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Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling the development of a wide range of systems with unique characteristics designed for varying real-world applications. These include robots that can engage in activities traditionally only completed by humans, such as sketching, painting and even hand-writing documents.

These robots could have interesting applications in both professional and creative contexts, as they could help to automate the creation of artistic renderings, legal papers, letters and other documents in real time. Most to date have considerable limitations, such as high production costs (around $150) and a large size.

Two researchers affiliated with the global student non-profit organization App-In Club recently developed a new cost-effective robotic handwriting system that could be more affordable for individual consumers, schools, universities and small businesses. This system, introduced in a paper on the arXiv preprint server, integrates a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and other components that can be produced via 3D printing.

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The magnitude 7.9 Bonin Islands earthquake sequence in May 2015, which ruptured deep within the earth near the base of the upper mantle, did not include an aftershock that extended to record depths into the lower mantle, according to a study appearing in The Seismic Record.

When Hao Zhang of the University of Southern California and colleagues re-examined the aftershock sequence of the earthquake, they did not find evidence for a 751-kilometer-deep aftershock as reported by previous researchers. This aftershock has been called the deepest earthquake ever recorded.

Instead, their study found a distribution of aftershocks that is compatible with a 12-kilometer sliver of a mantle mineral called olivine that could shed light on how deep earthquakes can occur.

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Researchers from the University of British Columbia, the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University have identified a new class of quantum states in a custom-engineered graphene structure.

Published in Nature, the study reports the discovery of topological electronic crystals in twisted bilayer–trilayer graphene, a system created by introducing a precise rotational twist between stacked two-dimensional materials.

“The starting point for this work is two flakes of graphene, which are made up of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure. The way electrons hop between the carbon atoms determines the electrical properties of the graphene, which ends up being superficially similar to more common conductors like copper,” said Prof. Joshua Folk, a member of UBC’s Physics and Astronomy Department and the Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (UBC Blusson QMI).

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Like humans, mice will compete over territory and mates, and show increased confidence in their fighting skills the more they win. At first, a brain chemical called dopamine is essential for young males to master this behavior. But as they gain experience, the chemical grows less important in promoting aggression, a new study shows.

Dopamine has been linked to male aggression for decades. How past experiences might influence this relationship, however, had until now been unclear.

In experiments in rodents, a team led by researchers at NYU Langone Health boosted activity in -releasing cells in a part of the brain called the . The findings revealed that in inexperienced male fighters, this led the animals to attack for twice as long as they would have fought naturally. When the cells were blocked, the novice mice would not fight at all.

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In the world of modern optics, frequency combs are invaluable tools. These devices act as rulers for measuring light, enabling breakthroughs in telecommunications, environmental monitoring, and even astrophysics. But building compact and efficient frequency combs has been a challenge—until now.

Electro-optic , introduced in 1993, showed promise in generating optical combs through cascaded phase modulation but progress slowed down because of their high power demands and limited bandwidth.

This led to the field being dominated by femtosecond lasers and Kerr soliton microcombs, which, while effective, require complex tuning and , limiting field-ready use.

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A new study reveals that people with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience significantly higher rates of mental illness during pregnancy and the first year after childbirth, compared to those without MS.

The findings suggest a critical need for targeted mental health screening and interventions for this group, with depression and anxiety being the most prevalent conditions.

MS and mental health during pregnancy.

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It’s one of the most often asked questions I get, while showing off the Moon to the public. “Can you see the flag the astronauts left there?”

This then leads to a discussion on how far the Moon is, versus the difficulty of seeing a 1.5 by 0.9 meter flag at such a distance. My scope is good, but not that good.

During the US Apollo program, six crewed missions landed on the Moon starting with Apollo 11 in 1969, leaving a like number of flags. Now, China recently announced that one more flag will join the collection in late 2026, when Chang’e 7 heads to the Moon.

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Researchers have discovered two sets of ancient wave ripples on Mars, signatures of long-dried bodies of water preserved in the rock record. Wave ripples are small undulations in the sandy shores of lakebeds, created as wind-driven water laps back and forth. The two sets of ripples indicate the former presence of shallow water that was open to the Martian air, not covered by ice as some climate models would require.

Ripples are one of the clearest indicators of an ancient standing body of water that can be provided by the geologic record. The team estimates that the ripples formed around 3.7 billion years ago, indicating that the Martian atmosphere and climate must have been warm and dense enough to support liquid water open to the air at the time.

The research is described in a paper appearing in the journal Science Advances. Caltech’s John Grotzinger, Harold Brown Professor of Geology, and Michael Lamb, professor of geology, are principal investigators on the study.

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Threat actors are exploiting an unspecified zero-day vulnerability in Cambium Networks cnPilot routers to deploy a variant of the AISURU botnet called AIRASHI to carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

According to QiAnXin XLab, the attacks have leveraged the security flaw since June 2024. Additional details about the shortcomings have been withheld to prevent further abuse.

Some of the other flaws weaponized by the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet include CVE-2013–3307, CVE-2016–20016, CVE-2017–5259, CVE-2018–14558, CVE-2020–25499, CVE-2020–8515, CVE-2022–3573, CVE-2022–40005, CVE-2022–44149, CVE-2023–28771, as well as those impacting AVTECH IP cameras, LILIN DVRs, and Shenzhen TVT devices.

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