Engineers have developed a vegetable-picking robot that can autonomously harvest iceberg lettuce, a manually demanding crop for human pickers. Vegebot was trained using a machine-learning algorithm that helped it distinguish healthy lettuces ready for harvest, in a variety of weather conditions.
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Humans are currently locked in an arms race against pathogenic bacteria – and we’re losing. Now scientists have identified the genes responsible for antibiotic resistance in a particularly dangerous superbug, and found a way to thwart them.
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A landmark study, led by a team of scientists from King’s College London and the University of Cambridge, has described the mechanism responsible for the hardening of arteries. The research also points to a common antibiotic as a potential new treatment to prevent this condition.
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New research led by the University of Cambridge has found that forests may not be as useful a carbon sink as we thought. The team found that a warming climate makes trees grow faster and die younger, releasing their captured carbon back into the air sooner.
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Combining suction cups and shower hoses, robotics researchers have created a wall-climbing robot said to be inspired by one of nature's congenital suckers: the leech. They're calling it a "world's first achievement in developing soft and flexible robot that is capable of free movement on a wall."
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Researchers at Cambridge University have managed to create the smallest pixels in the world, about a million times tinier than those in a phone. These new pixels could be used in huge, flexible displays that are relatively easy to manufacture and cheaper to run.
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A new study has discovered a drug used to treat high blood pressure may also be beneficial for a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and dementia. The research has only been verified in animals so far but the scientists are cautiously optimistic it will translate to humans.
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A vital section of the world's largest ice shelf is losing ice 10 times faster than the overall melt rate for the structure, posing a potential risk to its future stability. The Ross Ice Shelf stretches out over 500,809 square km, and accounts for 32 percent of Antarctica's total ice shelf area.
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Scientists led by the University of Cambridge have developed a way to replace the organic gases used in most conventional refrigerators with plastic crystals. By using crystals of neopentyl glycol under pressure, it may be possible to build safer, greener, and more efficient cooling systems.
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A new technique has been used to turn ordinary metals into "metallic wood" with a greatly improved strength-to-weight ratio. By manipulating materials at the atomic scale, scientists claim to have created a sheet of nickel that is as strong as titanium, but up to five times lighter.
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