A team of engineers from Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have developed an affordable self-assembling robot. The android is made of a sheet of composite paper, which has had different parts, including hinges, motors, batteries, and a microcontroller, installed upon it. Having been fitted with the batteries, the automaton starts to assume its designated form and launch into... 

The US space agency released a spectacular video detailing the testing of an interplanetary landing system, which is designed to place more massive payloads on the surface of Mars, as it hurtled toward Earth. In the cosmic quest to explore the surface of Mars, NASA is attempting to devise technologies that will allow it to deliver heavy payloads to the mysterious red planet. In June, NASA engineers,... 

A close up detail focusing on a smooth region on the “base” of the “body” section of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera and downloaded on August 6. Spelling an end to more than a decade of pursuit, European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta spacecraft has finally caught up with a comet in an unprecedented coup. The unmanned probe swung... 

Scientists follow the flight of the Rosetta spacecraft from the control centre of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Darmstadt, western Germany, on August 6, 2014. European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta spacecraft is set to ensconce itself in the orbit of a comet, it has been chasing for more than a decade. On Wednesday, the craft started the final engine burn that will take it into the orbit around... 

Coins shown from the Greek colony Akragas, Circa 409-406 B.C. A collection of ancient coins dating back to 500 B.C. are being returned to Greece after the New York prosecution of a prominent collector from Rhode Island. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. and Greek officials scheduled a ceremony today in New York marking the repatriation of the coins. The coins were part of a case against... 

A human-dependent android has been set on a hitchhiking trip across Canada in search for an answer to an uncanny query. Put together from household items, “hitchbot” started its journey on July 27 in Canada’s Atlantic port city of Halifax on a mission designed by McMaster University experts. The project aims to see if robots can trust humans, “hitchbot” needing to look to humans to help... 

A US space agency Mars rover that would launch in 2020 is to carry a device that will turn carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen. The oxygen thus created could then be used to make rocket fuel and for future astronauts to breathe, according to Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA. “The 2020 rover will help... 

The construction project of the world’s biggest telescope has officially begun at the summit of a mountain on the US island of Hawaii. Several countries including Japan, China, Canada and India are slated to collaborate with the United Stated in the project. The thirty Meter Telescope is going to be a reflecting one and will be built atop a 4,000 meter mountain, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. A... 

Scientists have begun installing mapping instruments on Mount St. Helens as means of mapping the volcano’s interior. The project, called Imaging Magma Under St. Helens, or iMUSH, would further acquaint scientists to the volcano’s internal workings. It intends to help improve warning systems prior to eruption. The mapping devices, which would scan the volcano’s interior upon installation, are... 

Experts have reported the discovery in southern China of the world’s yet-biggest aquatic insect, which has been found to be a giant dobsonfly. The specimen, discovered in China’s Sichuan Province, has been described as having long teeth and fearsome pincers. So far also spotted elsewhere in China, as well as in northern Vietnam, and India’s Assam state, the largest one of the insects has been... 

Having evaded scientists due to its large and complex nature for long, bread wheat’s genome has finally yielded to sequencing. The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, as the international team of scientists who have been working on the problem is known, rendered a genetic blueprint of the plant on Thursday. The discovery promises development of more resistant and productive bread wheat... 

Russian scientists conducted a primary examination of the giant sinkhole in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District. The video of the bizarre hole on YouTube has received more than two million views in several days. As a result of the examination, the scientists concluded that the crater was of natural origin and did not appear either as a result of a manmade impact or the fall of a meteorite, the website... 

Russian cities that want to develop their public transit systems will soon have a stellar option to buy. A sleek new black streetcar looks like something Darth Vader would pilot in Star Wars and promises new levels of comfort and safety to commuters. The R1, or Russia One, was developed by a subsidiary of Uralvagonzavod, a company best known for producing advanced Russian tanks. The prototype streetcar,... 

Scientists have created images of ultrahigh resolution by applying electrical current to phase-change material. To do so, the Oxford University researchers placed a layer of the material, which can switch between amorphous and crystalline state, between two transparent electrodes. The images thus produced feature pixels just 300 nanometers across and are smaller than the width of a human hair. Lead... 

The Indiana State Department of Health has been collecting babies’ blood and DNA without their parents’ permission since 1991, according to an investigation by a local news station. Now the state wants to know what to do with the blood samples. When a baby is born in Indiana, as with other states, the state conducts a newborn screening test. A nurse or midwife takes a few drops of blood from the...