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A photo of Folsom Lake in California from October 2015. There is no water to be seen. A white pick-up truck is driving diagonally from the left to the right along a dry path.

California’s Folsom Lake in October 2015. So much water evaporated that a full size truck could drive across parts of the lake bed without getting wet. Studies seek to test whether such extreme weather was driven by climate change.

MCMLXXXI/iStockphoto

Weather & Climate
 
Oct 18, 2018
Fingerprint of climate change shows up in some extreme weather
a horse stuffed animal with white wraps around its legs is walking across a the screen against a black background, electric wires trail behind it

A new bendable, stretchable skin can wrap around inanimate objects — such as this stuffed horse’s legs — creating a soft robot.

J.W. Booth et al./Sci Robotics 2018

Robotics
 
Oct 10, 2018
Soft robots get their power from the skin they’re in
860_main_SN_wildfires_Carr.png

The Carr Fire burned 930 square kilometers, destroyed more than 1,000 buildings and killed seven people during the summer of 2018. That made it one of the most destructive wildfires in California history.

Eric Coulter, Bureau of Land Management/Flickr

Weather & Climate
 
Oct 1, 2018
Wilder wildfires? Computing helps predict their path and fury
spaghetti machine

Researchers used a custom spaghetti-snapping machine (above) to discover the best way to break dry spaghetti in half.

RONALD HEISSER AND VISHAL PATIL

Physics
 
Sep 28, 2018
The perfect spaghetti snap starts with a twist
fake news

Researchers are building computer algorithms that can check the veracity of online news.

juststock/iStockphoto

Technology
 
Sep 27, 2018
Scientists enlist computers to hunt down fake news
Obama and Putin

A new computer program can manipulate the subjects in a video so that one of them mirrors the movements of someone else in some other video. Here, images of Russian President Vladimir Putin are altered to match those of former President Barack Obama.

H. KIM ET AL/ACM TRANSACTIONS ON GRAPHICS 2018

Computers & Electronics
 
Sep 27, 2018
Computers can now make fool-the-eye fake videos
Tarzan the robot swinging over a field of crops

Tarzan, shown here, travels over crop fields with an energy-efficient swinging motion. One day, such robots might help with farm work.

Georgia Tech Research Institute

Robotics
 
Aug 31, 2018
Tarzan the robot was actually inspired by a sloth
860_stretchy_nanoelectronics.png

Batteries not required. This foldable keyboard (shown with its inventor Nelson Sepúlveda) can harvest energy from keystrokes.

G.L. Kohuth/MSU

Computers & Electronics
 
Aug 30, 2018
What powers these electronics? We do!
a photo of an origami frog folded with dark blue paper
Robert Lang folded this 2011 sculpture — Poison Dart Frog HP, Opus 598 —from a single sheet of paper. Artists have worked with this type of paper-folding, known as origami, for centuries. Recently, some scientists have found use for this technique in their research.
Artist Robert J. Lang
Mathematics
 
Aug 23, 2018
Cool Jobs: The art of paper folding is inspiring science
a photo of a man watching tv with his hands clasped behind his head

A TV delivers content through images and sound. But for those who cannot see or hear, watching TV is impossible without special technology.

BrianAJackson/iStockphoto

Computers & Electronics
 
Aug 17, 2018
New tech helps deaf-blind people ‘watch’ TV