Buddhas of Bamiyan resurrected

In 2001, the Taliban had destroyed the statues of Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. But thanks to technology, the statues were resurrected again in Bamiyan Valley via 3D light projection technology.

The project was undertaken by a Chinese couple Janson Yu and Liyan Hu, who used 3D laser light projection technology to fill the empty cavities in the cliff in the Bamiyan Valley with Buddha’s virtual images.

The two statues of Standing Buddhas of Bamiyan, 115 ft and 174 ft tall respectively, were carved out of sandstone cliffs and stood at one point painted and gilded. They managed to survive for more than 1500 years. The statues were among the most famous cultural landmarks of the region, and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley.

Photo Courtesy: WikiMedia Commons

The Bhagvad Gita in Chinese

The sacred ancient Indian scripture Bhagavad Gita’s Chinese version was launched recently in China during an international yoga conference. The book is translated in Chinese by Professor Wang Zhu Cheng and Ling Hai of the Zhejiang University, Shanghai and published by the Sichuan People’s Publications.

This is perhaps the first time that a well known Hindu ancient religious text has been published in China. Last year, scholars from India and China published an Encyclopedia on the age-old cultural association between the two countries that went back to over 2000 years.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Say Goodbye to Maggi

Maggi – one our favourite two minute treat, found itself in big soup last month. Thousands of packets of maggi were dumped in the garbage last month after the Food Safety and Drug Administration ordered the manufacturers of Maggi noodles- Nestle to withdraw all the packets from the market. The order came after dangerous levels of Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) was found in the noodles.

Reports suggest that a lead concentration of 17.2 parts per million (ppm), nearly seven times the permissible limit, was found in the noodles (the permissible limit of lead ranges between 0.01 ppm and 2.5 ppm). What is Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) and what is the permissible limit? Monosodium Glutamate or MSG is naturally present in various food items such as mushrooms, tomatoes, Parmesan cheese and soy sauce. It has a unique taste which is different from salty, sweet, sour or bitter. The taste is described as ‘meaty’ or ‘savory’ ma

Is it dangerous if consumed in excess?
Excess consumption of MSG promotes sluggishness in the body. It may also cause headache, nausea, increased thirst, chest tightness and a twitching sensation in the mouth. In some cases one may feel numbness, skin rashes and excessive sweating too.

So what now?
At present, there is an on-going investigation to fi nd out how and why this happened. Until such time, Nestle will not manufacture and sell Maggi noodles in India. Once the reason for the high levels of MSG has been discovered, the FDA will decide if it can be corrected and if Maggi can be sold after that. But for now, we have no choice but to wait and watch!

The Wettest Place on Earth - Cherapunjee

Nestled in the East Khasi Hills of the state of Meghalaya; Cherapunjee for decades was the wettest place on earth. Recently, it was overtaken by the nearby town Mawsynram which in the last few years has received more rainfall than Cherapunjee. However, Cherapunjee still holds the record for being the wettest place on earth for at least 20 years in the past and is at present the second wettest place on earth. It is also the only place in India which receives rainfall throughout the year!

Located about 50 km southwest of Shillong (the capital of Meghalaya), Cherapunjee is also known as Sohra and Churra. Cherrapunjee, which means ‘the land of oranges’, is at a height of 4290 ft. One can see the plains of Bangladesh from the cliffs of Cherrapunjee. It receives a staggering 11,777 mm (38.64 feet) of rainfall each year. Monsoon clouds which blow inland from the Bay of Bengal are stopped from moving further by the ridges of Cherrapunjee. The town receives both south-west and north-east monsoon. However, despite receiving excess rain, the town still faces an acute water shortage and the locals have to travel great distances to get fresh water. Another fall out of the relentless rain is the soil erosion. This has denuded the land of Cherrapunjee and the surrounding valleys.

Cherrapunjee is also famous for its live bridges, a result of bio-engineering practised by the locals. The bridges can bear 50 people at a time and are spectacular to watch. Besides, enjoying the rains, Cherrapunee is also a good place for trekking. The most popular trekking route is that leads to Double Decker Living Root bridge in Nongriat village.

The Wonder Called Kohinoor

The Kohinoor is one of the oldest and most famous diamonds in the world. The history of the Kohinoor goes back in history to more than 5000 years ago. The name of the diamond, “Koh-i-noor” is in Persian and means “Mountain of Light”. Here is a timeline that traces the roots of this priceless diamond: 

5000 Years Ago 

It is believed that the diamond was fi rst mentioned more than 5000 years ago in a Sanskrit script, where it was called the Syamantaka. After this fi rst written mention, for over 4,000 years the diamond is not mentioned. 

