Luna the Personal Robot

Luna, which is claimed to be the first personal robot designed for mainstream consumer adoption, has gone on sale.

Californian company RoboDynamics hopes that it will revolutionise robotics in the same way that the PC did home computing.

They aim to see a robot in every home by 2021.

Practical applications for the five-foot robot have yet to be announced but it is expected that Luna will be able to carry out menial tasks such as serving drinks and walking the dog.

The robot has an 8-megapixel camera and a 3D sensor to stop it bumping into walls.

Powered by a 12-volt battery, Luna runs for 4-8 hours per charge. One thousand robots will begin shipping at the end of the year for $3,000.

Picture: Robodynamics/SchultzeWORKS / Rex Features

Personalised Blood Test for Cancer DNA

A personalised blood test that can identify tumour DNA could be the first step towards a long-promised revolution in the way cancer is treated.

In the short term, the test - reported by Victor Velculescu of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues in Science Translational Medicine - could be used to spot cancer recurrence before tumour growth shows up on scans, meaning that treatment could be started earlier.

The test detects genetic rearrangements that distinguish cancer cells from normal cells. Eventually it might also pave the way for more personalised cancer treatments tailored to the genetic signature of individuals' tumours.

Doctors already classify cancers by some of the genes that get switched on by the disease, and use this to guide treatment in some cases. For example, breast cancers are often divided into those that express oestrogen receptors on their surface and are therefore likely to respond to the drug tamoxifen, and those that don't.

Genes have also been identified that predict whether a variety of cancers are resistant to radiotherapy and certain drugs, and might therefore need a different sort of treatment. It is also possible to stratify cancers into aggressive and non-aggressive subtypes according to their genetic make-up.

But that's just the beginning. In the future, pretty much all cancers are likely to be defined by the genetic pathways that drive their growth, rather than where in the body they manifest themselves. And because cancers mutate as they grow, it should be possible to track these changes and tailor patients' therapies accordingly.

Velculescu's test is a step towards this. The real breakthrough will come when such blood tests become sophisticated enough to reveal how tumours are changing over time, rather than simply spotting that they have come back. That should truly revolutionise cancer treatment, enabling the most effective combinations of drugs to be tailored to individual patients - and without the need for painful tissue biopsies.

Closer To Home-Brewed Electricity With Personalised Solar Energy

A simple inexpensive rooftop solar panel can convert sunlight to electricity. In a new study, an expert describes progress toward an efficient and inexpensive method for storing and distributing solar energy in the home

New scientific discoveries are moving society toward the era of "personalized solar energy," in which the focus of electricity production shifts from huge central generating stations to individuals in their own homes and communities.

That's the topic of a report by an international expert on solar energy published in the ACS' Inorganic Chemistry, a bi-weekly journal.

It describes a long-awaited, inexpensive method for solar energy storage that could help power homes and plug-in cars in the future while helping keep the environment clean.

Daniel Nocera explains that the global energy need will double by mid-century and triple by 2100 due to rising standards of living world population growth. Personalised solar energy - the capture and storage of solar energy at the individual or home level - could meet that demand in a sustainable way, especially in poorer areas of the world.

The report describes development of a practical, inexpensive storage system for achieving personalized solar energy. At its heart is an innovative catalyst that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen that become fuel for producing electricity in a fuel cell.

The new oxygen-evolving catalyst works like photosynthesis, the method plants use to make energy, producing clean energy from sunlight and water. "Because energy use scales with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the nonlegacy world and in the largest city of the legacy world, on a more level playing field," the report states.