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Categories: Computer Science: General, Paleontology: Fossils
Published Researchers develop soft robot that shifts from land to sea with ease


Most animals can quickly transition from walking to jumping to crawling to swimming if needed without reconfiguring or making major adjustments. Most robots cannot. But researchers have now created soft robots that can seamlessly shift from walking to swimming, for example, or crawling to rolling using a bistable actuator made of 3D-printed soft rubber containing shape-memory alloy springs that react to electrical currents by contracting, which causes the actuator to bend. The team used this bistable motion to change the actuator or robot's shape. Once the robot changes shape, it is stable until another electrical charge morphs it back to its previous configuration.
Published New kind of transistor could shrink communications devices on smartphones


One month after announcing a ferroelectric semiconductor at the nanoscale thinness required for modern computing components, a team has now demonstrated a reconfigurable transistor using that material. Their work paves the way for single amplifiers that can do the work of multiple conventional amplifiers, among other possibilities.
Published Researchers take a step towards turning interactions that normally ruin quantum information into a way of protecting it


A new method for predicting the behavior of quantum devices provides a crucial tool for real-world applications of quantum technology.
Published Artificial intelligence (AI) reconstructs motion sequences of humans and animals


Imagine for a moment, that we are on a safari watching a giraffe graze. After looking away for a second, we then see the animal lower its head and sit down. But, we wonder, what happened in the meantime? Computer scientists have found a way to encode an animal's pose and appearance in order to show the intermediate motions that are statistically likely to have taken place.
Published Paleontologists flip the script on anemone fossils


Billions of sea anemones adorn the bottom of the Earth's oceans -- yet they are among the rarest of fossils because their squishy bodies lack easily fossilized hard parts. Now a team of paleontologists has discovered that countless sea anemone fossils have been hiding in plain sight for nearly 50 years. It turns out that fossils long-interpreted as jellyfish were anemones. To do so, a team of scientists has simply turned the ancient animals upside down.
Published Complex oxides could power the computers of the future


Materials scientists describe in two papers how complex oxides can be used to create very energy-efficient magneto-electric spin-orbit (MESO) devices and memristive devices with reduced dimensions.
Published Phone-based measurements provide fast, accurate information about the health of forests


Researchers have developed an algorithm that uses computer vision techniques to accurately measure trees almost five times faster than traditional, manual methods.
Published Integrating humans with AI in structural design


A new design process that uses generative design but also seeks feedback from humans is more effective at producing designs that are fully optimized for their purpose.
Published Jurassic shark: Shark from the Jurassic period was already highly evolved


Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of their evolutionary history than previously believed. Evidence for this thesis has been provided by new fossils of a ray-like shark, Protospinax annectans, which demonstrate that sharks were already highly evolved in the Late Jurassic.
Published Will future computers run on human brain cells?


A 'biocomputer' powered by human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime, according to researchers who expect such technology to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computing and create novel fields of study.
Published Ancient proteins offer new clues about origin of life on Earth



By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today -- including plants, animals, and humans.
Published New material may offer key to solving quantum computing issue


A new form of heterostructure of layered two-dimensional (2D) materials may enable quantum computing to overcome key barriers to its widespread application, according to an international team of researchers.
Published Clues about the Northeast's past and future climate from plant fossils


A team of researchers is working to understand the details of the climate for the eastern portion of the United States from the Miocene, which unfortunately is a blank spot on paleo-climate maps. New findings suggest the future climate will be very close to the warmer, wetter, and more homogeneous climate similar to conditions experienced 5 million years ago.
Published Insect bite marks show first fossil evidence for plants' leaves folding up at night


Plants can move in ways that might surprise you. Some of them even show 'sleep movements,' folding or raising their leaves each night before opening them again the next day. Now, researchers offer convincing evidence for these nightly movements, also known as foliar nyctinasty, in fossil plants that lived more than 250 million years ago.
Published A new chip for decoding data transmissions demonstrates record-breaking energy efficiency


A new chip called ORBGRAND can decode any code applied to data transmitted over the internet with maximum accuracy and between 10 and 100 times more energy efficiency than other methods.
Published Theory can sort order from chaos in complex quantum systems


Theoretical chemists have developed a theory that can predict the threshold at which quantum dynamics switches from 'orderly' to 'random,' as shown through research using large-scale computations on photosynthesis models.
Published Early Cretaceous shift in the global carbon cycle affected both land and sea


Geologists doing fieldwork in southeastern Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation found carbon isotope evidence that the site, though on land, experienced the same early Cretaceous carbon-cycle change recorded in marine sedimentary rocks in Europe. This ancient carbon-cycle phenomenon, known as the 'Weissert Event' was driven by large, sustained volcanic eruptions in the Southern Hemisphere that greatly increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and produced significant greenhouse climate effects over a prolonged time.
Published New technology turns smartphones into RFID readers, saving costs and reducing waste


Imagine you can open your fridge, open an app on your phone and immediately know which items are expiring within a few days. This is one of the applications that a new technology would enable.
Published Improving the performance of satellites in low Earth orbit


On-chip distributed radiation sensors and current-sharing techniques can be used to reduce the impact of radiation on the radio and power consumption of small satellites, respectively. New findings can be used to make small satellites more robust, which can increase the connectivity of networks across the globe.
Published The switch made from a single molecule


Researchers have demonstrated a switch, analogous to a transistor, made from a single molecule called fullerene. By using a carefully tuned laser pulse, the researchers are able to use fullerene to switch the path of an incoming electron in a predictable way. This switching process can be three to six orders of magnitude faster than switches in microchips, depending on the laser pulses used. Fullerene switches in a network could produce a computer beyond what is possible with electronic transistors, and they could also lead to unprecedented levels of resolution in microscopic imaging devices.