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The HRP-5P is a humanoid robot from Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology institute that can perform common construction tasks including — as we see above — install drywall.

HRP-5P — maybe we can call it Herb? — uses environmental measurement, object detection and motion planning to perform various tasks. In this video we see it use small hooks to grab the wallboard and slide it off onto the floor. Then, with a bit of maneuvering, it’s able to place the board against the joists and drill them in place.

“By utilizing HRP-5P as a development platform of industry-academia collaboration, it is expected that research and development for practical use of humanoid robots in building construction sites and assembly of large structures such as aircraft and ships will be accelerated,” write the creators.

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An international team of scientists led by the University of Groningen’s Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials created quantum bits that emit photons that describe their state at wavelengths close to those used by telecom providers. These qubits are based on silicon carbide in which molybdenum impurities create color centers. The results were published in the journal npj Quantum Information on 1 October.

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They don’t call Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson ‘The Mountain’ for nothing.

In 2015, the strong man and Game of Thrones actor broke a millennium-old record by taking – or more accurately, staggering – five steps with a 650 kilogram (1,430 pound) log on his back.

To most of us, this was simply an extraordinary example of heroic strength. To scientists, this feat marked a crushing limit to the gravitational pull any mortal could ever hope to endure, setting a boundary on the mass of planets we might expect to colonise.

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LEAF’s Rejuvenation Roundup September 2018 is out!


Happy autumn—or spring, if you live in the southern hemisphere! Be as it may, in a post-aging world, the season of your health would always be summer; let’s see how much closer we got to that world during last September.

LEAF News

To get things started, the new episode of the Rejuvenation Roundup podcast is available today.

While the rest of the country has been transfixed by the Brett Kavanagh confirmation drama, the White House was quietly but steadily taking major steps to secure America’s high-tech future.

The first was the release of the National Cybersecurity Strategy last week, which I discussed in a previous column. This week came the National Strategic Overview for Quantum Information Science (QIS), released by a subcommittee of the Committee on Science for the National Science and Technology Council. This document is a big win for Jacob Taylor, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s point man on all things quantum, and a major win for America.

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