Paleontologists arent easily deterred by evolutionary dead ends or a sparse fossil record. But in the last few years, theyve developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them. In the absence of a living specimen, scientists say, an ambling, flying, swimming, or slithering automaton is the next best thing for studying the behavior of extinct organisms. Learning more about how they moved can in turn shed light on aspects of their lives, such as their historic ranges and feeding habits.Digital models already do a decent job of predicting animal biomechanics, but modeling complex environments like uneven surfaces, loose terrain, and turbulent water is challenging. With a robot, scientists can simply sit back and watch its behavior in different environments. We can look at its performance without having to think of every detail, [as] in the simulation, says John Nyakatura, an evolutionary biologist at Humboldt University in Berlin.The union of paleontology and robots has its roots in the more established field of bio-inspired robotics, in which scientists fashion robots based on modern animals. Paleo-roboticists, however, face the added complication of designing robotic systems for which there is no living reference. They work around this limitation by abstracting from the next best option, such as a modern descendant or an incomplete fossil record. To help make sure theyre on the right track, they might try to derive general features from modern fauna that radiated from a common ancestor on the evolutionary tree. Or they might turn to good ol physics to home in on the most plausible ways an animal moved. Biology might have changed over millions of years; the fundamental laws of nature, not so much.Modern technological advances are pulling paleo-inspired robotics into a golden age. Computer-aided design and leading-edge fabrication techniques such as 3D printing allow researchers to rapidly churn out prototypes. New materials expand the avenues for motion control in an automaton. And improved 3D imaging technology has enabled researchers to digitize fossils with unprecedented detail.All this helps paleo-roboticists spin up more realistic robotsones that can better attain the fluid motion associated with living, breathing animals, as opposed to the stilted movements seen in older generations of robots. Now, researchers are moving closer to studying the kinds of behavioral questions that can be investigated only by bringing extinct animals back to lifeor something like it. We really think that this is such an underexplored area for robotics to really contribute to science, says Michael Ishida, a roboticist at Cambridge University in the UK who penneda review studyon the field.Here are four examples of robots that are shedding light on creatures of yore.The OroBotIn the late 2010s, John Nyakatura was working to study the gait of an extinct creature called Orobates pabsti. The four-limbed animal, which prowled Earth 280 million years ago, is largely a mysteryit dates to a time before mammals and reptiles developed and was in fact related to the last common ancestor of the two groups. A breakthrough came when Nyakatura met a roboticist who had built an automaton that was inspired by a modern tetrapoda salamander. The relationship started the way many serendipitous collaborations do: We just talked over beer, Nyakatura says. The team adapted the existing robot blueprint, with the paleontologists feeding the anatomical specs of the fossil to the roboticists to build on. The researchers christened their brainchild OroBot.Fossilized footprints, and features like step length and foot rotation, offer clues to how tetrapods walked.A fossilized skeleton of Orobates pabsti, a four-limbed creature that lived some 280 million years ago.OroBots proportions are informed by CT scans of fossils. The researchers used off-the-shelf parts to assemble the automaton. The large sizes of standard actuators, devices that convert energy into motion, meant they had to scale up OroBot to about one and a half yards (1.4 meters) in length, twice the size of the original. They also equipped the bot with flexible pads for tread instead of anatomically accurate feet. Feet are complex bodily structures that are a nightmare to replicate: They have a wide range of motion and lots of connective soft tissue.A top view of OroBot executing a waddle.ALESSANDRO CRESPI/EPFL LAUSANNEThanks to the teams creative shortcut, OroBot looks as if its tromping in flip-flops. But the robots designers took pains to get other details just so, including its 3D-printed faux bones, which were painted a ruddy color and given an osseous texture to more closely mimic the original fossil. It was a scientifically unnecessary design choice, but a labor of love. You can tell that the engineers really liked this robot, Nyakatura said. They really fell in love with it.Once OroBot was complete, Nyakaturas team put it on a treadmill to see how it walked. After measuring the robots energy consumption, its stability in motion, and the similarity of its tracks to fossilized footprints, the researchers concluded that Orobates probably sashayed like a modern caiman, the significantly punier cousin of the crocodile. We think we found evidence for this more advanced terrestrial locomotion, some 50 million years earlier than previously expected, Nyakatura says. This changes our concept of how early tetrapod evolution took place.Robotic ammonitesAmmonites were shell-toting cephalopodsthe animal class that encompasses modern squids and octopusesthat lived during the age of the dinosaurs. The only surviving ammonite lineage today is the nautilus. Fossils of ammonites, though, are abundant, which means there are plenty of good references for researchers interested in studying their shellsand building robotic models.An illustration of anammonite shell cut in half.PETERMAN, D.J., RITTERBUSH, K.A., CIAMPAGLIO, C.N., JOHNSON, E.H., INOUE, S., MIKAMI, T., AND LINN, T.J. 2021. BUOYANCY CONTROL IN AMMONOID CEPHALOPODS REFINED BY COMPLEX INTERNAL SHELL ARCHITECTURE. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 11:90When David Peterman, an evolutionary biomechanist, was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah from 2020 to 2022, he wanted to study how the structures of different ammonite shells influenced the underwater movement of their owners. More simply put, he wanted to confirm whether or not [the ammonites] were capable of swimming, he says. From the fossils alone, its not apparent how these ammonites fared in aquatic environmentswhether they wobbled out of control, moved sluggishly, or zipped around with ease. Peterman needed to build a robot to find out.A peek at the internal arrangement of the ammonite robots, which span about half a foot in diameter.PETERMAN, D.J., AND RITTERBUSH, K.A. 2022. RESURRECTING EXTINCT CEPHALOPODS WITH BIOMIMETIC ROBOTS TO EXPLORE HYDRODYNAMIC STABILITY, MANEUVERABILITY, AND PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS ON LIFE HABITS. