News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Reproducibility is a major challenge in experimental biology. New research publishing Nov. 12 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Shir Mandelbaum, Zohar Manber, Orna Elroy-Stein, and Ran Elkon from Tel Aviv University, identifies a frequent technical bias in data generated by RNA-seq technology, which allows in a single test the simultaneous measurement of the expression level of all the genes in a given sample. This bias recurrently leads to false results.

In research that validates what many parents and educators suspect, students whose grades are below average could boost their exam results if they devoted less time to Facebook and other social networking sites.

Researchers at EPFL have developed a novel way of predicting lightning strikes to the nearest 10 to 30 minutes and within a radius of 30 kilometers. The system uses a combination of standard data from weather stations and artificial intelligence.

MIT engineers have developed a robot designed to extend a chain-like appendage flexible enough to twist and turn in any necessary configuration, yet rigid enough to support heavy loads or apply torque to assemble parts in tight spaces. When the task is complete, the robot can retract the appendage and extend it again, at a different length and shape, to suit the next task.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are getting smarter with the help of an international team of researchers. They developed a way for multiple UAVS to fall into formation while still automatically controlling their own flight needs, just like the drones used by the villain portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal in the 2019 Spiderman movie. They published their results in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica.

Computational methods used to fill in missing pixels in low-quality images or video also can help scientists provide missing information for how DNA is organized in the cell, computational biologists at Carnegie Mellon University have shown. Filling in this missing information will make it possible to more readily study the 3D structure of chromosomes and, in particular, subcompartments that may play a crucial role in both disease formation and determining cell functions.