Heavy rainfall ends prolonged drought in Southern Plains

The rooms at Crappie King Cabins near northwestern Oklahoma's Canton Lake were mostly empty when much of the state and the rest of the Southern Plains were in the grip of a prolonged, withering drought that sent lake levels plummeting.

* This article was originally published here

It's dog eat dog on the canine social ladder

Climbing the social ladder is a ruff business for dogs, new research shows.

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Barbara now a major hurricane on NASA satellite imagery

NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean after Tropical Storm Barbara strengthened into the first hurricane of the season. Barbara intensified rapidly into a major hurricane.

* This article was originally published here

Teaching artificial intelligence to create visuals with more common sense

Today's smartphones often use artificial intelligence (AI) to help make the photos we take crisper and clearer. But what if these AI tools could be used to create entire scenes from scratch?

* This article was originally published here

Robot arm tastes with engineered bacteria

A robotic gripping arm that uses engineered bacteria to "taste" for a specific chemical has been developed by engineers at the University of California, Davis, and Carnegie Mellon University. The gripper is a proof-of-concept for biologically-based soft robotics.

* This article was originally published here

Smart materials provide real-time insight into wearers' emotions

Smart wearable technology that changes colour, heats up, squeezes or vibrates as your emotions are heightened has the potential to help people with affective disorders better control their feelings.

* This article was originally published here

A bio-inspired flow-sensing cupula for submersible robotics

Nature can be a precious source of inspiration for researchers developing robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Studies in submersible robotics, for instance, have often tried to replicate or incorporate mechanisms observed in aquatic life, such as fish locomotion patterns and shark skin textures.

* This article was originally published here

The world needs a global agenda for sand

What links the building you live in, the glass you drink from and the computer you work on? The answer is smaller than you think and is something we are rapidly running out of: sand.

* This article was originally published here