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 12: 11287Its straightforward to copy the shell size and shape from the fossils, but the real test comes when the robot hits the water. Mass distribution is everything; an unbalanced creature will flop and bob around. To avoid that problem, Peterman added internal counterweights to compensate for a battery here or the jet thruster there. At the same time, he had to account for the total mass to achieve neutral buoyancy, so that in the water the robot neither floated nor sank.A 3D-printed ammonite robot gets ready to hit the water for a drag race. We were getting paid to go play with robots and swim in the middle of a work day, Peterman says. It was a lot of fun.DAVID PETERMANThen came the fun partrobots of different shell sizes ran drag races in the universitys Olympic-sized swimming pool, drawing the curiosity of other gym-goers. What Peterman found was that the shells had to strike a tricky balance of stability and maneuverability. There was no one best structure, the team concluded. Narrower shells were stabler and could slice through the water while staying upright. Conches that were wider were nimbler, but ammonites would need more energy to maintain their verticality. The shell an ancient ammonite adopted was the one that suited or eventually shaped its particular lifestyle and swimming form.This bichir-inspired robot looks nothing like a bichir, with only a segmented frame (in black) that allows it to writhe and flap like the fish. The researchers gradually tweak the robots features, on the hunt for the minimum physiology an ancient fish would need in order to walk on land for the first time.MICHAEL ISHIDA, FIDJI BERIO, VALENTINA DI SANTO, NEIL H. SHUBIN AND FUMIYA IIDARobofishWhat if roboticists have no fossil reference? This was the conundrum faced by Michael Ishidas team, who wanted to better understand how ancient marine animals first moved from sea to land nearly 400 million years ago and learned to walk.Lacking transitional fossils, the researchers looked to modern ambulatory fishes. A whole variety of gaits are on display among these scaly strollersthe four-finned crawl of the epaulette shark, the terrestrial butterfly stroke of a mudskipper. Like the converging roads in Rome, multiple ancient fishes had independently arrived at different ways of walking. Ishidas group decided to focus on one particular gait: the half step, half slither of the bichir Polypterus senegalus.Admittedly, the teams robofish looks nothing like the still-extant bichir. The body consists of rigid segments instead of a soft, flexible polymer. Its a drastically watered-down version, because the team is hunting for the minimum set of features and movements that might allow a fishlike creature to push forward with its appendages. Minimum is a tricky word, Ishida says. But robotic experiments can help rule out the physically implausible: We can at least have some evidence to say, yes, with this particular bone structure, or with this particular joint morphology, [a fish] was probably able to walk on land. Starting with the build of a modern fish, the team simplified the robot further and further until it could no longer sally forth. It was the equivalent of working backwards in the evolutionary timeline.The team hopes to publish its results in a journal sometime soon. Even in the rush to finalize the manuscript, Ishida still recognizes how fortunate he is to be doing something thats simultaneously futuristic and prehistoric. Its every kids dream to build robots and to study dinosaurs, he says. Every day, he gets to do both.The RhombotNearly 450 million years ago, an echinoderm with the build of an oversize sperm lumbered across the seafloor. The lineage of that creature, the pleurocystitid, has long since been snuffed out, but evidence of its existence lies frozen among numerous fossils. How it moved, though, is anyones guess, for no modern-day animal resembles this bulbous critter.A fossil of a pleurocystitid, an extinct aquatic animal that lived some 450 million years ago.CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITYCarmel Majidi, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, was already building robots in the likeness of starfish and other modern-day echinoderms. Then his team decided to apply the same skills to study their pleurocystitid predecessor to untangle the mystery of its movement.CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITYMajidis team borrowed a trick from previous efforts to build soft robots. The main challenge for us was to incorporate actuation in the organism, he says. The stem, or tail, needed to be pliable yet go rigid on command, like actual muscle. Embedding premade motors, which are usually made of stiff material, in the tail wouldnt work. In the end, Majidis team fashioned the appendage out of shape-memory alloy, a kind of metal that deforms or keeps its shape, depending on the temperature. By delivering localized heating along the tail through electrical stimulation, the scientists could get it to bend and flick.The researchers tested the effects of different stems, or tails, on their robots overall movement.CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITYBoth Majidis resulting Rhombot and computer simulations, published in 2023, showed that pleurocystitids likely beat their tails from side to side in a sweeping fashion to propel themselves forward, and their speeds depended on the tail stiffness and body angle. The team found that having a longer stemup to two-thirds of a foot longwas advantageous, adding speed without incurring higher energy costs. Indeed, the fossil record confirms this evolutionary trend. In the future, the researchers plan to test out Rhombot on even more surface textures, such as muddy terrain. Shi En Kim is a freelance science writer based in Washington, DC.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"Originally posted on 6 January 2025. Scroll down for details of the Paint System 1.2.1 update.Artist and tools developer Tawan Sunflower has released Paint System, a free add-on that turn[s] Blender into Photoshop.The tool implements Photoshop-style layer painting in the open-source 3D software, enabling users to create non-photorealistic textures by painting directly onto 3D objects.A promising free add-on for painting non-photorealistic textures in BlenderTawan Sunflower describes Paint System as a simple but flexible painting system for non-photo-realistic-rendering in Blender in the video above, he describes it as inspired by the painterly look of Netflix animated series Arcane.It enables users to paint directly onto the surface of 3D geometry, using a range of preset brushes: the add-on supports the brushes included in Blenders Essentials asset library.Painting is layer-based, supporting layer opacity, layer clipping, and as of Paint System 1.1.6, the latest release Adjustment Layers.Supports a range of blending modes, including Erase Alpha for erasing parts of a modelPaint System also supports Photoshop-style layer blending modes, including Hue, Saturation, Value, Multiply, Divide, Lighten and Darken: the full list is shown in this part of the demo video.However, one of the most eye-catching is Erase Alpha, which renders that part of the layer transparent, making it possible to erase parts of the object by painting over it, as shown above.Can also be used to paint other material channels, including normal mapsWeve covered other free Blender add-ons for layer-based texture painting on CG Channel before, including HAS Paint Layers and Ucupaint.Paint Systems selling point looks to be its ease of use: it has a simple, intuitive UI, and is designed to avoid users having to manipulate Blenders Shader Nodes.However, artists willing to dive into the node graph can generate an even wider range of results.By adjusting the connections between the node group Paint System creates the rest of a material network, users can paint texture channels other than surface color, including the normal map.Updated 12 February 2025: Tawan Sunflower has released Paint System 1.2.1.Its a sizeable update, adding shader layers, and the option to bake layered textures for export.Other features added in recent updates include automatic UV unwrapping, for texturing assets without UV maps, and the option to lock layer settings.Price and system requirementsPaint System is compatible with Blender 4.1+. Its a free download. The source code is available under a GPL v3 license.If you want to support Tawan Sunflowers work, you can back him on Patreon.Download free Blender non-photorealistic painting add-on Paint SystemHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

