Researchers are about to take a big step toward better understanding a tiny air pollutant. A U.N. expert panel earlier this month agreed on a technical road map that will guide the first multinational effort …
Read the full story »Forty fight rust and rot
More than 40 institutes around the world are teaming up to use biotech tools to improve food security in sub-Saharan Africa and India. The Sustainable Crop Production Research for International Development (SCPRID) will provide a …
Polite Robot Overlords Will Be More Persuasive
Baking cupcakes can be as much a matter of social interaction as it is a mechanical exercise. Never is this more true than when your kitchen partner is a robot. Their always-right, ego-deflating advice can …
Robot to Human: ‘Trust Me’
In a crisis control center, several teams of firefighters in Montelibretti, Italy, used laptops to guide a robotic ground vehicle into a smoke-filled highway tunnel. Inside, overturned motorcycles, errant cars, and spilled pallets impeded the …
Predictable evolution trumps randomness of mutations
Although mutations, the driver of evolution, occur at random, a study of the bacterium Escherichia coli reveals that nature often finds the same solution to the same problem again and again.
Over time, random mutations enable …
