Thanks to artificial intelligence, a pair of robot legs was taught how to walk on their own. Well, to be specific, thanks to reinforcement learning (the training technique that teaches AIs complex behavior via trial and error), Cassie learned to walk from scratch. The robot legs are also capable of walking in a crouch and while carrying a load. Unlike the viral robots from Boston Dynamics, Cassie can’t dance, as MIT Technology Review details: 

Reinforcement learning has been used to train bots to walk inside simulations before, but transferring that ability to the real world is hard. “Many of the videos that you see of virtual agents are not at all realistic,” says Chelsea Finn, an AI and robotics researcher at Stanford University, who was not involved in the work. Small differences between the simulated physical laws inside a virtual environment and the real physical laws outside it—such as how friction works between a robot’s feet and the ground—can lead to big failures when a robot tries to apply what it has learned. A heavy two-legged robot can lose balance and fall if its movements are even a tiny bit off.

The real Cassie was able to walk using the model learned in simulation without any extra fine-tuning. It could walk across rough and slippery terrain, carry unexpected loads, and recover from being pushed. During testing, Cassie also damaged two motors in its right leg but was able to adjust its movements to compensate. Finn thinks that this is exciting work. Edward Johns, who leads the Robot Learning Lab at Imperial College London agrees. “This is one of the most successful examples I have seen,” he says.

Image via MIT Technology Review

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama brings fun and vibrant colors to the New York Botanical Garden thanks to the exhibition, “Kusama: Cosmic Infinity.” Different kinds of exhibitions are now being unveiled at the garden after a one year delay. Kusama’s exhibit celebrates and reminds people that the city is still standing despite the struggles: 

Unlike her wildly popular museum exhibitions, where visitors queue for hours for the chance to spend 30 seconds inside one of Kusama’s mirrored “infinity rooms,” most of the art here can be experienced outdoors without long lines, making it ideal for the age of social distancing.

“It’s a refreshing experience since we don’t normally see art that way. You go from one gallery to the next,” curator Mika Yoshitake said at the exhibition’s press preview. “Kusama’s work really enhances the botanical landscape.”

The setting is a fitting one for the artist, who grew up in a seed nursery, and for whom flowers are a recurring motif.

Image via Artnet 

Talk about reusing trash items, right? Researchers have discovered a way to convert discarded tires into a strengthening material for concrete. The rubber from tires was turned into nanomaterial graphene, a strong carbon that can make concrete tougher and more sustainable. Anthropocene Magazine has the details: 

The team from Rice University and C-Crete Technologies in Stafford, TX decided to convert waste tires into graphene, which has been shown before to strengthen concrete.

They used a graphene-production technique developed at Rice called flash heating, which involves superheating carbon sources such as food waste or plastic with a jolt of electricity. The process removes everything else besides carbon atoms, which rearrange into graphene flakes.

The team found that rubber is harder to turn into graphene. So they used the black waste material that is leftover after tires have gone through a recycling process to extract oil. They could convert about 70 percent of this carbon black residue into graphene with flash heating.

Next, they added tiny amounts of this graphene to Portland cement and used it to make concrete cylinders. After seven days of curing, tests showed that the graphene-infused cylinders were 30 percent stronger than regular concrete.

Flash heating is an easy and inexpensive way to produce graphene from rubber tire waste that would otherwise be burned for fuel or disposed in landfills, the researchers write in the paper,

Image via Anthropocene Magazine

The wheel has been reinvented- literally. A group of scientists detailed their design for a new tire that can change its own structure. In a paper published in Science Robotics, the new conceptual wheel is an origami-inspired, shape-shifting tire that can switch between the more traditional tall-and-skinny shape to a short-and-fat form. Inverse has more details: 

The “high-load capacity origami transformable wheel” is not a catchy name, but the wheel uses something called the waterbomb tesselation origami pattern (which is an awesome name) to transition between small and large forms as it is being used.

Origami wheels similar to this one are not new, but these past designs weren’t very good at actually carrying loads during the transition process. A transforming wheel isn’t particularly useful to a driver if you first have to take all your gear off your rig to use it.

The new wheel, however, is capable of bearing more than 2,248 pounds in weight — even when transitioning between wheel shapes.

Image via Inverse 

After being discovered by a caretaker nine years after his death, the Norwegian police investigated. The man was found when the caretaker requested that the police open the apartment so he could do maintenance work. The police believe that the man died in 2011, and an autopsy showed that he died of natural causes: 

His pension was stopped in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him but his bills continued to be paid automatically from his bank account.

Oslo police inspector Grete Lien Metlid told NRK she and her colleagues had thought a lot about how somebody could have lain dead for so long without being missed.

“This is a special case and it has made us ask questions about how it could happen,” she told NRK. “Based on the picture we have, he was obviously a person who chose to have little contact with others.”

Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man would unlikely have lain dead undiscovered for nine years if he had died 30 years ago.

