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IMAGE: A simulated soft robot controlled to reach the same target (red dot) while acting either soft (left) or stiff (right). view more
Credit: Courtesy of James Bern and Daniela Rus
Imagine a robot.
Perhaps you ve just conjured a machine with a rigid, metallic exterior. While robots armored with hard exoskeletons are common, they re not always ideal. Soft-bodied robots, inspired by fish or other squishy creatures, might better adapt to changing environments and work more safely with people.
Roboticists generally have to decide whether to design a hard- or soft-bodied robot for a particular task. But that tradeoff may no longer be necessary.
A team of UH geologists has been awarded 2.5 million CPU Hours by the National Science Foundation for use of its supercomputer to search for the remains of a lost ocean deep below the Earth s surface.
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IMAGE: The spatial organisation of the C. elegans brain is modular. The image shows the different brain regions that process information to direct behaviours such as navigation, avoidance and feeding. The. view more
Credit: University of Leeds
Researchers have mapped the physical organization of the brain of a microscopic soil-living nematode worm called
Caenorhabditis elegans, creating a new model for the architecture of the animal s brain and how it processes information.
In a surprise twist, they found a large degree of variation in the structure of some neural circuits or pathways in individual worms which complemented a core set of neural circuits common to different animals.
Sharing the press release that I hope you will find interesting: A research team from Skoltech (Russia) and FBK (Italy) presented a method to derive 4D building models using historical maps and machine learning (ML). It is useful for understanding urban phenomena and changes that contributed to defining our cities actual shapes.
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BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, February 24, 2021 -The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering released a report, The Power of Virtual Communities, which examines the role online groups play in creating opportunities for people to build new kinds of meaningful communities they often could not form in real space.
This first-of-its-kind research was built on interviews with 50 Facebook community leaders in 17 countries, 26 global experts from academia and industry, unique access to Facebook s underlying research and an original global survey conducted by YouGov of 15,000 people in 15 countries who are currently members of online and in-person communities, which found that in 11 of those countries the majority of people said that the most meaningful communities to which they belong are primarily online.