By watching their own motions with a camera, robots can teach themselves about the structure of their own bodies and how they move, a new study from researchers at Columbia Engineering now reveals. Equipped with this knowledge, the robots could not only plan their own actions, but also overcome damage to their bodies.

"Like humans learning to dance by watching their mirror reflection, robots now use raw video to build kinematic self-awareness," says study lead author Yuhang Hu, a doctoral student at the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, directed by Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. "Our goal is a robot that understands its own body, adapts to damage, and learns new skills without constant human programming."

Ethylene oxide is a “platform chemical” with a $40 billion annual worldwide market used in the production of plastics, textiles and many other common products. Tufts University chemists discovered an inexpensive way to reduce CO₂ emissions and decrease the need for chlorine to produce the chemical. 

esearchers at Purdue University have developed a computational solution to this problem named NuFold, which will model 3D RNA structures that could expedite medical discovery decades ahead of schedule. The research team, led by Daisuke Kihara, professor of biological sciences and computer science in the Purdue College of Science, published their findings in Nature Communications.

A new artificial intelligence model measures how fast a patient’s brain is aging and could be a powerful new tool for understanding, preventing and treating cognitive decline and dementia, according to USC researchers.

Ebru Demir, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, recently received funding through the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program for her research combining artificial microswimmers with machine learning to build Smart Artificial Microswimmers (SAMs). By embedding AI into centimeter-scale robotic swimmers and comparing their behavior with predictions from simulations, her project aims to uncover the underlying physics that govern their movement in complex fluid environments. 

Flooding remains the most destructive natural hazard in the United States, costing billions in damages annually, disrupting critical infrastructure and endangering lives. While urban areas often have access to substantial resources to tackle these challenges, rural communities face persistent barriers in mitigating flood risks. Recognizing these issues, Avantika Gori, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University, is leading an innovative project to close the gap. Together with Rice’s James Doss-Gollin, Andrew Juan at Texas A&M University and Keri Stephens at University of Texas at Austin, the team was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant under the CHIRRP program (Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet).

A new study reconstructing extreme rainfall in Arabia has uncovered that rainfall in the region was five times more extreme just 400 years ago, highlighting the need for preparedness amid growing urbanization.

A hybrid microscope, born at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), for the first time allows scientists to simultaneously image the full 3D orientation and position of an ensemble of molecules, such as labeled proteins inside cells. The research is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The microscope combines polarized fluorescence technology, a valuable tool for measuring the orientation of molecules, with a dual-view light sheet microscope (diSPIM), which excels at imaging along the depth (axial) axis of a sample.

In One Earth, scientists outline the urgency to better identify the significant damage sand extraction across the world heaps upon marine biodiversity.