For a researcher who builds robots, Maurizio Porfiri credits his success to an unexpected source — literature. Paul Auster’s novels in particular, with their scenes of Brooklyn, which is home to the researcher’s own Polytechnic Institute of New York University. As a teen growing up in Italy, Porfiri read Auster as well as Robert Musil,…
The most significant breakthrough in the laser pulse field in four years provides scientists with a new tool to watch quantum mechanics in action — a world hidden from view until now. The work was also accomplished without using specialized equipment, such as a mile-long particle accelerator or Superdome-sized synchrotron. University of Central Florida professor…
You already know it’s hard to balance your checkbook while simultaneously reflecting on your past. Now, investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine — having done the equivalent of wire-tapping a hard-to-reach region of the brain — can tell us how this impasse arises. The researchers showed that groups of nerve cells in a…
Rather than kicking off the expected cycles of extinction, periods of warming in Earth’s history were accompanied by increased biodiversity, according to a report. But this does not mean that the mass extinctions that are taking place today, with Earth warming at an unprecedented rate, will be reversed in future. Researchers examined the number of…
Tigers aren’t known for being accommodating, but a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that the carnivores in Nepal are taking the night shift to better coexist with humans. The revelation that tigers and people are sharing exactly the same space – the same roads and trails – of…
Marine scientists, planners and government officials say millions of mollusks planted in waters off New York and other cities could go a long way toward cleaning up America’s polluted urban environment. The oyster and other shellfish can slurp up toxins and eliminate decades of dirt. Landscape architect Kate Orff has a name for the work…
When environmental engineer John Feighery got a job testing well water in Bangladesh for the National Institutes of Health, he felt the work, which involved using heavy equipment, charting notes and locations by hand and transporting samples in incubators to a distant laboratory could be simpler and less expensive. That’s how he came up with…
Reliance on supernatural explanations for major life events, such as death and illness, often increases rather than declines with age, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin. The study, published in a recent issue of Child Development, offers new insight into developmental learning. “As children assimilate cultural concepts into…
With the successful landing and deployment of the Mars Curiosity Rover, humanity has been treated to a sneak peek at the Red Planet for the first time. The possibility of establishing space colonies has been a scientists’ dream for decades, but working out a way to keep humans alive on the outside Earth’s protective shell…
Getting a six-wheeled car-size rover safely onto the surface of the red planet? Daunting, sure. But NASA did it with Curiosity. Sending humans on a mission to Mars? That requires overcoming even more outlandish obstacles. Here’s a look at five of the top challenges to safely getting astronauts to Mars, as well as potential solutions.