Motherboard

NASA wants humans and robots to work together as teams. To ensure that, the space agency’s autonomous robotics group is currently developing new technology to improve how humans explore the solar system, and how robots can help.

Swirling flakes in mixture of camphor, ethanol, and other chemicals were thought to predict coming weather.

Over 1,000 light-years from Earth is a monstrous gas giant of a planet—500 times more massive than our own—where clouds seem to be made from corundum, the same mineral that creates rubies and sapphires here on Earth.

Recent explorations by a team of Australian researchers into the contents of its venom have revealed another stunning trait of the already wonderful platypus: the critter contains an enhanced version of the hormone that regulates insulin secretion in animals’ guts, which could offer a new type of treatment for type 2 diabetes.

Egyptian, Canadian, Japanese, and French researchers are using highly sensitive muon panels to sense those elementary particles to find undiscovered caverns inside the giant pyramids.

Recently, researchers from Stanford University discovered quite by accident that regular old iron nanoparticles, in the form of the injectable supplement ferumoxytol (currently used to treat iron-deficiency anemia), have a potent immune system rallying effect in mice. Simply, ferumoxytol prompts immune cells called macrophages to attack and destroy tumor cells. It seems likely the concept…

On August 23, a Dutch statistician shook up the usually slow world of scientific publishing by giving it a glimpse of an automated open data future.

Researchers have unveiled another “first” in brain imaging: a visualisation of epigenetic activity (the mechanisms that affect gene expression) in a living human brain. This could help show the role epigenetics plays in different disorders, and even help develop drugs to then treat them.

Researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia have developed a technique for enabling liquid metals to move and arrange themselves autonomously in response to varying external conditions. The resulting electronics aren’t just soft and free-flowing, but are highly reconfigurable as well.