Bizarre Things: Matter & Energy

May 13, 2024

Top Headlines

Cats Purrfectly Demonstrate What It Takes to Trust Robots

May 13, 2024 — Would you trust a robot to look after your cat? New research suggests it takes more than a carefully designed robot to care for your cat, the environment in which they operate is also vital, as well as human ...

A Better Way to Control Shape-Shifting Soft Robots

May 9, 2024 — A new machine-learning technique can train and control a reconfigurable soft robot that can dynamically change its shape to complete a task. The researchers also built a simulator that can evaluate control algorithms for shape-shifting soft ...

Good Vibrations: New Tech May Lead to Smaller, More Powerful Wireless Devices

May 9, 2024 — What if your earbuds could do everything your smartphone can, but better? A new class of synthetic materials could allow for smaller devices that use less ...

Generative AI That Imitates Human Motion

May 9, 2024 — Walking and running is notoriously difficult to recreate in robots. Now, a group of researchers has overcome some of these challenges by creating an innovative method that employs central pattern generators -- neural circuits located in the spinal ...

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Discover Optimal Conditions for Mass Production of Ultraviolet Holograms

May 9, 2024 — Scientists delve into the composition of nanocomposites for ultraviolet metasurface ...

This Sound-Suppressing Silk Can Create Quiet Spaces

May 7, 2024 — Researchers developed a silk fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, that can suppress unwanted noise and reduce noise transmission in a large ...

Seeking Medical Insights in the Physics of Mucus

May 7, 2024 — Understanding how mucus changes, and what it changes in response to, can help diagnose illnesses and develop treatments. Researchers develop a system to grow mucus-producing intestinal cells and ...

Caterbot? Robatapillar? It Crawls With Ease Through Loops and Bends

May 6, 2024 — Engineers created a catapillar-shaped robot that splits into segments and reassembles, hauls cargo, and crawls through twisting ...

Marriage of Synthetic Biology and 3D Printing Produces Programmable Living Materials

May 1, 2024 — Scientists are harnessing cells to make new types of materials that can grow, repair themselves and even respond to their environment. These solid ...

Stretchable E-Skin Could Give Robots Human-Level Touch Sensitivity

May 3, 2024 — A stretchy electronic skin could equip robots and other devices with the same softness and touch sensitivity as human skin, opening up new possibilities to perform tasks that require a great deal of ...

This Highly Reflective Black Paint Makes Objects More Visible to Autonomous Cars

May 2, 2024 — Driving at night might be a scary challenge for a new driver, but with hours of practice it soon becomes second nature. For self-driving cars, ...

Random Robots Are More Reliable

May 2, 2024 — New algorithm encourages robots to move more randomly to collect more diverse data for learning. In tests, robots started with no knowledge and then learned and correctly performed tasks within a ...

Significant New Discovery in Teleportation Research -- Noise Can Improve the Quality of Quantum Teleportation

May 2, 2024 — Researchers succeeded in conducting an almost perfect quantum teleportation despite the presence of noise that usually disrupts the transfer of ...

The End of the Quantum Tunnel

Apr. 26, 2024 — Quantum mechanical effects such as radioactive decay, or more generally: 'tunneling', display intriguing mathematical patterns. Researchers now show that a 40-year-old mathematical discovery can be ...

Time Zones and Tiredness Strongly Influence NBA Results, Study of 25,000 Matches Shows

May 1, 2024 — The body clock has a significant impact on the performance of NBA players. Data shows vastly better win ratio for home teams from the Western Time Zone Area (PDT) when playing an EDT team, compared ...

Trotting Robots Reveal Emergence of Animal Gait Transitions

Apr. 30, 2024 — A four-legged robot trained with machine learning has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking -- a milestone for roboticists as well as biologists ...

Scientists Develop Strong Yet Reusable Adhesive from Smart Materials

Apr. 29, 2024 — Scientists have developed a smart, reusable adhesive more than ten times stronger than a gecko's feet adhesion, pointing the way for development of reusable superglue and grippers capable of ...