The failure of new technological systems to raise red flags when someone did not make physical contact was “the price we’ve paid for digital services”, he said.

Image via The Guardian 

White canvas sneakers are difficult to clean, especially if they’re past the point of being returned back to their pristine state. However, with the help of the father-daughter duo Miguel and Grace Showlorio, we can now get some tips on how to polish our old shoes into near-new condition. They scour local thrift stores for sneakers in need of some TLC and do their magic, posting their progress on TikTok and introducing themselves as shoe doctors. Check out GQ’s full piece on the Showlorios as they share some tips and most surprising sneaker transformations. 

image via GQ

The question is, how did they react? The Indiana Bell Telephone Company was able to add a second building beside its headquarters in Indianapolis by rotating it 90 degrees. The company was able to successfully rotate and erect the changes despite the fact that there were employees that were working in the building! Open Culture has more details: 

But between October 20th and November 14th, 1930, the company did indeed manage to turn and shift the entire structure as planned, “and the move caused no service outages, and all 600 workers within the building still reported to work every day.”

This necessitated lengthening and making flexible all its utility cables and pipes, then lifting it a quarter-inch with jacks and placing it on rollers. “Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the building three-eighths of an inch, moving it fifteen inches per hour.” As for Indiana Bell’s employees, they entered and left their slowly pivoting workplace “using a movable passenger walkway that moved with the building.” To Kurt Vonnegut Jr., then eight years old, all this must have been an impressive sight indeed.

The fastest record for beating the original Super Mario Bros. for the NES was previously four minutes and 55 seconds. This record has been unbeatable for two years, to the point that there are forum discussions about achieving a 4 minutes and 54 seconds run. The debates ended, as Twitch streamer Niftski managed to finish the game at 4:54:97, toppling the multiple 4:55 records in the speedrun records, as Polygon details: 

Theoretically, a faster time has always been possible. At least, that’s what tool-assisted speedruns, which can be written frame by frame, tell the experts. The question was whether or not an actual human could improve on what is already an extremely optimized run that requires pixel-perfect control. Already, a 4:55 time is nearly flawless compared to what a computer can achieve (4:54.26, for those keeping track.)

And now, in 2021, someone has. The new record, which is being called historic by the community, was achieved by Twitch streamer Niftski. Clocking in at 4:54:97, it is now the fastest anyone has beaten Super Mario Bros.

“This is insane,” Niftski said during the stream. “It hit me, but it hasn’t hit me fully.”

Now that the seemingly impossible has been achieved, the streamer ended his broadcast by announcing that he was developing new 2021 goals for the game.

Image via Gaming Age

The fabric looks like strokes of paint on a well-colored background. Thomas Jackson uses the wind as the main tool in his series of dreamy images, featuring multiple fabrics over Californian seascapes. Jackson picked nylon tulle for his artworks, as it is lightweight, flexible, highly durable, and can be used for multiple shoots: 

The series takes place primarily on the scenic shores of Point Reyes and Stinson Beach in northern California, near San Francisco. “The initial inspiration for the series was fire,” Jackson explains. “As a California resident living in a vulnerable area, the threat of fire and the resulting pollution became a constant preoccupation. Once I started shooting, however, the work took on a life of its own. Some of the installations ended up resembling fire, but others assumed more abstract, inscrutable forms. The wind, it turned out, is an unreliable artistic collaborator, and many of the shoots turned out completely different from what I initially envisioned. However, fire remains the guiding inspiration for this series as I go forward.”

Image via My Modern Met 

Not before she managed to break her own record, of course! Ayanna Williams beat her previous Guinness World Record of 18 ft and 10.9 inches before sawing her nails off with an electric rotary tool. The official measurement of her nails was 24 feet and Williams shared that she has been growing her nails for about 28 or 29 years, as People details:  

"I have mixed emotions about my babies going," she said about her nails, revealing she's been growing them for "about 28 [or] 29 years."

Williams continued, "I'm so, so ready for a new life. I know I'm going to miss them, but it's just about that time – it's time for them to go. I'm just about tired of them so it's time for them to go."

"With or without my nails, I will still be the queen. My nails don't make me, I make my nails!" she stated.

She also revealed her decision to cut her nails stemmed from difficulty doing daily tasks.

"With my movements, I have to be very, very careful. So usually in my mind, I'm already preparing for the next step that I have to do to make sure that I don't hurt myself with my nails - or break them," Williams revealed. "I'm excited about cutting my nails because I'm looking forward to new beginnings."

Image via People 

Rumors about a massive LEGO Harry Potter wizard chess set are flying around the Internet. Remember the rather violent version of regular chess depicted in the Harry Potter movies? According to Instagram user lego_fulcrum, set number 76391 will be based on the scene in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Harry, Ron, and Hermione play a dangerous game of wizard chess in order to get to the stone in time: 

If buying the recently released sets left you pretty broke, you should start saving up, because the same Instagram user reported that this new set will cost $249.99. If that’s really what the price tag’s going to be, it’s fair to assume that the set will include pretty much everything from that scene, so we can probably expect to get the entire chess set with its surroundings. New minifigures are not likely to be included here since the only characters present in this scene were the golden trio.

