Agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupations in the United States. Each year, vehicles, machinery, environmental hazards, and other incidents cause thousands of injuries and hundreds of fatalities. A thorough understanding of the main risks is key to preventing accidents and promoting agricultural safety. A research team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has developed an interactive platform that allows users to obtain customized information about agricultural injuries. The researchers describe their work in a new article.

A microscopic worm that has no kidneys is helping Rutgers scientists understand a genetic change suspected of causing a serious inherited kidney disease.

Roboticists at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and the University of Michigan have shown that elastic rods can be bent and twisted to repeatedly snap between shapes, releasing built-up energy that enables small robots to hop, flip and swim. The study, published in Science Advances, could offer a promising new approach to movement for robots constrained by size, weight and power output. The snapping mechanism could also help robots move across uneven terrain, on land and in water.