Why Can't Robots Outrun Animals?

Apr. 26, 2024 — Robotics engineers have worked for decades and invested many millions of research dollars in attempts to create a robot that can walk or run as well as an animal. And yet, it remains the case that ...

Holographic Displays Offer a Glimpse Into an Immersive Future

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers have invented a new optical element that brings us one step closer to mixing the real and virtual worlds in an ordinary pair of eyeglasses using high-definition 3D holographic ...

Researchers Show It's Possible to Teach Old Magnetic Cilia New Tricks

Apr. 24, 2024 — Magnetic cilia -- artificial hairs whose movement is powered by embedded magnetic particles -- have been around for a while, and are of interest for applications in soft robotics, transporting ...

Octopus Inspires New Suction Mechanism for Robots

Apr. 18, 2024 — A new robotic suction cup which can grasp rough, curved and heavy stone, has been developed by ...

Data-Driven Music: Converting Climate Measurements Into Music

Apr. 18, 2024 — A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition -- entitled 'String Quartet No. 1 'Polar Energy ...

How 3D Printers Can Give Robots a Soft Touch

Apr. 17, 2024 — Soft skin coverings and touch sensors have emerged as a promising feature for robots that are both safer and more intuitive for human interaction, but they are expensive and difficult to make. A ...

Two-Dimensional Nanomaterial Sets Record for Expert-Defying, Counter-Intuitive Expansion

Apr. 17, 2024 — Engineers have developed a record-setting nanomaterial which when stretched in one direction, expands perpendicular to the applied ...

A Single Atom Layer of Gold: Researchers Create Goldene

Apr. 16, 2024 — For the first time, scientists have managed to create sheets of gold only a single atom layer thick. The material has been termed goldene. According to researchers, this has given the gold new ...

Trapped in the Middle: Billiards With Memory

Apr. 11, 2024 — Adding one simple rule to an idealized game of billiards leads to a wealth of intriguing mathematical questions, as well as applications in the physics of living organisms. Researchers are ...

Star Trek's Holodeck Recreated Using ChatGPT and Video Game Assets

Apr. 11, 2024 — Star Trek's Holodeck is no longer just science fiction. Using AI, engineers have created a tool that can generate 3D environments, prompted by everyday ...

Revolutionary Molecular Device Unleashes Potential for Targeted Drug Delivery and Self-Healing Materials

Apr. 10, 2024 — In a new breakthrough that could revolutionise medical and material engineering, scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind molecular device that controls the release of multiple small molecules ...

Engineers Design Soft and Flexible 'Skeletons' for Muscle-Powered Robots

Apr. 8, 2024 — Engineers designed modular, spring-like devices to maximize the work of live muscle fibers so they can be harnessed to power biohybrid ...

'Smart Swarms' of Tiny Robots Inspired by Natural Herd Mentality

Apr. 3, 2024 — Researchers gave nanorobots a trait called adaptive time delay, which allows them to better work ...

Plastic-Free Vegan Leather That Dyes Itself Grown from Bacteria

Apr. 3, 2024 — Researchers have genetically engineered bacteria to grow animal- and plastic-free leather that dyes ...

Intelligent Liquid

Apr. 3, 2024 — Researchers have developed a programmable meta-fluid with tunable springiness, optical properties, viscosity and even the ability to transition between a Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid. The ...

Elastocaloric Cooling: Refrigerator Cools by Flexing Artificial Muscles

Apr. 2, 2024 — There is room for just one small bottle in the world's first refrigerator that is cooled with artificial muscles made of nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy. But the mini-prototype is ...

AI Writing, Illustration Emits Hundreds of Times Less Carbon Than Humans, Study Finds

Apr. 2, 2024 — A group of scholars calculated the amount of energy used by AI tools for the tasks of writing and illustrating and compared it to the average amount of energy humans use for the same processes. Their ...