- How does a robotic arm or a prosthetic hand learn a complex task like grasping and rotating a ball? The challenge for the human, prosthetic or robotic hand has always been to correctly learn to control the fingers to exert forces on an...
- The way bonobos combine vocal sounds to create new meanings suggests the evolutionary building blocks of human language are shared with our closest relatives
- Ancient humans living in what is now Ukraine 400,000 years ago may have practised or taught tool-making techniques using mammoth tusks, a softer material than bone
- A widely used artificial sweetener increases brain activity in regions involved in appetite, suggesting it makes people hungrier
- Researchers used a synthetic version of moon dust to build working solar panels, which could eventually be created within – and used to power – a moon base of the future
- People seem to be less impressed when others lose weight with the drug Ozempic than when they achieve it via lifestyle changes
- As China’s vast electrical grid relies more on wind, solar and hydropower, it faces a growing risk of power shortages due to bad weather – and that could encourage the use of coal plants
- Nostalgia for video games seems to be strongest for those played during childhood – at least for Nintendo Switch players
- When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures,...
- When we move, it's harder for existing wearable devices to accurately track our heart activity. But researchers found that a starfish's five-arm shape helps solve this problem. Inspired by how a starfish flips itself over -- shrinking...
- High-speed drones will be put to the test in the extreme Arctic environment as part of a project to assess how quickly glaciers in Greenland are retreating
- Mandy Barker's new book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype imperfections, highlights the ongoing ocean pollution crisis by echoing an influential 19th-century book
- Drug trials are vital to medicine, but what of those taking part? Jennie Erin Smith's moving new book about what happened in a rural community hit by early-onset Alzheimer's disease gives them a voice
- Feedback is baffled – baffled! – as to why Facebook owner Meta's attempts to suppress a previous employee's memoir sent the book rocketing to the top of the book charts
- A cost-cutting initiative in the world of passenger aviation could see flight-deck staff reduced to just a captain, with their co-pilot replaced by AI. It may save money, but it's a risk too far, argues Paul Marks
- Why are some people drawn towards exploration and challenge – even to the point of extreme danger? Alex Hutchinson's bracing new book unpicks the complex reasons
- For decades, autistic women and girls have had to play "diagnostic bingo" before getting their true diagnosis. As new neuroscience offers a fresh understanding of the condition, the time for change is now
- A more precise definition of the second is crucial to all sorts of physical measurements – but to get there, scientists have to pack up their extraordinarily fragile optical clocks and take them on tour
- A company in the Netherlands says it has perfected a way to create "graft chimeras" with the skin of one plant and the innards of another
- From robot rights to ageing and climate change, this month’s science fiction squares up to the big topics, with new titles from authors including Nick Harkaway and Eve Smith
- Squeezing exercise into one or two days a week seems to have similar health benefits as doing the same amount of physical activity spread out throughout the week
- A termination letter obtained by New Scientist reveals that the Trump administration has gutted the office that runs the country’s only nationwide survey on drug use and mental health
- “Mooooo.” This dairy barn is full of cows, as you might expect. Cows are being milked , cows are being fed , cows are being cleaned up after , and a few very happy cows are even getting vigorously scratched behind the ears . “I wonder...
- Ever asked a question and been met with a blank stare? It's awkward enough with a person—but on a humanoid robot, it can be downright unsettling. Now, an international team co-led by Hiroshima University and RIKEN has found a fix: giving...
- The concept of nothing once sparked a 1000-year-long war, today it might explain dark energy and nothingness even has the potential to destroy the universe, explains physicist Antonio Padilla
- Under pressure from Elon Musk’s DOGE task force, NASA is cancelling grants and contracts for everything from lunar dust research to educational programmes
- Growing up in Spain, Cecilia Huertas Cerdeira was captivated by the elegant movements of aquatic life during frequent vacations to the Atlantic coast. Later, as a doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, she steered...
- Even animals with very small brains turn out to have cultural traditions, which poses a puzzler for biologists wondering what makes human culture unique
- As semaglutide-based weight loss treatments such as Ozempic and Wegovy become more popular, new side effects are emerging – and one is hair loss
- Urine that has sat in the sun for a while seems to fertilise crops while warding off pests, without affecting the produce's taste
- This is a sponsored article brought to you by Freudenberg Sealing Technologies . The increasing deployment of collaborative robots (cobots) in outdoor environments presents significant engineering challenges, requiring highly advanced...
- At the Dakshineswar temple complex in India, Hanuman langurs beg for food by grabbing visitors’ legs or tugging on their clothes – and they don’t stop until they get their favourite snacks
- After a container ship struck and destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, researchers began calculating the risks of similar catastrophic incidents for other US bridges – and they’re surprisingly high
- AI mental health apps may offer a cheap and accessible way to fill the gaps in the overstretched U.S. mental health care system, but ethics experts warn that we need to be thoughtful about how we use them, especially with children.
- Like a bumblebee flitting from flower to flower, a new insect-inspired flying robot created by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, can hover, change trajectory and even hit small targets. Less than 1 centimeter in...
- Cave-dwelling orb spiders have adapted their webs so they act as tripwires for prey that crawl on the walls of the caves
- By studying the brains of autistic girls, we now know the condition presents differently in them than in boys, suggesting that huge numbers of women have gone undiagnosed
- An eavesdropper hiding inside a black hole could still obtain information about quantum objects on its outside, a finding that reveals how effectively black holes destroy the quantum states near their event horizons
- Paranthropus was an ape-like hominin that survived alongside early humans for more than a million years. A fossilised leg belonging to a strikingly small member of the group raises questions about how it did so
- The rate at which the planet is warming has sped up since 2010, and now researchers say that China's efforts to clean up air pollution are inadvertently responsible for the majority of this extra warming
- Taking aspirin was first linked to a lower risk of colorectal cancer in 1988, but the research into its anti-tumour potential has been full of twists and turns since then
- Many of the robotic systems developed in the past decades are inspired by four-legged (i.e., quadruped) animals, such as dogs, cheetahs and horses. By replicating the agile movements of these animals, quadruped robots could move swiftly...
- Since the second world war, US economic prosperity and major technological developments have hinged upon the government’s commitment to funding scientific research. The Trump administration is ending that
- Novel artificial neurons learn independently and are more strongly modeled on their biological counterparts. A team of researchers has programmed these infomorphic neurons and constructed artificial neural networks from them. The special...
- The US has confirmed more than 480 measles cases across 19 states, the highest total since an outbreak in 2019 sickened more than 1200 people
- A new prototype is laying claim to the title of smallest, lightest untethered flying robot. At less than a centimeter in wingspan, the wirelessly powered robot is currently very limited in how far it can travel away from the magnetic...
- Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next...
- Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe asteroid 2024 YR4, which earlier this year seemed to be at risk of hitting Earth in 2032. Earth is now safe, but astronomers are cheering on a possible collision with the moon
- The long-standing question of how animals came to have an anus may have been solved by studies of which genes are active during development in various animals
- Some researchers propose that countries should start to rack up a carbon debt once they exceed their carbon budget, obliging them to do more to draw down carbon dioxide, but the idea is unlikely to form part of international climate...