It would be pretty exciting if this rumor turns out to be true, but the LEGO Group hasn’t said anything about it yet, so for now, we’ll wait, but we’ll be the first to let you know if it gets confirmed.

Image via Brick Fanatics

Dozens of bald eagles were found paralyzed, convulsing, or dead in Arkansas 25 years ago. The brains of these eagles were marked with lesions and soon enough, other birds turned up pocked with the lesions found in these eagles. Years after the incident, researchers finally identified a novel neurotoxin produced by cyanobacteria and shows that it harms birds, fish, and invertebrates, as Science Magazine details: 

“This research is a very, very impressive piece of scientific detective work,” says microbiologist Susanna Wood of the Cawthron Institute. An unusual feature of the toxic molecule is the presence of bromine, which is scarce in lakes and rarely found in cyanobacteria. One possible explanation: the cyanobacteria produce the toxin from a bromide-containing herbicide that lake managers use to control the weed.

The discovery highlights the threat of toxic cyanobacteria that grow in sediment and on plants, Wood says, where routine water quality monitoring might miss them. The finding also equips researchers to survey lakes, wildlife, and other cyanobacteria for the new toxin. “It will be very useful,” says Judy Westrick, a chemist who studies cyanobacterial toxins at Wayne State University and was not involved in the new research. “I started jumping because I got so excited.”

Image via Science Magazine 

Experts and archaeologists have been stumped over finding the real meaning behind the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal, which are sculpted slabs of ancient alabaster that once adorned the walls of a royal palace in Upper Mesopotamia. The 7th-century BC gypsum panels that seem to display a narrative of the majestic might of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal as he slaughtered lions, is more than its surface narrative. A single piece of jewelry reveals the true meaning of these sculptures. Kelly Grovier explains the mystery behind the artwork for BBC. Check the full piece here. 

Image via BBC 

It’s possible to manipulate ourselves to be happy. You could get your favorite food or watch your favorite movie to get that dose of temporary serotonin, but experts claim that an appreciation for theoretical science and philosophy is the formula for maintaining that constant source of serotonin. In a new paper published in  Frontiers in Psychology, researchers were able to manipulate a series of neurological patterns that define happiness: 

Participants involved in the preceding analysis who demonstrated self-awareness, a base knowledge of the peaks and limitations of the human mind, and adopted an empathetic worldview, dually evidenced increased life satisfaction and emotional self-regulation.

This group additionally expressed significantly lower levels of anxiety, stress, negative thoughts, and anger.

“In recent decades, psychological research on the effects of mindfulness-based interventions has greatly developed and demonstrated a range of beneficial outcomes in a variety of populations and contexts,” the authors wrote in the new paper.

“Yet, the question of how to foster subjective well-being and happiness remains open. Here, we assessed the effectiveness of an integrated mental training program, The Art of Happiness on psychological well-being in a general population.

Reducing an emotional state to a consequence of cognitive and behavioral conditions–as opposed to a spiritual privilege, may make it easier to draft solutions during times of duress.

The authors acknowledge the enormous role mental illness plays in one’s overall stability while encouraging introspection alongside clinical resources.

“Although there is a consistent interest in scientific research on the general topic of happiness, such studies present several limitations. Firstly, most of the research has focused on clinical studies to assess the effectiveness of happiness-based interventions—in line with more traditional psychological research, which is primarily concerned with the study of mental disorders,” the authors continued.

image via The Ladders 

Researchers at the MIT CSAIL have developed smart clothes that are much more comfortable than the wearable tech that is available on the market right now. The smart clothes have ‘tactile electronics’ that can track body movements while remaining the soft, breathable apparel people prefer to wear everyday. Engadget has more details on the new development: 

The textiles are machine-knitted using both conventional material and piezoresistive fibers that react to pressure and hold arbitrary 3D shapes. Machine learning helps calibrate and correct the sensors so that they produce consistent output. Neural networks, meanwhile, turn sequences of raw input into more usable data "frames" and predict poses. The result is a system that can not only capture many points of data in an unintrusive way, but infer what you're doing without requiring sensors across your entire body.

The initial prototypes cover a wide range of possibilities. Gloves can detect what you touch, while socks can tell when you're squatting or standing on your tiptoes. A smart vest can recognize poses and even the texture of the couch you're sitting on. There's also a sleeve that reacts to pressure on your arm.

The tech is made using affordable materials and would be relatively easy to mass-produce.

CSAIL envisions a range of uses for humans. Athletes could record their postures and help rookies perfect their form. Assisted-care residents could get help sooner if there's signs they've taken a fall. However, the technology could even help robots — you could teach robots to mimic tasks, or give them a "skin" with the advanced sense of touch they normally lack. In other words, this could be helpful even if it doesn't become part of your wardrobe.

Image via Engadget