Technology, Innovation & Outdoor News

Frog muscle put to use in swimming robotic manta ray

September 08, 2026 | Etiido Uko
Few things make the career jump from regional cuisine delicacy to robotics actuator. Yet, in research vaguely reminiscent of RoboCop, scientists have used skeletal muscle from a literal frog leg as an actuator to control a tiny robotic manta ray.

Our planet has a time problem – and it may be about to get weirder

September 06, 2026 | Mike McRae
The 28th General Conference on Weights and Measures is expected to settle the debate over whether we should be so pedantic about our measures of time, putting the future of the "leap second" to a vote.

We've uncovered the deadliest days – and they don't fall on Friday the 13th

September 08, 2026 | Mike McRae
As somebody who was born on Friday the 13th, Jeffrey Rosenthal felt he had a personal interest in determining whether there were any correlations to justify in the first place, or if our suspicions are a case of confirmation bias.

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Dragon Tiny Homes' custom Vista tiny house has a compact 24-ft-long footprint while packing in some notable features, including an open living area with a home office, plus a full kitchen, and two bedrooms.
Some companies build a desalination plant and call it a day; others build a data center, while others, still, build power generation facilities. One project wants to build all three …into one facility …offshore …on a movable ship.
"American excess" is a simple term that points out the US tendency toward conspicuous overconsumption. Despite its big Ford badge, though, the new Kerkamm Ranger Super Duty RV isn't American excess at all. It's German excess ... and it's glorious.
Xiaomi’s REDMI Note 17 lineup brings 7,700- to 10,000-mAh batteries to four mid-range phones, led by a Pro Max promising three-day endurance, 100W charging and up to six years of battery health for longer ownership.
The new Cubivan Camping System is a very different style of camper-in-a-box module. It expands out the van and down to the ground to create a full kitchen and bathroom. Add the hard-walled origami roof, and you make a full camper out of a tiny van.
I have issues with AI in general, but the biggest gripe is with being forced to interact with the LLM from Google, a company with enough money and talented staff to do something great – but has instead produced a model the AI hates too.

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Almost a century and a half after construction began on La Sagrada Familia, the exterior structure of the tallest church in the world was finally completed last Friday in Barcelona, Spain. Its tallest tower has reached its maximum height of 566 ft.
It was cold – but nowhere near what I expected; I’ve been colder in an outdoor swimming pool in Australia. It's part of a global feedback loop, the scale of which I only began to comprehend when I saw this remarkable continent for myself.
Dinosaurs may be long extinct, but 2025 made it clear that they’re anything but settled science. New fossils, reanalyses of famous specimens and increasingly sophisticated tools have helped us learn more about how they lived, moved, fed and evolved.
This has to go down as one of the most inventive and ambitious motorcycle designs I've seen in nearly 20 years following two-wheeled innovations. That doesn't mean I'd have the cojones to ride it, especially given its eye-popping steering setup!
The US Navy's secretive F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter plane is a bit less secret after program competitor Northrop Grumman unveiled a new concept image of its version of the carrier-based warplane, giving us a few design clues.
As it heads out of the solar system never to return, the deep space probe Voyager 1 is headed for yet another cosmic milestone. In late 2026, it will become the first spacecraft to travel so far that a radio signal from Earth takes 24 hours, or one light day, to reach it.
For the last couple of years, Cixi has been working on a three-wheeled vehicle called Vigoz that's based on its chainless pedaling system. A skeletal prototype has been tested to 100 km/h, and now the company has revealed the latest production design.
Scientists have uncovered an intriguing link between infection and brain health, finding that a common bacterium may advance cognitive decline. It's the latest evidence suggesting that bacteria and infections play a key role in destroying our brains.