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Ancient Rome's fanciest glasses are full of cryptic symbols

Popular Science

Science Archaeology Ancient Rome's fanciest glasses are full of cryptic symbols They were the ancient equivalent of a brand.' Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Tiny symbols engraved into ancient Roman drinkware may be more than merely decorative accents. After two years of research, an art historian believes that the designs on glass Roman cage cups are testaments to the skill and collaborative efforts required to craft some of the empire's most renowned pieces of glasswork. The talent of ancient Rome's artisans is displayed across the empire's vast archaeological remains, such as its architecture, mosaics, and sculptures .


The Ninja Crispi air fryer we use all the time is on sale for Amazon Early Black Friday

Popular Science

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Admit it, your DoorDash/Uber Eats bills are scandalous. And what makes it even worse is how the food loses all its deep-fried joy on the journey. So skip delivery and get the perfect texture at home with a Ninja air fryer. From single-serve baskets to countertop ovens, there's a device that can feed your cravings for crisp, and they're on sale during Amazon's Early Black Friday deals.


Dual-Arm Whole-Body Motion Planning: Leveraging Overlapping Kinematic Chains

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Abstract-- High degree-of-freedom dual-arm robots are becoming increasingly common due to their morphology enabling them to operate effectively in human environments. However, motion planning in real-time within unknown, changing environments remains a challenge for such robots due to the high dimensionality of the configuration space and the complex collision-avoidance constraints that must be obeyed. In this work, we propose a novel way to alleviate the curse of dimensionality by leveraging the structure imposed by shared joints (e.g. First, we build two dynamic roadmaps (DRM) for each kinematic chain (i.e. Then, we show that we can leverage this structure to efficiently search through the composition of the two roadmaps and largely sidestep the curse of dimensionality. Finally, we run several experiments in a real-world grocery store with this motion planner on a 19 DoF mobile manipulation robot executing a grocery fulfillment task, achieving 0.4s average planning times with 99.9% success rate across more than 2000 motion plans.


Save up to 500 off De'Longhi espresso machines and coffee makers during Amazon's early Black Friday sale

Popular Science

Skip the takeout coffee and grab one of these high-end espresso machines or coffee makers. They'll pay for themselves in the long run. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. My friend recently started working at a popular coffee shop and I stopped in to get an iced mocha. I ended up spending more than $8 after tip.


Microsoft's Surface Laptop Is Marked Down by 350

WIRED

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Is Marked Down by $350 While Apple may have the first-party laptop market cornered with the MacBook lineup, Microsoft's Surface laptops have been steadily improving over the past few years, and are now an increasingly appealing option. Last year's seventh-generation Surface Laptop is currently marked down by $350 on Amazon for the base model, bringing the price down to a tantalizing $849. While the screen is a somewhat rare 3:2 aspect ratio, it's an excellent panel for everyday use and productivity. It can reach a decently bright 600 nits, which should be plenty for a quick work call from the park, and it has a 120-Hz refresh rate, which should smooth things out a bit, even if you don't plan on gaming. It's a touch panel as well, in case you like to get physical with your Windows, but I'm still not super enthused by the touchscreen support in the Microsoft OS.


Is a Robot Vacuum Worth It?

WIRED

Is a Robot Vacuum Worth It? It's not for everyone, but sometimes my robot vacuum is my only friend. Every single day--weekend, weekday, rain or shine--whichever robot vacuum I'm currently testing starts running at 9 am. I heave a sigh of relief and continue with whatever else I was doing, content that at least f*cking chore in my house is getting done. When I first started testing robot vacuums eight years ago, it sometimes seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I cleaned up the floor .


Teen designs and builds a robotic hand with only LEGOs

Popular Science

At only 16, Jared Lepora has also co-authored a paper. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In October, a student presented a robotic hand made entirely from LEGOs at the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hangzhou, China. Nonetheless, the 16-year-old co-authored research recently published on arXiv along with colleagues including his father Nathan Lepora, a professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Bristol. Jared used LEGO MINDSTORMS, a LEGO robotics kit, to build a LEGO version of SoftHand-A, a 3D-printed anthropomorphic robot hand introduced in an earlier study .


Take 50% off the best smart feeder with Bird Buddy's Early Black Friday Deals

Popular Science

Gear Home Smart Home Take 50% off the best smart feeder with Bird Buddy's Early Black Friday Deals If you've been waiting to try a smart bird feeder that lets you see new avian pals up close, it's the best time of the year to get almost half off. Your backyard paparazzi career starts now. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. The Bird Buddy smart feeder has turned a lot of Popular Science readers into accidental birders over the years. It was PopSci's most-clicked Black Friday deal in 2023, then sold out again during Prime Day in 2024.


Fisherman searching for worms finds 20,000 medieval silver coins

Popular Science

A Swedish man discovered the 12th century buried treasure near his summer home. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It only costs a few dollars to buy a tub of bait worms for fishing, but many people are fine with sourcing them straight from the ground. There's always a chance you may find more in the dirt than wriggling invertebrates. Take a recent example near Stockholm, Sweden: According to county officials last month, an unnamed fisherman scrounging for worms at his summer house discovered a corroded copper cauldron containing around 13 pounds of treasure from the Middle Ages.


AI videos of animals could be dangerous. Here's how to spot them.

Popular Science

Technology AI AI videos of animals could be dangerous. Here's how to spot them. Researchers warn that they can distort our connection to wildlife. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It happens more and more frequently.