Skin Ageing: Factors that cause it

Here are a few factors that will cause your skin to age premature and make you look older:

-Apart from your increasing your weight, sugar is also responsible for boosting ageing. When your blood sugar is high, it causes a process called glycation which harms elastin and collagen in our skin. This leads to the wrinkling of the skin.

-Did you know, excessive exercising, especially running is known to cause the skin to sag? Known as runner's face, it is caused by the breakdown of collagen. So keep your morning runs short.

-Excessive alcohol leads to dehydration and also lowers the salt content in the body, which is known to be bad for the skin.

-If you have an erratic lifestyle and are not getting enough sleep, this is another reason that will make you look older than your years. Lack of sleep causes dark circles and the skin on your face to look sallow. It makes the skin weak and susceptible, thus making it age faster.

-In winter, the cold dry air saps all the moisture from the skin, making it prone to fine lines and wrinkles. To combat this, apply a moisturiser as soon as you are out of the hot shower.

Nokia X series of Android smartphones unveiled

Nokia has unveiled its first three Android smartphones after several turbulent years that saw the Finnish manufacturer lose its top spot in the mobile market as Google's free OS became the biggest mobile software in the world.

All three Android phones by Nokia - X, X+ and XL - run on a 'customized' version of Android operating system and will not have access to Play Store.

This means that those looking for a number of popular Android apps will still not have access to those. The company has also not innovated much by way of design for the new range and carried over the monobody design of its Lumia series in the new Android smartphones.

Nokia XL, the biggest of the three new smartphones, has a 5-inch screen, 5MP auto-focus camera with LED flash on the back, 2MP front camera and 1,500mAh battery.

On the other hand, Nokia X and X+ have 4-inch screens and 3MP fixed-focus cameras, said former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop while unveiling the devices.

All three devices will run on a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with just 512MB RAM, have access to 3G networks and have display resolution of 800x480p. Nokia will offer a 4GB microSD card free with X+ and XL smartphones, but not with the entry-level Nokia X.

As expected, Nokia has preloaded the X, X+ and XL smartphones with Microsoft's cloud services like SkyDrive and One Drive, instead of Google's software, which may prove a dampener for some. The company is offering 10GB of One Drive storage for free.

Some of the apps pre-installed on the devices are Here Maps, Nokia Mix Radio, Facebook, Skype, BBM etc. Users can download apps from the Nokia store, or choose to sideload apps directly from the web.

Interestingly, the home screen of Nokia's three Android smartphones is heavily influence by that of Windows Phone operating system and features Live Tiles. The company has also included FastLane multitasking solution, which it debuted with the revamped Asha series, and Glance Screen in the new smartphones.

Nokia announced that Nokia X will be available immediately in Europe for 89 euros, whereas X+ and XL will hit the stores in early Q2 2014 for 99 and 109 euros respectively. However, it added that the three models will hit markets like India, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe first, without indicating the price range for these markets.

Elop said that Nokia, set to be acquired by Microsoft soon, will encourage app ecosystem for the Nokia X platform.

Batteries that run on human movement

MELBOURNE: Scientists are developing gen-next batteries that capture the energy of our everyday movements, such as walking, to convert it into electricity to power cellphones and other devices. 

Researchers have for many years attempted to harvest energy from our everyday movements to allow us to trickle charge electronic devices while we are walking without the need for expensive and cumbersome gadgets such as solar panels or hand-cranked chargers. 

Lightweight devices are limited in the voltage that they can produce from our low-frequency movements to a few millivolts. 

Now, Jiayang Song and Kean Aw of The University of Auckland, New Zealand, have built an energy harvester that consists of a snake-shapes strip of silicone, polydimethylsiloxane, this acts as a flexible cantilever that bends back and forth with body movements. 

The cantilever is attached to a conducting metal coil with a strong neodymium, NdFeB, magnet inside, all enclosed in a polymer casing. When a conductor moves through a magnetic field a current is induced in the conductor. 

This has been the basis of electrical generation in power stations, dynamos and other such systems since the discovery of the effect in the nineteenth century. 

Using a powerful magnet and a conducting coil with lots of turns means a higher voltage can be produced. 

In order to extract the electricity generated, there is a need to include special circuitry that takes only the positive voltage and passes it along to a rechargeable battery. 

The development of kinetic chargers has been stymied by current diode technology that requires a voltage of around 200 millivolts to drive a current. 

Song and Aw have now side-stepped this obstacle by using a tiny electrical transformer and a capacitor, which acts like a microelectronic battery. 

Their charger weighing just a few grammes oscillates, wiggling the coil back and forth through the neodymium magnetic field and produces 40 millivolts. 

The transformer captures this voltage and stores up the charge in the capacitor in fractions of a second. Once the capacitor is full it discharges sending a positive pulse to the rechargeable battery, thus acting as its own rectifier. 

The team concedes that this is just the first step towards a viable trickle charger that could be used to keep medical devices, monitors and sensors trickle charged while a person goes about their normal lives without the need for access to a power supply. 

The study was published in the International Journal Biomechatronics and Biomedical Robotics.