How to move forward when you face a wicked problemPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter4 min readJust now-- Were officially 11.6% of our way through 2025Issue #266: your responses to academias paper mill problem, 12x-ing humanity, and luckBy Harris SockelI have a simple piece of advice today, one that calms me down and is also something Carter Gibson learned after nine years as an internal community management strategist at Google: No matter how overwhelmed you feel, just do the next right thing.Work is ambiguous, Gibson writes. You are never going to have the full picture youre getting paid to make decisions and not mess up, but youll [inevitably] find yourself in a situation where you have to make a call. I imagine thats especially true at Google, with its ~182,000 employees spread across 200 cities. When I think about life as these short, immediate decisions I feel at ease. Same.Jake Hoban, founder and strategy consultant, echoes this advice in a story about wicked problems on Medium. These are problems that feel impossible to solve because you cant identify exactly whats wrong, or where might be the best place to start. If something feels intractable to you, or if you keep ruminating about it and arent sure where to begin, its a wicked problem. The term was coined by two philosophers and business theorists in the 60s. One hallmark of a wicked problem? Whenever you try to solve it, it gets worse. Wicked problems are:Hard to articulate clearly.Unprecedented.Not easily labeled solved or unsolved (often, the solution is more of a continuum than boolean).Irresponsive to testing, meaning you cant try to solve it through trial and error.Climate change is a wicked problem. Homelessness, healthcare reform, and pandemics are wicked problems. Most businesses have a wicked time landing on a strategy because doing so means understanding the complex, ever-shifting reality in which they operate.Also key to these problems? Every action you take to solve them changes the problem itself. Thats why, as Hoban writes, you cant think straight to a solution instead you have to get there gradually, one Next Right Thing at a time. Your thoughts on false academic papersYesterday, we sent a newsletter about the swarm of AI-generated papers overwhelming academia. Many of you responded thoughtfully here are a few replies that deepened our understanding.As an academic, albeit in a low-stakes field (literature), this is bloody terrifying. [] Peer reviewing should always be double-blind to prevent nepotism, but also reviewers should [also] be paid its hard work and essential work, but with how precarious many academics are right now, it is not possible to do extra/volunteer for unpaid labour. Journals roll in cash but expect free labour from all sides of academia the writers dont get paid (or have to pay to publish) and the reviewers dont get paid, but readers pay for access, either individually or through library subscriptions/universities. Its bonkers. Dr. Casey LawrenceI have been thinking about the crisis of academic science for quite a long time. Even when I was a researcher, it was becoming clear, now, alas, it is obvious. Modern science has turned into an institution that requires efficiency and extreme planning, which is practically unrealistic in the conditions of a scientific experiment and many find rather strange solutions. Zoia (Zoe) Chernova, MSI agree with your observation on the modern focus on quantity over quality in academic life. But your treatment of peer review strikes me as inaccurate (and maybe a little glib). I have worked for several academic journals in the social sciences and peer review in these settings is done blind. Identifying information is removed from all manuscripts and the names of reviewers are never shared with the authors. Reviewers are ethically obligated to avoid reviewing manuscripts if they think they can identify the author. I dont know about medical research maybe they use a different approach. Amanda Barusch Three of my open tabsValentines Day is Friday, and medievalist K. A. Laity reminds us of the holidays roots in medieval courtly love (extravagant gifts, chivalry, dramatic devotion). She quotes 31 Rules of Love from a 12th century text, most of which feel Valentines Day-coded to me. (Rule #4: It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.)There are around 8.2 billion people on Earth right now, and the U.S. Census Bureau projects well reach 10 billion by 2060. In a fascinating Medium story, Tomas Pueyo outlines a few hyperfuturist technologies human civilization will need to unlock as we grow: supertall residential skyscrapers, ocean desalination at scale (more people = more thirst), and underground farming labs.Karen Hill Anton reflects on the slang-ification of her name. It became a pejorative sometime in 2020, but the name has a beautiful Scandinavian lineage and means purity or innocence. Your daily dose of practical wisdomA study of salespeople revealed that simply believing in luck changes your behavior. Those who believe in it are better at their jobs. (Nir Eyal)

Relic Entertainment outlines new business strategyCEO Justin Dowdeswell clarifies that implementation of strategy will not involve staff cutsImage credit: Relic Entertainment News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Feb. 12, 2025 Relic Entertainment has begun implementing its new business strategy after it became independent from Sega in March 2024.Speaking to Game Developer, Relic CEO Justin Dowdeswell said the studio will focus on three areas: a commitment to existing games, working on "smaller-scope" titles, and revisiting older franchises via remasters, re-releases, or new projects.Dowdeswell clarified that the implementation of the strategy would not involve layoffs. Last April, an unspecified number of employees were made redundant following the Sega sale. A former employee suggested 41 people were affected by the decision."Our new approach allows us to service our business needs while being in a strong position to react to opportunities in the market," said Dowdeswell."We're looking to operate with smaller teams on shorter timeframes, which means getting a game [into the] market roughly in the one [to] two-year range. Budget costs will vary depending on scope, but these titles will have a notably smaller budget than the big Relic real-time strategy games we will continue to work on."He concluded: "By embracing independence and focusing on our core strengths, we are confident in our ability to deliver innovative, high-quality games that will resonate with players around the world."

