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... 

The cemetery in Bavaria, Germany (A). The skeleton of a victim of the Plague of Justinian (C). Objects (E) from the grave (B) that helped scientists to estimate the plague victim’s death as occurring between 525 AD and 550 AD. A tooth from which the genome of the plague was extracted (D). Scientists have reconstructed the genome of the first recorded bubonic plague and compared it to two later pandemics....