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Categories: Mathematics: General, Offbeat: General

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Researchers have found differences between experienced Ordnance Survey (OS) mapmakers and novices in the way that they interpret aerial images for mapmaking, which could lead to improved training processes for new recruits.

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A new robotic suction cup which can grasp rough, curved and heavy stone, has been developed by scientists.

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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 Budget'-- is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.

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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 recent study demonstrates that soft skin pads doubling as sensors made from thermoplastic urethane can be efficiently manufactured using 3D printers.

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New research has highlighted an area in Arabia that once acted as a key point for cultural exchanges and trades amongst ancient people -- and it all took place in vast caves and lava tubes that have remained largely untapped reservoirs of archaeological abundance in Arabia. Through meticulous excavation and analysis, the international team uncovered a wealth of evidence at Umm Jirsan, spanning from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic/Bronze Age periods (~10,000-3,500 years ago).

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The fossilized remains of a second gigantic jawbone measuring more than two meters long has been found on a beach in Somerset, UK.

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Astronomers have discovered methane emission on a brown dwarf, an unexpected finding for such a cold and isolated world. The findings suggest that this brown dwarf might generate aurorae similar to those seen on our own planet as well as on Jupiter and Saturn.

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Scientists have developed a new method using knot theory to find the optimal routes for future space missions without the need to waste fuel.

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Chattering squirrels, charming coypus, and tail-slapping beavers -- along with some other rodents -- have orange-brown front teeth. Researchers have produced high-resolution images of rodent incisors, providing an atomic-level view of the teeth's ingenious enamel and its coating. They discovered tiny pockets of iron-rich materials in the enamel that form a protective shield for the teeth but, importantly, don't contribute to the orange-brown hue -- new insights that could improve human dentistry.

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

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To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy counterparts. This could involve altering the crops' genomes so that they express pigments that are already produced by many plants, for example, anthocyanins, which make blueberries blue, or carotenoids, which make carrots orange. Then, they say, weeding robots could be trained to remove only the weeds using machine learning.

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Young male blue tits are less successful in fathering offspring outside their breeding pair, not because of a lack of experience, but because they are outcompeted by older males, researchers report.

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Astronomers have identified the most massive stellar black hole yet discovered in the Milky Way galaxy. This black hole was spotted in data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission because it imposes an odd 'wobbling' motion on the companion star orbiting it. Astronomers have verified the mass of the black hole, putting it at an impressive 33 times that of the Sun.

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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 properties that can make it suitable for use in applications such as carbon dioxide conversion, hydrogen production, and production of value-added chemicals.

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Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery regarding number sense in animals by confirming the existence of discrete number sense in rats, offering a crucial animal model for investigating the neural basis of numerical ability and disability in humans.

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The mystery of how Pluto got a giant heart-shaped feature on its surface has finally been solved by an international team of astrophysicists. The team is the first to successfully reproduce the unusual shape with numerical simulations, attributing it to a giant and slow oblique-angle impact.

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An international team of scientists has published a single-cell atlas for Pristina leidyi (Pristina), the water nymph worm, a segmented annelid with extraordinary regenerative abilities that has fascinated biologists for more than a century.

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A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study. The 'copy-paste' errors allowed animals to keep one copy of their genome or genes for fundamental functions, while the second copy could be used as raw material for evolutionary innovation. Events like these, at varying degrees of scale, occurred constantly throughout the bilaterian evolutionary tree and enabled traits and behaviours as diverse as insect flight, octopus camouflage and human cognition.

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Sport junkie or couch potato? Always on time or often late? The animal kingdom, too, is home to a range of personalities, each with its own lifestyle. Biologists report on a surprising discovery: even simple marine polychaete worms shape their day-to-day lives on the basis of highly individual rhythms. This diversity is of interest not just for the future of species and populations in a changing environment, but also for medicine.

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In the sun-scorched Pilbara region of north-western Australia, scientists have unearthed a mysterious creature from the shadows -- a new ant species called Leptanilla voldemort.