Robot turning Japanese children into calligraphers

Nijiya Kurota's little hand grips a calligraphy brush dangling above a clean sheet of rice paper. The brush itself is being held dead straight, just as an expert who has spent years learning the art of "shodo"—Japanese ...

Lifelike wobble thanks to new software

The cartoon characters so loved by young and old audiences alike are becoming increasingly lifelike. In order for them to look realistic, animators invest a lot of time in making a fat belly wobble as naturally as possible ...

Artificial muscle contracts and expands with changes in humidity

(Phys.org) —A small plastic strip can do "weight training" to effortlessly lifts many times its own weight, driven by cyclic changes in the humidity of the surrounding air. This strong "artificial arm" is based on the interaction ...

NASA's Hubble sees a stranger in the crowd

The constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) is the largest of the Zodiac constellations, and the second largest overall after Hydra (The Water Snake). Its most appealing feature, however, is the sheer number of galaxies that ...

ARM chip makers set to reach 3GHz next year

(Phys.org) —ARM chip makers TSMC and GlobalFoundries have revealed that they plan to release ARM processor chips capable of running at 3GHz sometime next year. Such chips will almost certainly be welcomed with open arms ...

Touch to feel the virtual world (w/ Video)

Haptic technology, which simulates the sense of touch through tactile feedback mechanisms, has been described as "doing for the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision." Haptics are already common in devices ...

Exploring dinosaur growth

Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn have shown how one of the ...

Messier 61 looks straight into Hubble's camera

(Phys.org) —The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 61, also known as NGC 4303. The galaxy, located only 55 million light-years away from Earth, is roughly the size of ...

Earth's Milky Way neighborhood gets more respect

(Phys.org) —Our Solar System's Milky Way neighborhood just went upscale. We reside between two major spiral arms of our home galaxy, in a structure called the Local Arm. New research using the ultra-sharp radio vision of ...

Image: Hubble sees a swirl of star formation

(Phys.org) —This beautiful, glittering swirl is named, rather un-poetically, J125013.50+073441.5. A glowing haze of material seems to engulf the galaxy, stretching out into space in different directions and forming a fuzzy ...

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