The 1300s 

Up until 1304 the diamond was in the possession of the Rajas of Malwa. But back then, the diamond was still not named Kohinoor. In 1304, it belonged to the Emperor of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji. Then in 1339, the diamond was taken back to the city of Samarkand (Persia), where it stayed for almost 300 years. 

The 1500s

In 1526 the Mogul ruler Babur mentions the diamond in his writings, Baburnama. The diamond was gifted to him by the Sultan Ibrahim Lodi. One of the descendants of Babur, Aurangzeb, protected the diamond diligently and passed it on to his heirs. Mahamad, the grandson of Aurangzeb, however, was not a fear-inspiring and great ruler like his grandfather. 

From the 1700s to 1800s 

In 1739, Mahamad; lost a battle with the Persian general Nadir Shah. And along with his power and kingdom, Mahamed had to also surrender his precious diamond to Nadir Shah. It was Nadir Shah who gave the diamond its current name, “Koh-i-noor”. But Nadir Shah did not live for long. In 1747 he was assassinated and the diamond fell into the hands of one of his generals, Ahmad Shah Durrani. A descendant of Ahmad Shah, Shah Shuja Durrani brought the Koh-i-noor back to India in 1813 and gave it to Ranjit Singh (the founder of the Sikh Empire). In exchange Ranjit Singh helped Shah Shuja get back the throne of Afghanistan. 

British East India Company 

In 1849, after the conquest of the Punjab by the British forces, the properties of the Sikh Empire were confi scated. The Koh-i-noor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore. The diamond was then shipped to Britain on a ship and handed to Queen Victoria in July 1850.

Queen Victoria 

After the diamond was handed to Queen Victoria, it was exhibited at the Crystal Palace a year later. But the “Mountain of Light” was not as shiny as the other cut gemstones of that era and there was a general disappointment regarding it. In 1852 the Queen decided to reshape the diamond and it was taken to a Dutch jeweller, Mr. Cantor who cut it to 108.93 carats. Queen Victoria wore the diamond occasionally afterwards. She left in her will that the Koh-i-noor should only be worn by a female queen. If the head of state was a man, his wife would have to carry the diamond. After Queen Victoria’s death, the Kohinoor became part of the Crown Jewels.


Fun Facts about Diamonds 
The word “Diamond” comes from the Greek word “Adamas” and means “unconquerable and indestructible” The diamond is the hardest natural substance found on the Earth Diamonds are made of a single element—they’re nearly 100% carbon. Diamonds are billions of years old—in some cases more than three billion years old. Diamonds are formed about 160 kilometers below the ground and have been carried to the earth’s surface by deep volcanic eruptions. Diamonds were first discovered in India and then in Brazil. Today, most of the Earth’s natural diamond deposits are found in Africa.

Blue Mormon is Maharashtra’s State butterfly

Last month the Maharashtra Government declared the Blue Mormon (Papilio polymnestor) as the State butterfly. Blue Mormom is the second largest butterfly found in India after the southern birdwing. With this, Maharashtra became India’s first state to have a State butterfly.

Blue Mormom 

It is a large, swallowtail black coloured velvet winged butterfly. It has bright blue spots on its wings and red spots in the body. The species of this butterfly is primarily found in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra, South India and coastal belts. Earlier, the state government had declared the Yellow-footed Green Pigeon as state bird, Giant Squirrel as state animal, Mango as state tree and Jarul as the state flower.

Photo by Nature Loader on WikiMedia

350 years of Shri Anandpur Sahib

The 350th foundation day of Shri Anandpur Sahib was celebrated from 17 June to 19 June 2015 at Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib located in Anandpur Sahib in Punjab. The holy city was founded by the 9th Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1665.

Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib situated amid Shivalik hills on the banks of River Satluj is the birthplace of the Khalsa. Guru Teg Bahadur was father of Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Guru of Sikhs. Later, Guru Gobind Singh created Khalsa Panth in 1699.

Catching Waves and Turning Them Into Electricity

Off the coast of Western Australia, three big buoys floating beneath the ocean’s surface look like giant jellyfish tethered to the seafloor. The steel machines, 36 feet wide, are buffeted by the powerful waves of the Indian Ocean. By harnessing the constant motion of the waves, the buoys generate about 5 percent of the electricity used at a nearby military base on Garden Island.

