Landscape Evolution Observatory
This summer Biosphere 2, the glassed-in ecosystem in the Arizona desert, will go with the flow. The largest-ever experiment to study how water moves through the landscape is set to start there next month.
“Chemical weathering is the first thing you need in order to form a habitable planet,” says Jean Dixon, a geomorphologist at Montana State University in Bozeman. But the process is still not well understood.
Image credit: Gordon Parks/Getty
Every potential virtuoso needs a mentor. It just so happens that this one is a computer.
If your phone buzzed right now, would it distract you from reading this? Of course, it would, because switching between tasks takes mental energy. Julien Epps at the University of New South Wales, Australia, wants to help us handle those distractions.
Epps is building a wearable system that tracks human movements to understand what task you’re doing, how difficult it is, and when you switch to something else. His goal is to help us control our multitasking lives.
Petra Herbert/Plainpicture
EVER tried to answer a smartphone with your hands full? Try your foot instead. KickSoul is an insole that you can slip inside shoes to control digital devices with a flick of your foot.
Xavier Benavides and his team at the MIT Media Lab sewed a gyroscope and accelerometer between two layers of spongy insole.
A start-up is developing underwater drones to map the seas.
THE planet’s surface is more than 70 per cent water. Yet we know more about the moon than we do about what’s going on in the deep oceans. A Massachusetts start-up has a ball-sized robot it wants to fix that.
Meet EVE – the Ellipsoidal Vehicle for Exploration – a sensor-studded yellow robot the shape of a pumpkin.
Anna Nowogrodzki, science writer 