SCIENCE BOND

He wants pupils to plant rocket seeds that have been in orbit with him, and compare their growth with rocket plants that have stayed on Earth. Mr Peake has outlined details of the project in a message from the space station which will be sent to schools. The study will help find ways to grow food in space which will be essential if humans travel to distant planets. In his message, the European Space Agency (Esa) astronaut explains that he will be sending more than a million seeds back to Earth in a month's time. "Conditions here on the International Space Station are quite different from on planet Earth, due to us being weightless here in orbit." In his hands are a bag of seeds which occasionally float away. Unperturbed, he gently pulls them back towards him and continues."This experiment will aim to see if microgravity can affect the growth mechanisms in seeds," he adds. The seeds will be distributed to up to 10,000 schools. Pupils will compare the gro...

The old cliché, "If you want a friend, get a dog" still stands in the 21st Century. It is well established in the medical community that animals can do much to extend the human life span as well as improve the quality of life. Don't live on or vicariously through your computer.  A pastor once said his job was to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Thus we have the difference between a real live pet and an inanimate electro-mechanical object - in this case the personal computer. The pet comforts while the computer, improperly used and/or over used, is a thief and a murderer.  Besides, the computer, especially if you run a Microsoft Operating System and Microsoft production software, requires much more maintenance than does a pet. This alone is enough to drive most users' blood pressure through the roof. How many times do you suspect that needs to happen before it begins to take a toll on the human body? It is even more aggravating than t...

Then I watched as Helena, an 18-year-old with a fear of lifts, got into a series of them as a psychologist attempted to treat her phobia.  And finally, I saw a group of children take a tour of the Dulwich Picture Gallery without leaving King's College Hospital where they are long-term patients.In case you had not guessed, these were all examples of the use of virtual reality, which looks likely to be the big technology trend of 2016.  Given the amount of investment by players from Facebook to Sony to HTC, it will be a big disappointment if VR does not finally become, well, a reality in many homes this year.  My ascent of Everest, for example, came courtesy of the HTC Vive VR headset and a game developed by the Icelandic firm Solfar Studios.The HTC Vive, seen by many as providing the best VR experience, was due to launch late last year but its debut was delayed for some further tweaking. Now, it should join Sony's PlayStation VR and Facebook's Oculus Rift headset ...