The buoys are a pilot project of Carnegie Wave Energy, a company based in Perth and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. In late February, the buoys started supplying 240 kilowatts each to the electricity grid at HMAS Stirling, Australia’s largest naval base. They also help run a desalination plant that transforms seawater into about one-third of the base’s fresh water supply.

Renewable energy is not an urgent matter in Australia, given the country’s plentiful supplies of fossil fuels, particularly coal. But Carnegie’s demonstration project is ultimately aimed at island nations that must import expensive fuel for electricity, as well as military bases looking to bolster energy and water security.

“Island nations are all looking to be sustainable,” said Michael E. Ottaviano, chief executive of Carnegie. Wave energy could be a good fit, especially for islands where tropical clouds impede solar power or where wind turbines disturb the aesthetics of tourist destinations.

Given the ocean’s power, wave energy seems a promising source of renewable energy. Over the last two decades, companies have developed various designs, including a snakelike apparatus with hinged joints from Pelamis Wave Power, a pioneering Scottish company that connected wave power to the grid in 2004; a tubelike device from Ocean Power Technologies of New Jersey and bobbing buoys from AWS Ocean Energy of Scotland.

The new technology would generate electricity inside the buoy instead of at an onshore power plant. The electricity would be carried to shore by underwater cables, rather than by pumping water through a pipe. These larger buoys would also sit in deeper water, more than seven miles from shore, where waves are larger and have more energy. The newer buoys would be easier to maintain because they would be self-contained units that could be towed back to shore.

Injectable brain implant spies on individual neurons

A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain. A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices, and shown that it unfurls to spy on and stimulate individual neurons.

The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain in unprecedented detail. “I think it’s great, a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain,” says Rafael Yuste, director of the Neuro­technology Center at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the work.

If eventually shown to be safe, the soft mesh might even be used in humans to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, says Charles Lieber, a chemist at Harvard University on Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the team. The work was published inNature Nanotechnology on 8 June¹.

Neuroscientists still do not understand how the activities of individual brain cells translate to higher cognitive powers such as perception and emotion. The problem has spurred a hunt for technologies that will allow scientists to study thousands, or ideally millions, of neurons at once, but the use of brain implants is currently limited by several disadvantages. So far, even the best technologies have been composed of relatively rigid electronics that act like sandpaper on delicate neurons. They also struggle to track the same neuron over a long period, because individual cells move when an animal breathes or its heart beats.

The Harvard team solved these problems by using a mesh of conductive polymer threads with either nanoscale electrodes or transistors attached at their intersections. Each strand is as soft as silk and as flexible as brain tissue itself. Free space makes up 95% of the mesh, allowing cells to arrange themselves around it.

In 2012, the team showed² that living cells grown in a dish can be coaxed to grow around these flexible scaffolds and meld with them, but this ‘cyborg’ tissue was created outside a living body. “The problem is, how do you get that into an existing brain?” says Lieber.

Injectable brain implant spies on individual neurons

A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain. A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices, and shown that it unfurls to spy on and stimulate individual neurons.

The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain in unprecedented detail. “I think it’s great, a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain,” says Rafael Yuste, director of the Neuro­technology Center at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the work.

If eventually shown to be safe, the soft mesh might even be used in humans to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, says Charles Lieber, a chemist at Harvard University on Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the team. The work was published inNature Nanotechnology on 8 June¹.

Neuroscientists still do not understand how the activities of individual brain cells translate to higher cognitive powers such as perception and emotion. The problem has spurred a hunt for technologies that will allow scientists to study thousands, or ideally millions, of neurons at once, but the use of brain implants is currently limited by several disadvantages. So far, even the best technologies have been composed of relatively rigid electronics that act like sandpaper on delicate neurons. They also struggle to track the same neuron over a long period, because individual cells move when an animal breathes or its heart beats.

The Harvard team solved these problems by using a mesh of conductive polymer threads with either nanoscale electrodes or transistors attached at their intersections. Each strand is as soft as silk and as flexible as brain tissue itself. Free space makes up 95% of the mesh, allowing cells to arrange themselves around it.

In 2012, the team showed² that living cells grown in a dish can be coaxed to grow around these flexible scaffolds and meld with them, but this ‘cyborg’ tissue was created outside a living body. “The problem is, how do you get that into an existing brain?” says Lieber.

