All posts tagged: Fly

Transformative new robot that can fly, sail, and swim autonomously

Transformative new robot that can fly, sail, and swim autonomously

Published by Jenni Sidey

Bio-inspired robots are a dime a dozen these days, with machines mimicking everything from  bats and beetles to long-extinct sea creatures. But making the absolute most effective robot for certain niche scenarios like remote ocean monitoring during storms requires going one step beyond what nature offers.  With this in mind, researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design recently engineered a kind of multi-formed chimera robot that can be dropped from high in the sky, spin its outstretched “wings” to slow itself down, land on water, and then seamlessly morph into a sailboat with a fish-like backup rudder. Once afloat, the sensing robot (part maple seed, part swan, part fish) can navigate autonomously for several hours. The result is a machine that uses biology less like a strict blueprint and more as a garage full of useful, interchangeable part, according to in a study published today in the journal Science Robotics, The team calls their creation ALBATROSS, short for Airborne Lander with Buoyant AuToROtating Sailing Sensor. “Individual mechanisms can be borrowed, recombined, and engineered …

Fixing Remote Work Behaviors That Wouldn’t Fly In Person

Fixing Remote Work Behaviors That Wouldn’t Fly In Person

Published by Jenni Sidey

Remote work was sold as the ultimate escape from the annoyances of sharing a physical space with other people during working hours. No more micromanagers hovering over your shoulder, and no more exhausting watercooler gossip. But there is a dark side to remote work. Remote environments have not cured counterproductive behavior, and they have stripped away some of the social guardrails that keep malicious and destructive colleagues in check. Although a screen makes it easy to temporarily dodge a destructive coworker, avoiding the person also means avoiding the confrontation required to stop them. This has the potential to create an accountability vacuum. Rather than being challenged or corrected, manipulative people can get away with far more when they can hide behind their screens. The Virtual Weaponization of Rudeness In a physical meeting room, human behavior tends to be kept reasonably civil by a shared sensory environment. Bad manners carry an immediate, painful social cost. If a colleague talks over you, ignores you, or rolls their eyes in a physical meeting room, the entire room sees …

Fruit fly sperm is enormous

Fruit fly sperm is enormous

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. They may have tiny bodies, but fruit flies produce giant sperm. Adult male Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies are about two millimeters long (roughly the size of a sesame seed) and their sperm can be just as long, with the sperm tails taking up most of that space.  In order to keep the thousands of sperm cells inside their bodies untangled, the insects use movement in an ingenious way. The sperm cells are organized into densely aligned groups that move by pushing off one another to keep themselves more taut. The more taut, the less likely it is that the tails will get tangled. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal Nature Physics. Fruit fly sperm are about 40 …

The Ankler ditches Substack to fly solo

The Ankler ditches Substack to fly solo

Published by Sam Flores

One of the biggest publishers on Substack – The Ankler – has ditched the newsletter-focused tech platform to run on its own in-house tech infrastructure. The Hollywood-based B2B brand, which covers the entertainment industry, has around 150,000 paid subscribers and around $10m per year in annual revenue. Substack takes a 10% share of publisher subscriptions sales, which looks like a good deal for smaller titles but is more expensive for larger ones. The simplicity of Substack, both in terms of front-end functionality and data available at the back end, also starts as a benefit for creators getting started but can hinder titles as they become more sophisticated. The Substack ‘network effect’ helps new titles grow but becomes less important once they have reached critical mass. Ankler chief executive Janice Min and editorial director Richard Rushfield (also co-founders) set out the changes in a letter to subscribers. They explained that Ankler Media has grown from a single email newsletter to a multi-platform operation with 18 full-time staff. It now publishes 15 newsletters, as well as podcasts, …

Tina, Milo and other merchandise fly off shelves, despite cost

Tina, Milo and other merchandise fly off shelves, despite cost

Published by Sam Flores

MILAN, Feb 11 : Five days into Olympic competition, soft toys Tina and Milo, the cheery stoats chosen as mascots for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, have sold out. Other Olympic merchandise is also in short supply, with fans having to try different stores to find their size. With even a souvenir T-shirt costing 40 euros ($47.50), some shoppers are questioning the high prices but queues are long at the main store in central Milan and merchandise is flying off the shelves. “The main thing that we were looking for was going to be a knitted sweatshirt, but it looks like it’s already out and it’s only available in little kid sizes,” said Rafael Arredondo and William Garcia, who are from Los Angeles and were heading to an ice hockey game. “It’s a little expensive but it seems fair like it’s kind of like the same prices that you would find at a concert or something like that,” they added. SALES SURGE AS GAMES GAIN PACE Since the Winter Games kicked off in earnest at …