Researchers have developed a flexible optical computing system capable of tackling problems beyond the reach of previous designs.

 - Researchers at Princeton engineering developed a math framework for construction of adjustable shells that snap into different configurations. Each configuration is stable — it can maintain its position and resist outside force without additional locking mechanisms. The method has applications in robotics, space exploration and construction.

- Shells, thin structures with a curved surface, are a highly efficient method for supporting loads over wide areas, like airplane wings. Shells exist in nature, as eggshells or skulls, in the built environment as bridges and machine parts, and in ancient buildings like the Roman Pantheon and the Hagia Sophia.

- Taking inspiration from curved-crease origami and concepts from differential geometry, the team developed guidelines for curved, multi-stable structures. Based on geometry, the work does not require specific shapes or exotic construction materials. The team built robots to explore the concept of snapping curved folds which can be controlled with magnetic fields, without needing any onboard motors or electronics.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization have compiled ten fundamental mechanisms governing the course of pandemics from various disciplines.

Movement is a central aspect of almost every animal’s survival, whether it relates to local exploration or global migration. Even more sophisticated behaviors, such as the collective interactions for which many types of ants are famous, are built upon the motion of the individual. As such, understanding this individual behavior is integral to piecing together the life and ecology of an animal. By recording how individual ants explore a laboratory environment, researchers have come up with a model for how these ants navigate based on stochastic physics. As one of the most rigorous descriptions of ant exploration behavior to date, this model allows researchers to explore how these ants might behave in new environments, and highlights how physics-based tools and models can be used to quantify and understand living systems.