Leaker Evan Blass has shared a set of spinning GIFs of Samsungs midrange Galaxy A56 that show the phone in four colors and a host of different angles. The Galaxy A56 is rumored to launch in March, right around the same time as rival devices from Apple and Google.The new animations from evleaks show the A56 in silver, pink, black, and a pale green. They show a phone with flat edges, a chunky display bezel thats thicker at the bottom, and a redesigned camera island that mounts the three lenses together with a black backing. The other things that stand out literally are the power and volume buttons, which now sit on an island that rises slightly out from the phones edge, rather than lying flush.Image: evleaksThis isnt the first time weve seen this design. Android Headlines shared renders showing a similar look in November 2024, and Samsungs own renders were found on Chinas TENAA certification site, so were confident that this is what the A56 will look like. As for the specs, were not quite as certain. An early Geekbench score believed to belong to the A56 suggests it will be powered by Samsungs own Exynos 1580 chipset. Certification leaks point to a 5,000mAh battery and 45W wired charging which would be a little surprising only because the flagship Galaxy S25 is still limited to slower 25W speeds. GalaxyClub reports that the rear cameras will be similar to the last two generations, with a 50 megapixel main shooter joined by a 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro, though the selfie camera is at least getting an upgrade to a new 12MP sensor.The Galaxy A56 is likely to arrive alongside more affordable A36 and A26 models. Samsung released the last four generations in mid-March, so thats when were expecting to see these phones too. The big question for the A56 is whether it will launch Stateside; we were mostly fans of the $449 Galaxy A54 two years ago, but the A55 skipped the US entirely.This year Samsung may want to ensure it has a presence in the US market. Apple is expected to announce a new version of its similarly priced iPhone SE either this week or next, and Googles midrange Pixel 9a has also been tipped for a March launch, months earlier than prior generations summer announcements.See More:

Many sci-fi fans place themselves in a particular camp of speculative fiction they gravitate towards, naming as their favorites popular sub-genres like time travel, space opera, or post-apocalyptic dystopias. But science fiction doesnt fit into such neat categories these days, and 2025 is about to prove how the imagination of authors in this genre never stop asking, What if?One book of 2025, in fact, that didnt quite make this list since its already out is from Africanfuturism pioneer Nnedi Okorafor. Her Death of the Author is definitely not to be missed as its arguably her best work in an already strong line-up. The very meta storyline follows a first-time Nigerian author whose science fiction debut brings her unexpected fame. But the notoriety comes with some serious soul-searching about who gets to assign meaning to a created world once its written. This book within a book must not be missed!That being said, we still have some fun space romps and, yes, even a bit of time travel on this list, so traditionalists need not fear. However, we challenge you to try some of the more bizarre stories teased below to broaden your horizons. After all, science fiction is all about making up new rules and seeing where things end up!Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne CollinsMarch 18, ScholasticMarch is a huge month for science fiction fans as more than half of our list hits bookshelves within the space of two weeks. For fans of The Hunger Games, the highly anticipated sequel to the prequel jumps forward a quarter century after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Sunrise on the Reaping follows the famous Haymitch Abernathy in his storied victory in the second quarter quell, in which twice as many tributes were taken from each district to participate in the deadly contest. To say fans are looking forward to this long-hinted-at tale would be an understatement.Murder by Memory by Olivia WaiteMarch 18, TordotcomThe HMS Fairweather is a luxury generation ship traveling through space with passengers enjoying endless lifetimes. New bodies are provided upon request and minds are carefully preserved in glass within the ships Library. But when ship detective Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isnt hers, shes thrust into a chilling mystery. A murder has occurred, but the crime goes beyond mere death: someone is erasing minds from the Library itself. Those who enjoy a little mystery with their sci-fi will also be happy to hear that Murder by Memory is only the first in a planned Dorothy Gentleman series.The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip FracassiMarch 18, OrbitIn any time travel tale, the rules are very important, but theyre invariably almost impossible to stick to without creating paradoxes. The Third Rule of Time Travel is very up front about these limitations: you can only travel to the past within your lifetime, you can only stay for ninety seconds, and you can only observe without interaction. The cleverness of the books title, however, is that the third rule comes into question as Beth Darlow tries to figure out how her and her dead husbands machine determines its arrival point in the past and whether the past truly cant be changed. The sci-fi premise encapsulates more of a horror thriller, as the grief that motivates the story might actually be tied to the invention of time travel itself.Space Brooms! by A. G. RodriguezMach 25, Angry RobotJust as Star Trek: Lower Decks reminded us that not all space adventures happen to the officers on the bridge, Space Brooms! centers on one of Kilgore Stations janitors, Johnny Gomez, whose spiteful boss has him cleaning zero-g toilets imagine the mess! But when Johnny finds an illicit data chit in the alien excrement, hes off on adventure with some unusual companions to try to change his fortunes. Can he sell the data and escape his humble life, or will the assassins and mobsters get the better of him? This space romp is not to be missed by those seeking lighter sci-fi fare.