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While some polymers can already conduct electricity with the help of a process called chemical doping, none have yet been made that conduct just as well in a transparent form. This combination could find use in TV, phone and computer screens that currently use a relatively expensive inorganic material, indium tin oxide, to serve as a transparent conductor. The researchers detail their discovery in a paper published on March 23 in Science.

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This soft robot is made using kirigami — an ancient Japanese paper craft that relies on cuts, rather than origami folds, to change the properties of a material.  As the robot stretches, the kirigami is transformed into a 3D-textured surface, which grips the ground just like snake skin.

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“With this technique, we can print the electronic sensor directly onto the material, digitally pick-and-place electronic components, and print the conductive interconnects that complete the electronic circuitry required to ‘read’ the sensor’s data signal in one fell swoop,” says first author Alex Valentine, who was a Staff Engineer at the Wyss Institute when the study was completed and is currently a medical student at the Boston University School of Medicine.

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Physicists at MIT and Harvard University have found that graphene, a lacy, honeycomb-like sheet of carbon atoms, can behave at two electrical extremes: as an insulator, in which electrons are completely blocked from flowing; and as a superconductor, in which electrical current can stream through without resistance.

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Gallium Indium makes fractals when exposed to low voltages! Neato!

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Many spiders from the salticid subfamily Spartaeinae specialize at preying on other spiders and they adopt complex strategies when targeting these dangerous prey. We tested 15 of these spider-eating spartaeine species for the capacity to plan detours ahead of time. Each trial began with the test subject on top of a tower from which it could view two boxes: one containing prey and the other not containing prey. The distance between the tower and the boxes was too far to reach by leaping and the tower sat on a platform surrounded by water. As the species studied are known to avoid water, the only way they could reach the prey without getting wet was by taking one of two circuitous walkways from the platform: one leading to the prey (‘correct’) and one not leading to the prey (‘incorrect’). After leaving the tower, the test subject could not see the prey and sometimes it had to walk past the incorrect walkway before reaching the correct walkway. Yet all 15 species chose the correct walkway significantly more often than the incorrect walkway. We propose that these findings exemplify genuine cognition based on representation.

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Impacts of recent regional changes in climate on natural and human systems are documented across the globe, yet studies explicitly linking these observations to anthropogenic forcing of the climate are scarce. Here we provide a systematic assessment of the role of anthropogenic climate change for the range of impacts of regional climate trends reported in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report. We find that almost two-thirds of the impacts related to atmospheric and ocean temperature can be confidently attributed to anthropogenic forcing. In contrast, evidence connecting changes in precipitation and their respective impacts to human influence is still weak. Moreover, anthropogenic climate change has been a major influence for approximately three-quarters of the impacts observed on continental scales. Hence the effects of anthropogenic emissions can now be discerned not only globally, but also at more regional and local scales for a variety of natural and human systems.

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Ancient population expansions and dispersals often leave enduring signatures in the cultural traditions of their descendants, as well as in their genes and languages. The international folktale record has long been regarded as a rich context in which to explore these legacies. To date, investigations in this area have been complicated by a lack of historical data and the impact of more recent waves of diffusion. In this study, we introduce new methods for tackling these problems by applying comparative phylogenetic methods and autologistic modelling to analyse the relationships between folktales, population histories and geographical distances in Indo-European-speaking societies. We find strong correlations between the distributions of a number of folktales and phylogenetic, but not spatial, associations among populations that are consistent with vertical processes of cultural inheritance. Moreover, we show that these oral traditions probably originated long before the emergence of the literary record, and find evidence that one tale (‘The Smith and the Devil’) can be traced back to the Bronze Age. On a broader level, the kinds of stories told in ancestral societies can provide important insights into their culture, furnishing new perspectives on linguistic, genetic and archaeological reconstructions of human prehistory.

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This is an interesting idea, and I see little reason why it would be unsound. It's strange, when confronted with how our environment has evolved, but just because it is something is different does not mean it is not unfeasible. 

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An interactive data display of the likely mortality rate and cause for persons aged 1-100.

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Physics, FTW.

Because, without the laws of physics, all we’d have is chaos. 

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Thank you, XKCD

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Japanese Guide to Making Silk

Silk production in Edo-period Japan (between 1603 and 1868) was super important to the economy. Silk-making was a tasked to women during this time, and these illustrations from the @metmuseum‘s “Picture Book of Brocades with Precious Threads” show these talented ladies at work.

Page through the entire digitized volume here to see the process, from the collection of worms to the extraction of silk threads to the production of fabric. 

This week’s pick from the Getty Research Portal, a one-stop shop for public domain art history books.

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Researchers at the University of Washington say they’ve gotten computers to make robust 3-D models of celebrities’ faces from only online images. Once built, single images or video can control the model, making the simulated celebrity speak. The model can even be controlled by videos of other people, making a representation of someone like Tom Hanks or Barack Obama say things they have never uttered. 

The team led by computer science and engineering professor Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman have advanced their machine learning algorithms, which track and reconstruct faces, to the extent that they can now map one person’s mannerisms and facial expressions onto another.

The work’s goal is to develop virtual three-dimensional models of people to reconstruct interactive historical figures and to give a new dimension to visual communications tools like Skype, Google Talk or FaceTime.

“You might one day be able to put on a pair of augmented reality glasses and there is a 3-D model of your mother on the couch,” said Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. “Such technology doesn’t exist yet — the display technology is moving forward really fast — but how do you actually re-create your mother in three dimensions?”

Keep reading

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