A soft robotic device powered by popcorn, constructed by researchers in Cornell’s Collective Embodied Intelligence Lab. (Credit: Cornell University)
Robots have always been cool and futuristic. Since we live in such ultra-modern times we’re seeing more and more of them, whether it’s to clean our floors, drive our cars or even give us extra limbs. But usually the focus is on what robots can now do, and less on what actually powers their abilities.
Not today: A team of Cornell ...read more
(Credit: Ivan Marjanovic/Shutterstock)
If the quintessential ecological battle cry of the seventies was “Save The Whales,” today it is “Save The Bees.” From news headlines to environmental campaigns to alarming documentaries, we’re warned that if the bees go extinct, we’ll go with them.
It makes sense — about 75 percent of crops are reliant on animal pollinators, which are often honeybees. Without them, the theory goes, we’d not only lose $212 bi ...read more
(Credit: Hayk_Shalunts/shutterstock)
Zebra finch males sing just one song their entire lives. It’s a tune to woo females and keep away other males. Now scientists find they may have a way to reconstruct the songs these birds sing in their dreams.
Birds sing by using muscles to vibrate air. Prior work suggested that each of the different muscles that play a part in bird song just controlled one acoustic feature of singing. However, recent work hinted that each muscle could play more ...read more
(Credit: Neil Bromhall/Shutterstock)
In colonies of naked mole rats—wrinkly, pink-skinned rodents with oversized front teeth that live in extensive underground tunnel systems—one special couple gets to reproduce, creating the entire next generation for the colony.
For most mammals, breeding comes at a heavy cost — reproduction shortens lifespans. But for naked mole rats, procreating appears to slow aging, the exact opposite of whatâ ...read more
The view of the main plaza at Tikal. (Credit: WitR/Shutterstock)
Though today it is a wilderness, in the time of the Maya, the Central American lowlands they called home would have looked far different. Where emerald jungle canopies roll for miles on end, cities, roads, reservoirs and terraced fields would have covered the hilly landscape in southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
Millions of people called this land home, members of a loose alliance of interconnected city-states. The Maya devel ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