The kitchen garden goes high-tech

If you have always wanted to grow your own food but lack the expertise or outdoor space to do it, a high-tech indoor garden may be the answer. Various start-up companies now offer a bumper crop of garden gadgets to make it easier to grow food in your home.

CounterCrop and Niwa, which retail for about $320 to $350, offer a wired step up from a window planter box — no dirt or green thumb needed. Each device lets you plant and grow a small crop of fresh vegetables.

CounterCrop is a self-contained, miniature garden with its own watering setup and advanced LED lights that mimic sunrise, sunset and seasonal shifts in nature. It’s nearly two feet long, one foot wide, and takes up the same amount of space as a medium-size microwave oven.

To get things growing, simply plant some seeds in any or all of the 50 dirt-free growing pods. Salad greens, kale, herbs, mini-tomatoes, beets and radishes work best. Add plant food and water to the base. It comes with a remote control loaded with programmed settings, so it can handle the lights and watering cycles with little effort.

CounterCrop promises full plants in a month or less. The downside is that it’s a new product, so it’s not well tested in the real world. CounterCrop was funded by a Kickstarter campaign and created by engineers and horticulture scientists at Intelligent Light Source, which makes indoor growth lights for plants. The first units will be shipped in June.

Niwa takes a similar approach, but the mini-greenhouse looks more like a modern, luxury end table, with plants growing inside.

Water, soil and adequate light are the basic formula for virtually every type of plant, but the subtle nuances among species is where home growers are so often tripped up. The Niwa founder and chief executive, Javier Morillas, says his device has the “brain” of an experienced farmer, with the “guts” of an ultrahigh-tech gadget that can turn decades of growing expertise into an automated game plan that anyone can use. A tomato plant and a head of lettuce may need the same ingredients to grow, but only an experienced grower can coax the most out of both.

In that way, Mr. Morillas says, Niwa’s combination of fans, grow lights, sprinklers and sensors is the ultimate gardening guru. People just decide which seeds to plant, drop them into a hydroponic base that uses mineral solutions instead of soil, and let the device pick up from there.

A connected smartphone app asks what kinds of plants you’re growing and then plugs in a formula tailored to your garden. Niwa takes care of the watering routine and lighting schedule and keeps the humidity and temperature in check. Along the way, the Niwa app will ask that you check the plants and answer a few questions, such as how much growth has occurred. This information helps Niwa plot the progress of your garden in the app and further dial in its settings, ideally giving your plants the opportunity to flourish. The company expects to start shipping the first units by early summer.

For now, it comes in two sizes, with the smaller standing about two feet tall, and the largest a little less than three feet. A premium version of the larger unit gives you a choice between aluminum or plastic poles framing the four-sided, see-through plexiglass container.

Other options include ClicknGrow, which offers several breadbox-size containers wired to grow small batches of herbs, strawberries, chili peppers or other plants, and sells for less than $100. Early next year, it is releasing a larger-scale option that will let people grow 50 to 250 plants inside their homes.

The Miracle-Gro AeroGarden uses aeroponics to grow plants with air or mist instead of soil. This automated indoor kitchen garden places plants’ root system in a 100 percent humid, oxygenated, nutrient-rich growing chamber. The product comes in nine sizes and models that range from the $50 AeroGarden 3SL to the $300 AeroGarden Ultra LED.

For people with no counter space to spare, Brooklyn-based Windowfarms uses a hybrid hydroponics approach to grow up instead of out. For $179, you can order a single column of four vertically hanging pots and the watering system base. From there, growers can take a subscription box approach, getting fresh starter plants delivered to their doorstep as often as once a month, starting at $21.95.

Of course, people don’t need technology to grow their own food. Urban gardeners have used cheap plastic gardening plates, pots and even casserole dishes to grow herbs and other foods. Books like“Indoor Kitchen Gardening: Turn Your Home Into a Year-Round Vegetable Garden” (Cool Springs Press) offer low-tech solutions for people who are willing to spend time, and a lot less money, on an indoor garden.

An important step in artificial intelligence

Scientists say a simple artificial neural circuit is a small but important step for artificial intelligence. The circuit of about 100 artificial synapses performed a simple version of a typical human task: image classification.

With time and further progress, the circuitry may eventually be expanded and scaled to approach something like the human brain, which has 1015 (one quadrillion) synaptic connections.

