RNZ: This Way Up

Sam Muirhead is going a year without using any product that has any intellectual propery associated with it. Eating, wearing clothes and using technology will be among his many challenges.

Jonathan Eisen is a professor at the University of California Davis, and he loves microbes. Microbial organisms have been around longer than us humans - we'll find out if there's a chance they've taken charge.

Peter Griffin discusses Bit Torrent branching out, and the best ways to catch the latest from the Olympics online (plus what to avoid).

This week at the Imagine Cup technology competition in Sydney we'll hear about Flash Food, a real time donation and delivery platform for excess or leftover food.

Professor Armand Leroi of Imperial College London is using Darwin's theories to create music. He's breeding tunes, allowing only the fittest to survive.

Our correspondent Anu Anand reports from Delhi - on the traffic police taking to Facebook to catch bad drivers, and the group helping Indian couples marry for love.

Charles Arthur beams in with the latest tech news. This week, wearable computers and Charles has had a play with Google's new Nexus 7 tablet.

We go bush with bird man Hugh Robertson on the hunt for the piwakawaka or fantail.

Larry Smarr's collecting information on everything from how well he sleeps to the state of his stools all in the quest for a healthier life.

John Lambie is an Australian inventor who's declared war on the QWERTY keyboard.

Comic Con is an annual gathering for the comics, animation and entertainment industries that attracted 100,000 Hollywood executives and pop culture fans to San Diego earlier this week. Rory Carroll was there too.

Anton Posternikov and Max Osika are Ukranian students who have designed a pair of gloves that can turn sign language into spoken words. They're the winners of the Imagine Cup, the world's largest student technology competiton that was held in Sydney recently.

Max Little, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, needs your help as he develops a way to diagnose Parkinson's disease using a telephone.

French scientists have sequenced the banana's genome. Banana fan Dan Koeppel on the significance of the discovery.

Manu Sebastian Mannoor is working on smart teeth. He's trying to implant sensors in our teeth that can tell when you need a visit to the dentists, if you have a stomach ulcer, or even if you have cancer.