A humanoid robot can receive an object handed to it by a person with something approaching natural, human-like motion thanks to a new method developed by scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh in a project partially funded by the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (interACT) at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
A new study of glaciers worldwide using observations from two NASA satellites has helped resolve differences in estimates of how fast glaciers are disappearing and contributing to sea level rise.
Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region in particular that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.
Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon.
In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved.
Can math models of gaming strategies be used to detect terrorism networks? The answer is yes, at least according to a paper in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics.
The type of sensors that pick up the rhythm of a beating heart in implanted cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers are vulnerable to tampering, according to a new study conducted in controlled laboratory conditions.
Two research teams at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) smashed through a nearly 40-year barrier recently when they observed a never-before-seen energy pattern.
Whether in vehicle transmissions, hip replacements, or tiny sensors for triggering airbags: The respective components must slide against each other with minimum friction to prevent loss of energy and material wear.
Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world’s tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak.
These days, phylogeneticists – experts who painstakingly map the complex branches of the tree of life – suffer from an embarrassment of riches. The genomics revolution has given them mountains of DNA data that they can sift through to reconstruct the evolutionary history that connects all living beings.
The tiniest bones in the human body – the bones of the middle ear – could provide huge clues about our evolution and the development of modern-day humans, according to a recent study by a team of researchers that include a Texas A&M University anthropologist.
Your brain often works on autopilot when it comes to grammar. That theory has been around for years, but University of Oregon neuroscientists have captured elusive hard evidence that people indeed detect and process grammatical errors with no awareness of doing so.
The unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic acceleration of information processing compared to the fastest class of classical machines.
In a joint project between the Universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow, Imperial College London and the National Physical Laboratory, researchers have developed a portable way to produce ultracold atoms for quantum technology and quantum information processing.
Genes make up about 2 percent of the human genome. The rest consists of a genetic material known as noncoding DNA, and scientists have spent years puzzling over why this material exists in such voluminous quantities.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) recently managed to fly a fuel-cell powered Ion Tiger UAV for 48 hours and 1 minute using liquid hydrogen fuel in a new, NRL-developed, cryogenic fuel storage tank and delivery system.
An international team of physicists, including researchers from the Universities of York and St. Andrews, has demonstrated that chaos can beat order - at least as far as light storage is concerned.