For all its errors and potential for faultiness, the human brain remains a model of computational power and efficiency for engineers. The brain can accomplish certain functions much faster and efficiently than computers.

For example, as you read this, your brain is making countless split-second decisions about the letters and symbols you see, classifying their shapes and relative positions to each other and deriving different levels of meaning through many channels of context, in as little time as it takes you to scan over this print. Change the font, or even the orientation of the letters, and it’s likely you would still be able to read this and derive the same meaning.

The new circuit was able to successfully classify three letters (“z”, “v,” and “n”) by their images, each letter stylized in different ways or saturated with noise. In a process similar to how we humans pick our friends out from a crowd, the simple neural circuitry was able to correctly classify the simple images.

“While the circuit was very small compared to practical networks, it is big enough to prove the concept of practicality,” says Farnood Merrikh-Bayat, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

THE KEY COMPONENT: A ‘MEMRISTOR’

Key to this technology is the memristor (a combination of “memory” and “resistor”), an electronic component whose resistance changes depending on the direction of the flow of the electrical charge. Unlike conventional transistors, which rely on the drift and diffusion of electrons and their holes through semiconducting material, memristor operation is based on ionic movement, similar to the way human neural cells generate neural electrical signals.

“The memory state is stored as a specific concentration profile of defects that can be moved back and forth within the memristor,” says Dmitri Strukov, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The ionic memory mechanism brings several advantages over purely electron-based memories, which makes it very attractive for artificial neural network implementation, he added.

“For example, many different configurations of ionic profiles result in a continuum of memory states and hence analog memory functionality,” he says. “Ions are also much heavier than electrons and do not tunnel easily, which permits aggressive scaling of memristors without sacrificing analog properties.”

INSPIRED BY THE BRAIN

This is where analog memory trumps digital memory. In order to create the same human brain-type functionality with conventional technology, the resulting device would have to be enormous—loaded with multitudes of transistors that would require far more energy.

“Classical computers will always find an ineluctable limit to efficient brain-like computation in their very architecture,” says lead researcher Mirko Prezioso. “This memristor-based technology relies on a completely different way inspired by biological brain to carry on computation.”

To approach the functionality of the human brain, however, many more memristors would be required to build more complex neural networks.

The next step would be to integrate a memristor neural network with conventional semiconductor technology, which will enable more complex demonstrations and allow this early artificial brain to do more complicated and nuanced things.

Konstantin Likharev from Stony Brook University also conducted research for this project. The researchers’ findings are published in the journal Nature.

Hubo can kneel and drive on wheels, including walk

The winning robot, from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, can kneel and drive on wheels in addition to walking. Credit: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

A team of roboticists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology claimed a $2 million prize on Saturday that was offered by a Pentagon research agency for developing a mobile robot capable of operating in hazardous environments.

Twenty-five teams of university and corporate roboticists competed for the prize, which was first proposed in 2012 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The robots were graded on their ability to complete eight tasks, including driving a vehicle, opening a door, operating a portable drill, turning a valve and climbing stairs, all in the space of an hour.

The Korean victory is a validation of the work of JunHo Oh, the designer of the Hubo family of humanoid robots in development since 2002. The winning Hubo is a clever machine that can kneel and drive on wheels in addition to walking.

The second-place winner, the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Fla., received $1 million, and the third-place winner, Tartan Rescue, from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, received $500,000.

Despite clear progress since a trial event in Florida in 2013, the robots remain decades away from the science-fiction feats seen in movies like “Ex Machina” and “Chappie.”

Instead, the robots seemed more like an array of electronic and hydraulic contraptions that, in some cases, walked in a lumbering fashion on two or four legs and, in other cases, rolled on tracks or wheels. Some of the machines weighed more than 400 pounds. They were equipped with sensors and cameras to permit remote control.

On Friday, the first day of the Robotics Challenge, it took until 2:30 in the afternoon for the first robot to successfully complete the course, seven and a half hours after the competition began. Frequently, the machines would stand motionless for minutes at a time while they waited for wireless connections with their controllers to improve. Darpa degraded the wireless links on purpose to create the uneven communications that would simulate a crisis situation.

Reporters were once again left grasping for appropriate metaphors to describe the slow-motion calisthenics performed by the menagerie of battery-powered machines. Most agreed that “like watching grass grow” was no longer the best description, and Gill Pratt, the Darpa official in charge of the competition, suggested that it had risen to the level of “watching a golf match.”