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John ScalziMarch 25, Tor BooksAnyone who has read Scalzis meta sci-fi classic Redshirts or the wildly comedic Starter Villain knows that this author is not above playing with the genres established mythos. When the Moon Hits Your Eye throws science out the window with a world in which Earths satellite suddenly and without warning turns into cheese. Multiple characters react to this impossibility throughout the novel, including students, preachers, politicians, and, of course, scientists. The absurd premise is more about enjoying the wildly varying perspectives of what ends up being a series of interconnected short stories.Overgrowth by Mira GrantMay 6, Tor NightfireLooking for a twist on the pod-person alien trope that tells the story from the perspective of an extra-terrestrial hiding in a human body? Anastasia Miller has made no secret of the fact that shes from another planet; its just that no one believes her. But the armada that left her on Earth is returning, and humanity will not be happy when they arrive. This novel somehow manages to bring humor and existential horror together in harmony, and the themes of metamorphosis will have a deeper meaning for some readers. Be on the lookout for a nod to Little Shop of Horrors as well!Automatic Noodle by Annalee NewitzAugust 5, TordotcomAnnalee Newitz of io9 fame is an amazing journalist-author who has always excelled at commenting on technologys impact on society. Automatic Noodle takes place in a future California after its civil war with America. An abandoned ghost kitchen is taken over by four food service bots and an unhoused human just trying to get by, but they must overcome a mysterious review-bomber to make it in the restaurant business. Its a low-key but heartfelt tale that will make you want to join the fight for robot rights and perhaps a bit hungry at the same time.September 23, Tor NightfireSarah Gailey deftly handles both fantasy (Magic for Liars is a personal favorite) and science fiction, not to mention comics, but the early buzz about Spread Me is tantalizing to say the least. Kinsey is a research scientist at a remote desert outpost that acts as the perfect escape from the vices of civilization, but a mysterious specimen unearthed from deep in the sand tempts her into breaking quarantine. The temptations here speak to themes of desire and shame and how life will always find a way, however horrific its proliferation.Talk about an intriguing premise!Honorable MentionsHonorable mentions must be given to a couple of sequels coming from Tor Books in 2025 as well. The first is The Martian Contingency, the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, in which author Mary Robinette Kowal takes her post-meteor strike humanity, led by protagonist Elma York, to the red planet. The post-apocalyptic adventure continues on the aformentioned popular date of March 18th.The other notable sequel is The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, which continues the Hugo and Nebula award nominated detective series known as The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti by Malka Ann Older. This ones more Pleiti-centered as she tries to help a cousin whose academic reputation has been besmirched while also try to navigate the rejection of her professional and personal partner, Mossa. This third installment comes out on June 10.Also be on the lookout for our review of the first novelization of the beloved Netflix animated series, Arcane. Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf, which will hit shelves on February 18th, explores the exploits of the Noxian general who made a nuisance of herself in the video game adaptations second season. A book about a TV show about a video game? Lets see if the lore can hold up!

On the eve of potential Apple product announcements, an interesting possibility has crossed my mindespecially regarding Fridays news.Mark Gurman reports that Apple will brief the press on an Apple Vision Pro update that day.Earlier, I speculated on three possibilities:1. M5 chip upgrade Though no M5 products have been announced, production is reportedly underway. Apple might debut it in Vision Pro, just as the M4 launched in the iPad Pro.2. Apple Intelligence support Vision Pro meets the RAM requirement, but all available memory may already be in use. A RAM upgrade could be in the works.3. PSVR controller support Gurman says this is coming, but its not exactly a game-changer.Now, I want to explore a fourth possibility: a price drop. Its the perfect Friday night news dump.Apple often justifies the $3,500 price as paying for tomorrows technology today. But Susan Prescotts recent comment for now, the price is what the price is may not just refer to a cheaper version in the future. Apple rarely cuts prices before launching new models, but Vision Pros cost is its biggest hurdle. Theres precedent, too: Apple slashed the first iPhones price by $200 just months after launch.Would Apple lower the Vision Pros $3,499 starting price enough to make a difference? Probably not, but any amount is a step in the right direction. It could also adjust pricing by doubling storage at current price tiers.Still, inventory isnt constrained, making even that uncertain.Regardless, Im holding onto my prediction: Apple Vision Pro will see some kind of price update on Friday. Speculative, but worth considering.Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Paleontologists arent easily deterred by evolutionary dead ends or a sparse fossil record. But in the last few years, theyve developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them. In the absence of a living specimen, scientists say, an ambling, flying, swimming, or slithering automaton is the next best thing for studying the behavior of extinct organisms. Learning more about how they moved can in turn shed light on aspects of their lives, such as their historic ranges and feeding habits. Digital models already do a decent job of predicting animal biomechanics, but modeling complex environments like uneven surfaces, loose terrain, and turbulent water is challenging. With a robot, scientists can simply sit back and watch its behavior in different environments. We can look at its performance without having to think of every detail, [as] in the simulation, says John Nyakatura, an evolutionary biologist at Humboldt University in Berlin. The union of paleontology and robots has its roots in the more established field of bio-inspired robotics, in which scientists fashion robots based on modern animals. Paleo-roboticists, however, face the added complication of designing robotic systems for which there is no living reference. They work around this limitation by abstracting from the next best option, such as a modern descendant or an incomplete fossil record. To help make sure theyre on the right track, they might try to derive general features from modern fauna that radiated from a common ancestor on the evolutionary tree. Or they might turn to good ol physics to home in on the most plausible ways an animal moved. Biology might have changed over millions of years; the fundamental laws of nature, not so much. Modern technological advances are pulling paleo-inspired robotics into a golden age. Computer-aided design and leading-edge fabrication techniques such as 3D printing allow researchers to rapidly churn out prototypes. New materials expand the avenues for motion control in an automaton. And improved 3D imaging technology has enabled researchers to digitize fossils with unprecedented detail. All this helps paleo-roboticists spin up more realistic robotsones that can better attain the fluid motion associated with living, breathing animals, as opposed to the stilted movements seen in older generations of robots. Now, researchers are moving closer to studying the kinds of behavioral questions that can be investigated only by bringing extinct animals back to lifeor something like it. We really think that this is such an underexplored area for robotics to really contribute to science, says Michael Ishida, a roboticist at Cambridge University in the UK who penneda review studyon the field. Here are four examples of robots that are shedding light on creatures of yore. The OroBot In the late 2010s, John Nyakatura was working to study the gait of an extinct creature called Orobates pabsti. The four-limbed animal, which prowled Earth 280 million years ago, is largely a mysteryit dates to a time before mammals and reptiles developed and was in fact related to the last common ancestor of the two groups. A breakthrough came when Nyakatura met a roboticist who had built an automaton that was inspired by a modern tetrapoda salamander. The relationship started the way many serendipitous collaborations do: We just talked over beer, Nyakatura says. The team adapted the existing robot blueprint, with the paleontologists feeding the anatomical specs of the fossil to the roboticists to build on. The researchers christened their brainchild OroBot. Fossilized footprints, and features like step length and foot rotation, offer clues to how tetrapods walked.SEBASTIAN VOIGT/URWELTMUSEUM GEOSKOP THALLICHTENBERG A fossilized skeleton of Orobates pabsti, a four-limbed creature that lived some 280 million years ago.THOMAS MARTENS/MUSEUM DER NATUR GOTHA OroBots proportions are informed by CT scans of fossils. The researchers used off-the-shelf parts to assemble the automaton. The large sizes of standard actuators, devices that convert energy into motion, meant they had to scale up OroBot to about one and a half yards (1.4 meters) in length, twice the size of the original. They also equipped the bot with flexible pads for tread instead of anatomically accurate feet. Feet are complex bodily structures that are a nightmare to replicate: They have a wide range of motion and lots of connective soft tissue. A top view of OroBot executing a waddle.ALESSANDRO CRESPI/EPFL LAUSANNE Thanks to the teams creative shortcut, OroBot looks as if its tromping in flip-flops. But the robots designers took pains to get other details just so, including its 3D-printed faux bones, which were painted a ruddy color and given an osseous texture to more closely mimic the original fossil. It was a scientifically unnecessary design choice, but a labor of love. You can tell that the engineers really liked this robot, Nyakatura said. They really fell in love with it. Once OroBot was complete, Nyakaturas team put it on a treadmill to see how it walked. After measuring the robots energy consumption, its stability in motion, and the similarity of its tracks to fossilized footprints, the researchers concluded that Orobates probably sashayed like a modern caiman, the significantly punier cousin of the crocodile. We think we found evidence for this more advanced terrestrial locomotion, some 50 million years earlier than previously expected, Nyakatura says. This changes our concept of how early tetrapod evolution took place. Robotic ammonites Ammonites were shell-toting cephalopodsthe animal class that encompasses modern squids and octopusesthat lived during the age of the dinosaurs. The only surviving ammonite lineage today is the nautilus. Fossils of ammonites, though, are abundant, which means there are plenty of good references for researchers interested in studying their shellsand building robotic models. An illustration of an ammonite shell cut in half.PETERMAN, D.J., RITTERBUSH, K.A., CIAMPAGLIO, C.N., JOHNSON, E.H., INOUE, S., MIKAMI, T., AND LINN, T.J. 2021. BUOYANCY CONTROL IN AMMONOID CEPHALOPODS REFINED BY COMPLEX INTERNAL SHELL ARCHITECTURE. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 11:90 When David Peterman, an evolutionary biomechanist, was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah from 2020 to 2022, he wanted to study how the structures of different ammonite shells influenced the underwater movement of their owners. More simply put, he wanted to confirm whether or not [the ammonites] were capable of swimming, he says. From the fossils alone, its not apparent how these ammonites fared in aquatic environmentswhether they wobbled out of control, moved sluggishly, or zipped around with ease. Peterman needed to build a robot to find out. A peek at the internal arrangement of the ammonite robots, which span about half a foot in diameter.PETERMAN, D.J., AND RITTERBUSH, K.A. 2022. RESURRECTING EXTINCT CEPHALOPODS WITH BIOMIMETIC ROBOTS TO EXPLORE HYDRODYNAMIC STABILITY, MANEUVERABILITY, AND PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS ON LIFE HABITS. