Although oxygen is common throughout the cosmos, most of it isn’t in the form that we as humans need to breathe – molecular oxygen, or O2. Now, researchers at Caltech claim to have created a reactor that can turn carbon dioxide into molecular oxygen, which could help us fight climate change here on Earth or generate oxygen for life in space.
In recent years, forensics scientists, statisticians, and engineers have been working to put crime scene forensics on a stronger footing, with some classic techniques falling out of favor.
[Photos: OpenClipart-Vectors/Pixabay; Hunter Harritt/Unsplash; blickpixel/Pixabay].
Machines are mastering vision and language, but one sense they’re lagging behind on is touch. Now researchers have created a sensor-laden glove for just $10 and recorded the most comprehensive tactile dataset to date, which can be used to train machine learning algorithms to feel the world around them.
Dexterity would be an incredibly useful skill for robots to master, opening up new applications everywhere from hospitals to our homes. And they’ve been coming along in leaps and strides in their ability to manipulate objects, OpenAI’s cube juggling robotic hand being a particularly impressive example.
So far, though, they’ve had one hand tied behind their backs. Most approaches have relied on using either visual data or demonstrations to show machines how they should grasp objects. But if you look at how humans learn to manipulate objects, you realize that’s just one part of the puzzle.
There’s a giant contradiction in the middle of the Arizona desert: an experimental city designed for thousands that now contains only a few dozen inhabitants.
For nearly five decades, a group called the Cosanti Foundation has been working to build a city that would inspire a new future of urban design. Today, the project is only 5 percent complete.
Called Arcosanti, the city was envisioned by Italian architect Paolo Soleri, whose dream was to create an advanced urban laboratory where everyday activities could be powered by Earth’s natural resources.
Forensic anthropologist Amy Mundorff measures the depth of a grave as the remote sensing research project gets underway.
Amy Smotherman Burgess/Knoxville News Sentinel/Zuma.
Mundorff knew from her own searches for buried murder victims in the United States that investigators often fail locate hidden graves, but she didn’t expect it to be so difficult in Bosnia-Herzegovina: The country is smaller than Louisiana, and the whereabouts of 8,000 people remain unknown.