The event, which was held along parallel courses in front of the grandstands at the sprawling Los Angeles County Fairgrounds, allowed spectators to watch four teams simultaneously as operators remotely and wirelessly controlled robots from a garage area roughly a quarter of a mile away.

For the finals, the robots ran without power cords or rope belays meant to prevent them from falling. As a result, there were numerous falls as robots collapsed through doorways, tumbled backward off short staircases and keeled over while failing to grasp a valve that they were required to turn.

Despite the overriding ambience of a race run underwater, the competition also offered a real sense of drama on both Friday and Saturday, as the lead seesawed back and forth among different teams. A crowd of several thousand cheered each time one of the robots completed a task or groaned in sympathy when a machine failed or tumbled.

Photo

The crowd watched a line of dancing robots at an exhibition that accompanied the Robotics Challenge. CreditChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The event was inspired by the challenge posed by the nuclear disaster in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant complex in Japan, where workers were forced to flee before completely shutting it down after an earthquake and tsunami.

Dr. Pratt has argued that if remotely operated robots had been available after the quake, the nuclear plant meltdowns would have been avoidable.

“During the first day or two, things could have been different; the disaster could have been mitigated,” he said. “If only there had been some way to go in there despite the power being off and operate some of the emergency equipment they had.”

At the trials, held at the Homestead International Speedway in December 2013, Schaft, a Japanese robotics company that had been acquired by Google, dominated the competition. The Japanese team, which had spun off from the University of Tokyo to circumvent restrictions on military research, successfully completed all of the tasks they tried.

But after their success, Google decided to withdraw the team from competition. During the finals, the Schaft technology contributed to a redesign of seven bipedal Atlas robots that were supplied to teams in the contest by Boston Dynamics, another company that Google acquired.

After Team Schaft’s departure, the Japanese government intervened and arranged funding from the education ministry. As a result, five Japanese teams entered the contest this year, along with teams from the United States, China, Hong Kong, Germany, South Korea and Italy.

While there was relatively modest progress toward completely autonomous and mobile robots at the event, Darpa increased its emphasis this year on the idea of human-robot collaboration as a way to complete tasks that neither humans nor machines could perform separately.

It was also clear at the event that like the Japanese, Americans appear to have a growing affinity for robots. The contest was accompanied by an extensive exhibition in which dozens of companies, national laboratories and universities demonstrated robots to an appreciative crowd that included many children.

“People name their cars — it’s a human trait to build relationships with the things around you,” said Rich Mahoney, director of the robotics program at SRI International. “The more those things are like you and are animated and they move, the more we can build relationships with machines.”

How 3D-printed shells crack under stress

Mollusks have soft innards, but their complex exteriors protect them in harsh conditions. Engineers are beginning to understand how.

By modeling the average mollusk’s mobile habitat, they are learning how shells stand up to extraordinary pressures at the bottom of the sea. The goal is to learn what drove these tough exoskeletons to evolve as they did and to see how their mechanical principles may be adapted for use in human-scale structures like vehicles and even buildings.

The team led by Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science and a visiting student at Rice University, created computer simulations and printed 3D variants of two types of shells to run stress tests alongside real shells that Tiwary collected from beaches in India.

NACRE SHELLS

Shells are made of nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, a strong and resilient matrix of organic and inorganic materials recently studied by other Rice engineers as a model of strength, stiffness, and toughness.

Tiwary and his colleagues took their research in a different direction to discover how seashells remain stable and redirect stress to minimize damage when failure is imminent. Their calculations showed their distinctive shapes make the shells nearly twice as good at bearing loads than nacre alone.

They examined two types of mollusk: bivalves with two separate exoskeleton components joined at a hinge (as in clamshells) and terebridae that conceal themselves in screw-shaped shells.

In the case of clamshells, the semicircular shape and curved ribs force stress to the hinge, while the screws direct the load toward the center and then the wide top.

They found such evolutionary optimization allows fractures to appear only where they’re least likely to hurt the animal inside.

Keep going, stay positive

Actress Amy Poehler often plays upbeat characters, but the comedian brims with pep in Pixar's animated film "Inside Out" as Joy, an emotion living inside an 11-year-old girl named Riley.

When Riley moves to a new city, Joy teams up with Sadness to boost Riley's well-being.

Ahead of the film's Friday debut, Poehler, 43, said "Inside Out" let her cultivate her comedic talent. Below are interview excerpts.