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS 12: 11287 Its straightforward to copy the shell size and shape from the fossils, but the real test comes when the robot hits the water. Mass distribution is everything; an unbalanced creature will flop and bob around. To avoid that problem, Peterman added internal counterweights to compensate for a battery here or the jet thruster there. At the same time, he had to account for the total mass to achieve neutral buoyancy, so that in the water the robot neither floated nor sank. A 3D-printed ammonite robot gets ready to hit the water for a drag race. We were getting paid to go play with robots and swim in the middle of a work day, Peterman says. It was a lot of fun.DAVID PETERMAN Then came the fun partrobots of different shell sizes ran drag races in the universitys Olympic-sized swimming pool, drawing the curiosity of other gym-goers. What Peterman found was that the shells had to strike a tricky balance of stability and maneuverability. There was no one best structure, the team concluded. Narrower shells were stabler and could slice through the water while staying upright. Conches that were wider were nimbler, but ammonites would need more energy to maintain their verticality. The shell an ancient ammonite adopted was the one that suited or eventually shaped its particular lifestyle and swimming form. This bichir-inspired robot looks nothing like a bichir, with only a segmented frame (in black) that allows it to writhe and flap like the fish. The researchers gradually tweak the robots features, on the hunt for the minimum physiology an ancient fish would need in order to walk on land for the first time.MICHAEL ISHIDA, FIDJI BERIO, VALENTINA DI SANTO, NEIL H. SHUBIN AND FUMIYA IIDA Robofish What if roboticists have no fossil reference? This was the conundrum faced by Michael Ishidas team, who wanted to better understand how ancient marine animals first moved from sea to land nearly 400 million years ago and learned to walk. Lacking transitional fossils, the researchers looked to modern ambulatory fishes. A whole variety of gaits are on display among these scaly strollersthe four-finned crawl of the epaulette shark, the terrestrial butterfly stroke of a mudskipper. Like the converging roads in Rome, multiple ancient fishes had independently arrived at different ways of walking. Ishidas group decided to focus on one particular gait: the half step, half slither of the bichir Polypterus senegalus. Admittedly, the teams robofish looks nothing like the still-extant bichir. The body consists of rigid segments instead of a soft, flexible polymer. Its a drastically watered-down version, because the team is hunting for the minimum set of features and movements that might allow a fishlike creature to push forward with its appendages. Minimum is a tricky word, Ishida says. But robotic experiments can help rule out the physically implausible: We can at least have some evidence to say, yes, with this particular bone structure, or with this particular joint morphology, [a fish] was probably able to walk on land. Starting with the build of a modern fish, the team simplified the robot further and further until it could no longer sally forth. It was the equivalent of working backwards in the evolutionary timeline. The team hopes to publish its results in a journal sometime soon. Even in the rush to finalize the manuscript, Ishida still recognizes how fortunate he is to be doing something thats simultaneously futuristic and prehistoric. Its every kids dream to build robots and to study dinosaurs, he says. Every day, he gets to do both. The Rhombot Nearly 450 million years ago, an echinoderm with the build of an oversize sperm lumbered across the seafloor. The lineage of that creature, the pleurocystitid, has long since been snuffed out, but evidence of its existence lies frozen among numerous fossils. How it moved, though, is anyones guess, for no modern-day animal resembles this bulbous critter. A fossil of a pleurocystitid, an extinct aquatic animal that lived some 450 million years ago.CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY Carmel Majidi, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, was already building robots in the likeness of starfish and other modern-day echinoderms. Then his team decided to apply the same skills to study their pleurocystitid predecessor to untangle the mystery of its movement. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY Majidis team borrowed a trick from previous efforts to build soft robots. The main challenge for us was to incorporate actuation in the organism, he says. The stem, or tail, needed to be pliable yet go rigid on command, like actual muscle. Embedding premade motors, which are usually made of stiff material, in the tail wouldnt work. In the end, Majidis team fashioned the appendage out of shape-memory alloy, a kind of metal that deforms or keeps its shape, depending on the temperature. By delivering localized heating along the tail through electrical stimulation, the scientists could get it to bend and flick. The researchers tested the effects of different stems, or tails, on their robots overall movement.CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY Both Majidis resulting Rhombot and computer simulations, published in 2023, showed that pleurocystitids likely beat their tails from side to side in a sweeping fashion to propel themselves forward, and their speeds depended on the tail stiffness and body angle. The team found that having a longer stemup to two-thirds of a foot longwas advantageous, adding speed without incurring higher energy costs. Indeed, the fossil record confirms this evolutionary trend. In the future, the researchers plan to test out Rhombot on even more surface textures, such as muddy terrain. Shi En Kim is a freelance science writer based in Washington, DC.

