The first wireless flying robotic insect takes off

Engineers have created RoboFly, the first wireless flying robotic insect. RoboFly is slightly heavier than a toothpick and is powered by a laser beam. Insects sized flying robots could help with times consuming tasks like surveying crop growth on large farms or sniffing out gas leaks. These robots soar by fluttering...

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Nouns slow down our speech

Speakers hesitate or make brief pauses filled with sounds like 'uh' or 'uhm' mostly before nouns. Such slowdown effects are far less frequent before verbs, as researchers working together with an international team have now discovered by looking at examples from different languages. When we speak, we unconsciously pronounce...

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Eye, hair and skin color from a DNA sample of an unidentified individual

New tool will be used when standard forensic profiling is not helpful An international team has developed a novel tool to accurately predict eye, hair and skin color from human biological material -- even a small DNA sample -- left, for example, at a crime scene or obtained from archeological remains. This all in one...

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Discovery of episodic memory replay in rats could lead to better treatments for Alzheimer's disease

Researchers have reported the first evidence that non human animals can mentally replay past events from memory. The discovery could help improve the development of drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease by providing a way to study memory in animals that more closely addresses how memory works in people. The study, led...

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Genetic clues reveal origins of the killer fungus behind the 'amphibian plague'

New research has revealed a deadly disease that threatens the survival of the world's frogs originated from East Asia, and global trade was almost certainly responsible for the disease's spread. The frog chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) has long been identified as a cause of the decline and extinction...

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Large predators once hunted to near-extinction are showing up in unexpected places

Sightings of alligators and other large predators in places where conventional wisdom says they 'shouldn't be' have increased in recent years, in large part because local populations, once hunted to near-extinction, are rebounding. A new article finds that far from being outliers, these sightings signify the return of...

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25 years of fossil collecting yields clearest picture of extinct 12-foot aquatic predator

More than two decades of exploration at a Pennsylvania fossil site have given paleontologists their best idea of how a giant, prehistoric predator would have looked and behaved. After 25 years of collecting fossils at a Pennsylvania site, scientists at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University now have a much...

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Scientists find the first bird beak, right under their noses

Researchers have pieced together the three-dimensional skull of an iconic, toothed bird that represents a pivotal moment in the transition from dinosaurs to modern-day birds.  Ichthyornis dispar holds a key position in the evolutionary trail that leads from dinosaurian species to today's avians. It lived nearly 100...

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