Q: How did you develop a character out of an abstract idea?

A: When you're doing any kind of comedic performance, you have to figure out what are the rules of this character? Joy has very specific rules: Keep going, stay positive, stay in the moment, don't overthink it. She does that because she has fear that things are going to turn sad. It was fun to play a character that had an arc. Suddenly Joy's crying halfway through the movie.

Pixar does a great job in always not condescending to their audience. They don't make "kids movies." I love their brave attempt to go in, when a lot of movies these days are about external disasters and fabricated bad guys. Pixar decided … we're going to make the setting an 11-year-old girl.

Q: What did you enjoy from the experience?

A: Pixar is the gold standard. It's like any project, though … Does the project come from an authentic place? Is there a person with a really specific voice at the helm? Are you working with talented people who like to collaborate? All those boxes were checked.

Q: What's the connection to Smart Girls, your website and video series that emphasize women's empowerment?

A: Smart Girls is a sneaky attempt to be an antidote to some of the other stuff kids are watching. It's just funny, original content … that celebrates that great age in a young girl's life right before she's been confused by all the wonderful things puberty has to offer. It's celebrating this person who's just learning to be herself. As an adult, Smart Girls, for me, is an attempt to get back to that. "Inside Out" is trying to do that too.

Q: Is there anything you wish you had been asked?

A: I don't think enough people have asked me if they think I might be up for a Grammy for the "Bing Bong" song! I'm hoping that I'll be submitted for Best Live Vocal Performance in an Animated Film about Personified Emotions.

DNA May Help Track Ivory Poachers

DNA evidence retrieved from elephant dung, tissue and hair can help identify the origins of illegal ivory, a new study finds. Researchers at the University of Washington and Interpol developed a method to extract DNA from samples of ivory, and compared the gene sequences with those obtained from dung and tissue samples.

More than 85 percent of the forest elephant ivory seized between 2006 and 2014 came from elephants in northeast Gabon, the northwest of the Republic of Congo, southeast Cameroon, and an adjacent reserve in the southwest of the Central African Republic.

The researchers found that more than 85 percent of the savanna elephant ivory seized between 2006 and 2014 came from elephants in East Africa. The findings could help target poachers: About 50,000 African elephants are killed each year, and the animals are at risk of extinction.

Toddlers Have Sense of Justice, Study Shows

Children as young as age 3 will intervene on behalf of a victim, reacting as if victimized themselves, scientists have found.

With toys, cookies and puppets, Keith Jensen, a psychologist at the University of Manchester in England, and his colleagues tried to judge how much concern 3- and 5-year-olds had for others, and whether they had a sense of so-called restorative justice.

In one experiment, when one puppet took toys or cookies from another puppet, children responded by pulling a string that locked the objects in an inaccessible cave. When puppets took objects directly from the children themselves, they responded in the same way.

“The children treated these two violations equally,” said Dr. Jensen, a co-author of the study published in the journal Current Biology.

In another experiment, when an object was lost or stolen, children tried to right the wrong by returning the object to the puppet it belonged to.

“Their sense of justice is victim-focused rather than perpetrator focused,” Dr. Jensen said. “The take-home message is that preschool children are sensitive to harm to others, and given a choice would rather restore things to help the victim than punish the perpetrator.”

An Ant with the Right Coat for the 158-degree weather

Silver ants of the Sahara leave their underground nests for only 10 to 20 minutes a day, and they do it when the heat is peaking. The surface temperature can reach 158 degrees Fahrenheit.

The ant, just three-eighths of an inch long, survives because of a unique coat of hair that covers its body and cools it, researchers report in the journal Science.

The hairs, laid out in triangular cross sections, are highly reflective under visible and near-infrared light. The researchers also discovered that in the mid-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the hairs dissipate heat through thermal radiation.

A Sahara Silver Ant. A unique coat of hair covers silver ants of the Sahara and keeps them cool, a discovery with potential practical applications for humans.

The hairs are critical to the ants’ survival, said Nanfang Yu, a physicist at Columbia University and one of the study’s authors.

“That hottest moment of the day is when they can find the largest quantity of dead insects,” Dr. Yu said. “Just a bit later, and those insects may be blown away by the wind or buried by the sand.”

In the extreme heat, the ants also can avoid predatory lizards.

The hair on the ants may inspire the development of paints and other materials that can be applied to cars or rooftops, Dr. Yu said.