Angela Rayner Source:&nbsp Shutterstock The deputy prime minister has announced a 350 million top-up to its affordable housing fund, adding to the 500 million pot already pledged in Octobers budget Most of the new funding 300 million will be used to boost the governments affordable homes programme.Ministers say this extra cash will fund 2,800 additional homes, including more than half for social rent, Sky News reports.Meanwhile, 50 million has been pledged to the local authority housing fund to pay for an expected 250 extra council homes.AdvertisementThe new funding announcement comes as Angela Rayner said she was determined to meet Labours manifesto commitment to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.The deputy prime minister and housing secretary said Labour must come good on its pledge to 'turn [the] tide' on the UK's housing shortfall, with more than 120,000 households in temporary accommodation and 1.3 million people on housing waiting lists. She added: We will meet that target because we can't afford not to.However, the extra funding has been met with cynicism from some parts of the industry.Housing association L&Q's chief executive Fiona Fletcher Smith told the Radio 4s Today programme this morning: I'm not going to say no to extra money. But her 300 million announcement, although fantastic, really doesnt touch the sides. To build the affordable housing we need in London, which is about 120,000 homes over five years, we need 54 billion.Housing charity Shelters chief executive, Polly Neate, described the funding boost as a promising start but insisted: The government must commit far more ambitious investment at the spending review in June.AdvertisementOnly truly bold action will tackle the housing emergency and end homelessness for good. Investing in building 90,000 social rent homes a year for 10 years would clear social housing waiting lists, boost jobs and help grow the economy.'And Local Government Association housing spokesperson Adam Hug agreed with Neate that the government must seize the opportunity of the upcoming spending review to ensure local government is equipped with the necessary resources to help deliver the homes communities need.Asked whether an extra 250 council houses was a big enough increase to meet demand, Rayner said: We think the measures were taking will unlock thousands more council and social homes as part of that programme.However, writing in the Mirror today (12 February), the deputy prime minister admitted that ending the UKs housing crisis will not be easy, explaining: We havent built enough homes for decades to meet demand and it will take time to turn this around.Last year, Rayner said she was determined to bring forward the biggest wave of council housing in a generation as part of Labour's pledge to build 1.5 million homes in its first five years in power a social housing drive unseen since the post-war years.In November, she announced major restrictions on the right to buy for new council homes, to prevent new homes from leaving the system once they are built.It was also announced that local authorities would get to keep all of the money they make from council house sales, rather than having to give a portion of the income to the Treasury.Local authorities or organisations given funding for housebuilding will be required to return the money if they do not fulfil their contracts, the AJ understands.2025-02-12Anna Highfieldcomment and share

What if the power and resources to make good homes were in the hands of our communities? What if you literally put the tools in peoples hands to design and make your own homes? asks WeCanMake founder Melissa Mean. For over a decade, community land trust WeCanMake has been doing exactly that, developing a bottom-up, community-led approach to gentle densification in Bristol that builds social infrastructure and community wealth.WeCanMake is pioneering a new approach to housing delivery on the Knowle West estate, an interwar housing estate of 5,000 homes in south Bristol. At its heart is an opt-in scheme whereby eligible social housing tenants gift a microsite from their garden to someone with a housing need to build a home in their back garden. The components for the houses are cut to size by local residents in a neighbourhood micro-factory equipped with laser cutters and 3D printers, then delivered to site for assembly.The project started small with two prototype single-storey affordable homes now complete, two in planning and two more in the pipeline. Mean estimates that this approach could be rolled out in similar neighbourhoods across the UK to deliver more than 30,000 homes with just a 3 per cent increase in density.In this episode, Mean also describes current work with Mikhail Riches to explore the spatial transformation of Knowle Wests three-bedroom one-bath homes into four-bed two-bath houses. This holistic approach makes retrofit a game-changer that transforms residents lives by simultaneously reducing overcrowding and improving comfort by addressing thermal performance and air quality. It also makes the hassle of retrofit much more appealing.Working with WaughThistleton, WeCanMake is now tackling larger sites such as small car parks and derelict garages and developing a kit of parts for low-rise buildings (below 11m). Mean describes the multiple challenges of obtaining approvals for the use of bio-based materials.Mean believes that staying small and collaborating has enabled WeCanMake to punch above its weight. She describes an ecosystem of similar community-led organisations delivering housing, including Civic Square and Maia Group in Birmingham, Nudge in Plymouth and Hastings Commons in Hastings (AJ Climate Champions episode #54).We lean into the power and the joy of small. Knowle West and other neighbourhoods like it, can be the future of housing, says Mean.To catch up on all episodes of AJ Climate Champions, click here.Find Climate Champions on your favourite podcast app: subscribe via Spotify,Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Deezerand PodbeanAbout Melissa MeanA former Demos associate with a background in public policy, Mean is a rare AJ Climate Champion who is not an architect. In 2020, Mean founded WeCanMake, a community interest company and community land trust, as part of Bristol-based arts and tech collective Knowle West Media Centre where she has worked since 2012. Her strategic policy background has enabled her to navigate the complexity of planning and financial barriers to housing delivery and develop a unique place-based approach.Five of WeCanMakes current 10-strong team are trained as architects, and WeCanMake continues to collaborate with an impressive roster of architectural practices.Resources mentioned in this episodeMikhail RichesWaugh Thistleton ArchitectsStudio Bark ArchitectsTransition by DesignKnox Bhavan ArchitectsCivic SquareMaia GroupNudge Community BuildersHastings CommonsRetrofit Reimagined Nationwide FoundationPower to ChangeHactSocial Value PortalWood Knowledge WalesAlliance for Sustainable Building ProductsNational Retrofit HubForestry Commission Timber Innovation ProgrammePrice MyersMcKinsey Global Institute industry digitization indexBlokBuildBOPAS (Buildoffsite Property Assurance Scheme)BBA AccreditationTrustMark LodgementTransforming HomesThe Design MuseumBath University Department of Architecture and Civil EngineeringKnowle West Media CentreCharlotte BiszewskiCreditsPodcast produced and edited by May RobsonMusic:Edmilson do Pfano, Forr de dois Amigos. Interpretation:Felipe Tanakae banda Balaio de Baio