounds that can have similar effects on the brain as marijuana.

Sure Thing for Carbaholics
There’s a hypothesis that carbs can help your brain produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates moods, explains Judith J. Wurtman, PhD, the author of The Serotonin Power Diet.
In clinical studies, Wurtman carried out as a researcher at MIT, when carbohydrate-craving volunteers drank a high-carb beverage, they showed measurable improvements in mood, concentration and energy levels. So, if you’re having bagel fantasies during what Wurtman calls the “carb craving time”, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., she suggests trying a sweet and starchy snack of about 120 calories and 25 to 30 grams of carbs. (Note: This advice is not recommended for diabetics, who have a complicated relationship with carbs.)
Wurtman says that easily digested simple carbs will boost the mood right away, while complex carbs take longer to digest, making them a ‘time-release’ happy pill. Her recommendations combine both types of carbs: a whole-wheat English muffin with jam, oatmeal with raisins or honey on whole-wheat crackers.
“Carbohydrate-cravers will feel the mood-lifting effects within 20 minutes,” says Wurtman.

Micro Scooter Luggage Gives You Lift

The Micro Scooter Luggage by Kickboard makes rushing to catch a flight fun.
Developed in collaboration with Samsonite, the hard-shell, carry-on sized bag features a three-wheeled, folding scooter attached to its bottom, Technabob wrote.
The scooter base can fold upward into the luggage while the handlebar retracts, transforming the bag from scooter-fun to standard, overhead compartment size.
Weighing 11 pounds and able to carry a 220-pound load, the Micro Scooter Luggage is checkpoint compliant, though it may raise a few eyebrows at security.

Different Brain Areas Responsible For External, Internal Threats

When doctors at the University of Iowa prepared a patient to inhale a panic-inducing dose of carbon dioxide, she was fearless. But within seconds of breathing in the mixture, she cried for help, overwhelmed by the sensation that she was suffocating.
The patient, a woman in her 40s known as SM, has an extremely rare condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease that has caused extensive damage to the amygdala, an almond-shaped area in the brain long known for its role in fear.
She had not felt terror since getting the disease when she was an adolescent, ScienceDaily wrote.
In a paper published online on Feb. 3 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the UI team provides proof that the amygdala is not the only gatekeeper of fear in the human mind. Other regions--such as the brainstem, diencephalon, or insular cortex--could sense the body’s most primal inner signals of danger when basic survival is threatened.
“This research says panic, or intense fear, is induced somewhere outside of the amygdala,” says John Wemmie, associate professor of psychiatry at the UI and senior author on the paper. “This could be a fundamental part of explaining why people have panic attacks.”
If true, the newly-discovered pathways could become targets for treating panic attacks, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and other anxiety-related conditions caused by a swirl of internal emotional triggers.
Decades of research have shown that amygdala plays a central role in generating fear in response to external threats. Indeed, UI researchers have worked for years with SM, and noted her absence of fear when she was confronted with snakes, spiders, horror movies, haunted houses and other external threats, including an incident where she was held up at knife point. But her response to internal threats had never been explored.
The UI team decided to test SM and two other amygdala-damaged patients with a well-known internally generated threat. In this case, they asked the participants, all females, to inhale a gas mixture containing 35 percent carbon dioxide, one of the most commonly used experiments in the laboratory for inducing a brief bout of panic that lasts for about 30 seconds to a minute.
The patients took one deep breath of the gas and quickly had the classic panic-stricken response expected from those without brain damage.

Genetic Patch Stops Deafness in Mice

A tiny “genetic patch” can be used to prevent a form of deafness that runs in families, according to animal tests.
Patients with Usher syndrome have defective sections of their genetic code that cause problems with hearing, sight and balance, BBC wrote.
A study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, showed the same defects could be corrected in mice to restore some hearing.
Experts said it was an ‘encouraging’ start.
There are many types of Usher syndrome tied to different errors in a patient’s DNA--the blueprint for building every component of the body.
One of those mutations runs in families descended from French settlers in North America.
When they try to build a protein called hormonin, which is needed to form the tiny hairs in the ear that detect sound, they do not finish the job.
It results in hearing loss at birth and has a similar effect in the eye where it causes a gradual loss of vision.
Scientists at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, in Chicago in the US, designed a small strip of genetic material which attaches to the mutation and keeps the body’s factories building the protein.
When mice with Usher syndrome were injected with the “genetic patch” they grew up able to hear and had no balance problems.
For the first couple of months, their hearing was close to normal in the lower frequencies, but had started to deteriorate by six months.
One of the researchers Michelle Hastings, assistant professor at Rosalind Franklin University, told the BBC, “It was a surprising result that we could treat mice right after they are born and have such a profound effect.”

Vitamin D Loss

Obesity can lead to vitamin D deficiency, a new study indicates.