The immediate aftermath of an oil spill
The fate of oil during the first day
after an accidental oil spill is still poorly understood, with
researchers often arriving on the scene only after several days. New
findings from a field experiment carried out in the North Sea provide
valuable insight.
Shape-shifting robots
Erik Demaine describes how the prototype robot can automatically fold itself into an airplane or an origami boat. Video: Melanie Gonick; original footage: E. Hawkes/B. An/N.M. Benbernou/H. Tanaka/S. Kim/E.D. Demaine/D. Rus/R.J. Wood
Self-folding sheets of a plastic-like
material point the way to robots that can assume any conceivable 3-D
structure.
Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office
By combining origami and electrical
engineering, researchers at MIT and Harvard are working to develop
the ultimate reconfigurable robot — one that can turn into
absolutely anything. The researchers have developed algorithms that,
given a three-dimensional shape, can determine how to reproduce it by
folding a sheet of semi-rigid material with a distinctive pattern of
flexible creases. To test out their theories, they built a prototype
that can automatically assume the shape of either an origami boat or
a paper airplane when it receives different electrical signals. The
researchers reported their results in the July 13 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Step closer to birth of the sun
Researchers are a step closer to understanding the birth of the sun.
Published in Science, the team led by
Dr Maria Lugaro and Professor Alexander Heger, from Monash
University, have investigated the solar system's prehistoric phase
and the events that led to the birth of the sun.
Dr Lugaro, from the Monash Centre for
Astrophysics, said the team used radioactivity to date the last time
that heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum, lead and
rare-earth elements were added to the solar system matter by the
stars that produced them.
Water 'microhabitats' in oil show potential for extraterrestrial life, oil cleanup
 |
| Saturn's moon, Titan. |
Extremophilic ecosystems writ small
An international team of
researchers has found extremely small habitats that increase the
potential for life on other planets while offering a way to clean up
oil spills on our own.
Looking at samples from the world's
largest natural asphalt lake, they found active microbes in droplets
as small as a microliter, which is about 1/50th of a drop of water.
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