The latest revolutionary robot isn't the metallic, costly machine you'd expect: It's squishy like Silly Putty, wireless, battery-less and made for pennies by a 3-D printer. It looks like a tiny octopus and is designed to mimic that slithery creature to get through cracks and tight places, making it ideal as a rescue robot. A team at Harvard University has created a robot -- actually about 300 of them, since they are so cheap to make -- that is opposite of the common view of a robot. The discovery is described, photographed and on video in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday. "It's sort of a hybrid between octopus and robot," said study author Jennifer Lewis, a Harvard professor of biologically inspired engineering.

The Department of Pathology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has established the Center for Computational and Systems Pathology to revolutionize pathology practice, using advanced computer science and mathematical techniques coupled with cutting-edge microscope technology and artificial intelligence. The goal of this new academic research facility is to explore efforts to more accurately classify diseases and guide treatment using computer vision and machine learning techniques. The Center for Computational and Systems Pathology will be a hub for the development of new diagnostic, predictive, and prognostic tests and will partner with Mount Sinai-based "Precise Medical Diagnostics" (Precise MDTM), which has been under development for more than three years by a team of physicians, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and programmers. Carlos Cordon-Cardo, MD, PhD, will oversee the new center, located at Mount Sinai St. Luke's, and will continue his role as Chair of the Department of Pathology at the Mount Sinai Health System and Professor of Pathology, Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Oncological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine. Gerardo Fernandez, MD, Associate Professor of Pathology, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will be the Center's Medical Director.

Cooperation is one of the hallmarks of being human. We are extremely social compared to other species. On a regular basis, we all enter into helping others in small but important ways, whether it be letting someone out in traffic or giving a tip for good service. We do this without any guarantee of payback. Donations are made at a small personal cost but with a bigger benefit to the recipient.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is all around us and we might not even realize it! As a technology that imitates human decision making, it is present in a lot of what we use every day. AI can be found in Amazon.com Facebook tells you whom you could know and want to be friends with. Cars can automatically park for you.

Why is it that some people crave several cups of coffee a day while others stop at only one or two? A growing body of evidence suggests that the amount of coffee we consume is determined by our genetic makeup rather than the amount of sleep we got the night before. Coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide, second only to tea and water, researchers say. And drinking hefty amounts of coffee has been associated with several health benefits. Recent reports have linked coffee consumption with improvements in short-term memory, as well as a reduced risk of developing multiple sclerosis, melanoma, Type 2 diabetes and liver cancer.

Apple wants you to know that Siri is no dunderhead. The normally secretive tech giant lifted the lid on its artificial intelligence efforts by inviting the writer Steven Levy to its headquarters to hear it crow about all the products and services that are benefiting from various machine-learning techniques, especially deep learning. The resulting article, published on Levy's site, Backchannel, paints a picture of a company keen to boast about its AI chops. It's certainly interesting to hear about how deep learning is being used to improve Siri's hearing, voice, and natural language; and how machine learning is helping to make other Apple products smarter. But it's also hard not to notice that the company is starting to lag behind some of its competitors.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

NAGOYA – Toyota Motor Corp.'s famed quality control is being adopted by companies outside the auto sector and is now spreading into medical care. Nagoya University Hospital in Aichi Prefecture, where Toyota is headquartered, has started a program in collaboration with the Toyota group that aims to improve workflow and to reduce the number of mistakes by pharmacists. Called ASUISHI and subsidized by the government, the program is targeted at doctors across the nation and aimed at boosting safety and quality in medical care and treatment. Toyota's quality control methods include thorough reviews of its production systems and work environment in the event of mistakes to identify the root cause. Corrective measures are then added to standard procedures to avoid recurrences.

This artist's impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image between the planet and Proxima itself. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. It was just over 20 years ago--a blink of a cosmic eye--that astronomers found the first planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. All these new worlds were gas-shrouded giants like Jupiter or Saturn and utterly inhospitable to life as we know it--but for years each discovery was dutifully reported as front-page news, while scientists and the public alike dreamed of a day when we would find a habitable world. An Earth-like place with plentiful surface water, neither frozen nor vaporized but in the liquid state so essential to life. Back then the safe bet was to guess that the discovery of such a planet would only come after many decades, and that when a promising new world's misty shores materialized on the other side of our telescopes, it would prove too faraway and faint to study in any detail.