Back in April, Stanford University professor Oussama Khatib led a team of researchers on an underwater archaeological expedition, 30 kilometers off the southern coast of France, to La Lune, King Louis XIV’s sunken 17th-century flagship. Rather than dive to the site of the wreck 100 meters below the surface, which is a very bad idea for almost everyone, Khatib’s … Read More → "How Stanford built a humanoid submarine robot to explore a 17th-century shipwreck"

A one-kilometer stretch of road in the French town of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy is officially the world’s first public “Wattway.” As France 24 reports, the solar panel road was opened by French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal on Thursday, December 22.

The panels cover 30,000 square feet of roadway and have been reinforced with layers of plastic … Read More → "France debuts world’s first solar panel road in Normandy"

Humans have been a bit slow at catching up with birds on this—the best we’ve been able to do are some mechanically complicated and presumably very expensive wings that ponderously swing back and forth a little bit, but isn’t it about time we catch up to this technology that’s over a hundred million years old? At the École Polytechnique … Read More → "Artificial feathers let drones morph their wings like birds"

Shipping presents to loved ones during the busy holiday months can be a stressful endeavor, but the US Postal Service is testing something new this year that puts a seasonal spin on the task. Officially called “The Most Wonderful Ornament,” the Christmas decoration changes color as the the status of your package is updated. When your package is out for delivery, the ornament lights up blue. Red means the box … Read More → "USPS made an ornament that displays package tracking updates"

Japanese mobile service provider NTTDoCoMo has installed these special smartphone toilet paper rolls in the bathrooms stalls of Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Each wipe has instructions for how to connect to the airport’s Wi-Fi, as well as where to go to get other travel information and translation services. They encourage users to use the wipe to clean their smartphone screen to help remove germs.
via < … Read More → "Tokyo airport now has toilet paper wipes for your phone"

Norwegian pop star Aurora teamed up with YouTube and Carnegie Mellon for a music video starring the most heartless of backup dancers: drones. The quadcopter choreography was programmed by Ali Momeni, associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University, and Ellen Cappo, a PhD student in robotics. It was shot in CMU’s Planetary Robotics Lab.
via < … Read More → "Watch drones encase Norwegian pop star Aurora in a fabric cocoon"

As you might guess, measuring antimatter is rather tricky: it’s destroyed the moment it comes into contact with regular matter, so conventional approaches just aren’t going to cut it. Give credit to CERN, then, as its Alpha group just measured antimatter for the first time. The team stuffed positrons (positively charged electrons) and antiprotons (protons with a negative charge) into a vacuum tube to create antihydrogen, with a “ … Read More → "Physicists learn how to measure antimatter"

The dodo was more prized for its meat than for its beauty. That ended up being the bird’s downfall. However, its smaller, more attractive cousin is still around to admire.

According to My Modern Met, the Nicobar pigeon is the closest living relative to the flightless bird … Read More → "This colorful pigeon is the dodo’s closest living relative"

Public health researchers at Harvard University waded through three years of records for patients in the US ages 65 and up. They took a random sample of 20 percent of people receiving Medicare who had been hospitalized between January 2011, and December 2014. The researchers discovered that no matter what medical condition landed the patient in the hospital, that patient was more likely to die or be readmitted to the hospital in the following 30 … Read More → "Patients treated by female doctors less likely to die than patients treated by men, new study shows"

In this 20-minute video, two mathematicians play Monopoly and work out how to win at it…using math.

The mathematicians are Dr. Hannah Fry and Matt Parker. They each simulated the game using computer programs they wrote. The programs play pseudo-Monopoly games, keeping track of how the dice rolls come … Read More → "The mathematics of winning Monopoly"