Giant Freakin Robot

One of the most debated issues in human history has come to an astounding end. Wait, no, that was that other story. This one is about fetus yawning.

Nonetheless, scientists have disagreed upon the legitimacy of fetal mouth openings actually being yawns, and not just early forms of those duh moments you have when you’re watching an engrossing film and you think no one is watching until someone throws a balled-up piece of toilet paper at you and it sticks to the gathered drool accumulated in your beard. Also, it happens when you’ve been typing for a long time. Anyway, a study published in PLOS ONE proves that these are indeed yawns, but little more can be established at this point, though theories will lead to further research.

A team of researchers from Durham and Lancaster Universities, led by Dr. Nadja Reissland, of Durham University’s Department of Psychology, performed 4D scans on eight female and seven male fetuses from 24 to 36 weeks. Video footage of the scans were studied, with the various, and numerous, mouth openings getting most of the attention. The time durations were recorded, and over half of the instances were long enough to qualify as yawns. They’re not just yawning during the boring parts.

Remember in the ’90s when remote-controlled cars were just cars, clunky though they may have been? Then a lot of companies retooled their designs and made them adaptable to the environment, whether that meant designing the vehicle to look like a three-dimensional triangle, or adding a flipper arm on the roof to boot the car back into an upright position. There is something highly unsatisfying to me about playing with a car that looks nothing like an actual car. It must be an aesthetic thing. But when you’re building a robot rover meant to explore underground moon caverns that humans haven’t laid eyes on yet, a goal of maximum utility should be present from inception.

Despite its dated design that will probably be updated in future months, the Cave Crawler, described in this month’s Nature, has lofty and noble roots. Its creator, William “Red” Whittaker, is a roboticist at Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh, and has already created similar robots that have braved the depths of an Alaskan volcano, and assisted in cleaning up the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. He knows a little something about putting robots in precarious situations. Whittaker shared his plans at a meeting of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in Hampton, Virginia.

If you had to make a potentially life-saving invention out of the things you played with as a kid, what would it be? A Nerf Defibrillator? A pop-cap gun insulin injector? Massoud Hassani’s idea was taken from games he played with his brother and friends, where they would race small, wind-blown objects across the desert fields surrounding their home in Qasaba, Kabul. The danger inherent in these games was the sizable probability that landmines could be buried beneath the fields. Sounds of “That next step’s a doozy” fill the streets.

Managing Editor David Wharton
I’m thankful that we’ve had more than one memorable science fiction movie this year. I’m thankful that I got to watch my childhood dreams dance across a giant screen in John Carter, sitting the whole time next to my dad, the guy who introduced me to Burroughs’ books in the first place. I’m thankful for The Cabin in the Woods, the single best time I had in a movie theater all year. I’m thankful that Joss Whedon made The Avengers work better than any of us could have hoped. I’m thankful for the good parts of Prometheus, and that at least the painfully stupid parts looked pretty. I’m thankful that Seeking a Friend for the End of the World didn’t wuss out. I’m thankful for Total Recall…the original version. I’m thankful for the pleasant surprise of Robot & Frank, a movie I hope more people discover on DVD.

I’m thankful that the enjoyable science fiction wasn’t limited to summer would-be blockbusters. I’m thankful for a Dredd movie that knew exactly what it wanted to be, and excelled at being just that. I’m thankful that Looper was just as good as I’d hoped, and even more of a surprise than I could have guessed. I’m thankful that the Wachowskis returned to both the big screen and the science fiction genre with Cloud Atlas, an unforgettable movie experience that I still find myself thinking about all these weeks later.