Smart News Ideas & Innovations

Team WPI-CMU’s robot climbs over cinder blocks during the finals of the DARPA Robotic Challenge

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Worried About the Robot Takeover? Here’s a Video of Robots Falling Over

It’s like humanoid robots have ended adolescence — awkward clumsiness abounds

Fear the claw. More often than no, claw machines are likely rigged for you to lose.

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Here's How Claw Machines Are Rigged to Make Sure You Lose

That's why simply grabbing a prize is so deceptively difficult

Though still in development, Google's Im2Calorie program can compute the number of calories in a glamor shot of your food.

Google is Trying to Count Calories in Food Porn

All you need is an Instagram photo and an algorithm

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Restaurants are Facing an Egg Shortage Thanks to Avian Flu

The outbreak, which spread surprisingly fast, hit farms that produce liquid eggs

New Research

This Computer Runs on Water

A new class of computers takes advantage of the physical properties of water

Cool Finds

How Non-stick Frying Pans Are Made

Spinning the pans helps coatings apply evenly and makes the process hypnotic

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Behind the Scenes at a Tyrannosaurus Rex Dissection

Months of work went into creating a model, life-sized dinosaur for experts to dismember and cut open

New Research

Researchers Are Training Robots Using Minecraft

The popular game helps robots learn real-world skills

Cool Finds

This is What it Looks Like When a GoPro Falls From Space

SpaceX put a camera in a payload fairing for its Falcon 9 rocket

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The Most Popular Eating Banana Might Soon Go Extinct

The Cavendish banana is succumbing to a disease that wiped out its predecessor

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An Oregon Town Tried (and Failed) to Scare Off Sea Lions With a Fake Orca

“Fake Willy" nearly drowned on its mission to drive sea lions out of Astoria, Oregon

The little blue pill is nothing like flibanserin, the sexual dysfunction drug for women recently approved by an FDA advisory committee.

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Stop Calling Flibanserin "Female Viagra"

As the FDA weighs the merits of a new drug to boost female libido, it's clear this is not a little blue pill for women

An artist’s concept of NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator

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NASA Will Launch a Flying Saucer Soon

Weather has kept the test vehicle, designed to land softly on Mars, grounded for the moment but the launch window is still open

Cool Finds

Japanese Elevators May Soon Have Toilets

Earthquake-trapped travelers could have access to running water in elevators

Cool Finds

How Bug Guts Slow Down Planes and What Engineers are Doing About it

Designing the most fuel-efficient plane means keeping wings free of sticky exploded bugs

Graphic design student Oskar Pernefeldt envisions a blue and white flag to symbolize Earth's presence on far off planets like Mars.

Does Planet Earth Need Its Own Flag?

Some think we need a universal flag to stake our claim in space

A prototype of the Predictor pregnancy test (left) and the test as it went to market in the late 1970s (right).

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This is What the First Home Pregnancy Test Looked Like

"Predictor" gave results in just two hours

Cool Finds

New ATMs in China Recognize Your Face

Facial-recognition cash machines were designed to cut down on fraud

Does washing your laundry in warm water really make that much of a difference? Probably not.

The Case for Washing Clothes in Cold Water

Laundry: You're doing it wrong

Every latrine has it's own unique smell.

These Perfumers Are Analyzing the Stench of Toilets

Fair warning: Toilet chemistry is not for the faint of stomach

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