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Have you ever wondered how insects are able to go so far beyond their home and still find their way? The answer to this question is not only relevant to biology but also to making the AI for tiny, autonomous robots. Drone-researchers felt inspired by biological findings on how ants visually recognize their environment and combine it with counting their steps in order to get safely back home. They have used these insights to create an insect-inspired autonomous navigation strategy for tiny, lightweight robots. It allows such robots to come back home after long trajectories, while requiring extremely little computation and memory (0.65 kiloByte per 100 m). In the future, tiny autonomous robots could find a wide range of uses, from monitoring stock in warehouses to finding gas leaks in industrial sites.

Researchers have developed soft, stretchable 'jelly batteries' that could be used for wearable devices or soft robotics, or even implanted in the brain to deliver drugs or treat conditions such as epilepsy.

Researchers have developed soft, stretchable 'jelly batteries' that could be used for wearable devices or soft robotics, or even implanted in the brain to deliver drugs or treat conditions such as epilepsy.

Researchers engineered a new technique to identify at the nanoscale level what components are overheating in electronics and causing their performance to fail.

Researchers engineered a new technique to identify at the nanoscale level what components are overheating in electronics and causing their performance to fail.

Prehistoric mammal bones found at a construction site in Argentina appear to have been cut with stone tools, suggesting that humans lived in the region much earlier than previously thought

Researchers combined hydrogel with magnetic ferrofluid to make small jellyfish robots that can complete an obstacle course when directed with light

Giving mice the blood-thinning drug heparin after they were injected with venom from two cobra species reduced their risk of tissue death, which can lead to amputations

Getting this delicious cooked ice-cream dessert right requires a little bit of science know-how to avoid a melted disaster, says Catherine de Lange

The extraordinary film Eternal You probes the power of "grief technologies" – boosted by AI – to generate credible simulations of the dead, says Simon Ings

Photographer Enrico Sacchetti captures the power and potential of ITER, an international nuclear fusion experiment currently under construction in southern France

From laughing gas and whipped cream to compressed air and bicycles, Mark Miodownik's new book It’s a Gas lives up to its title by revealing just how much science is woven into the everyday

Time travelling to the middle of the 21st century, Rowan Hooper discovers scientists have developed a method of shared dreaming. Here's how it changes the world

Feedback is amazed that researchers have split a single hair from end to end. They think it will help predict who will get split ends from colouring hair and similar treatments

In the era of climate change, France’s capital is prone to more frequent and extreme warmth. Staging the Olympic games there in the height of summer is wrong, says Madeleine Orr

Writer Naomi Klein unpacks her book Doppelganger about the "mirror world" of misinformation, conspiracy influencers and strange alt-right alliances

Governments must step up if we are to make good on Thermal Energy Storage's promise as a cheap and easy way to help tackle wind and solar power's intermittency problem

In an era when the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) images is at the fingertips of the masses, the ability to detect fake pictures -- particularly deepfakes of people -- is becoming increasingly important. So what if you could tell just by looking into someone's eyes? That's the compelling finding of new research which suggests that AI-generated fakes can be spotted by analyzing human eyes in the same way that astronomers study pictures of galaxies.

In an era when the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) images is at the fingertips of the masses, the ability to detect fake pictures -- particularly deepfakes of people -- is becoming increasingly important. So what if you could tell just by looking into someone's eyes? That's the compelling finding of new research which suggests that AI-generated fakes can be spotted by analyzing human eyes in the same way that astronomers study pictures of galaxies.

Australian engineers have unveiled a clever new device -- based on a modified speargun -- as a cheap and efficient way to test seabed soil when designing offshore wind farms.