Last fourth of July, as fireworks burst across the night sky near the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, S.C., convicted kidnapper Jimmy Causey tucked a lifelike dummy into his bed, sneaked out of his prison cell and completed a daring escape. It wasn't until three days later, when Texas Rangers found Causey holed up 1,200 miles away, that authorities offered an explanation for how he had obtained the equipment for the breakout, including a pair of wire cutters used to snip through four fences that encircle the maximum security prison. "We believe a drone was used to fly in the tools that allowed him to escape," Bryan Stirling, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, told reporters at a news conference. A lengthy investigation confirmed that an accessory role was played by a small, off-the-shelf drone. And with that, law-enforcement and national security officials added "prison breaks" to the potential ill uses lurking in a technology widely available at retailers including Amazon and Walmart.

Today's store-bought drones are remarkably easy to fly, thanks to features like self-stabilization technology, obstacle avoidance sensors and so on. You could walk out of a shop, charge up your batteries and be airborne for the first time all within a single afternoon. But as the video compilation above shows, it's probably still a good idea to get some practice in before attempting any particularly tricky stunts. Even if drones have all sorts of high-tech features designed to keep them airborne, they aren't impervious to the constant pull of earth's gravity, the branches of an unseen tree, or even the grasp of a curious animal. Watch the video above to see a selection of drone crashes from the aircraft's perspective.

Around the time Leonardo Da Vinci was painting the Mona Lisa, he was also writing his Codex on the Flight of Birds, a roughly 35,000-word exploration of the ways in which man might take to the air. His illustrations included diagrams positing pre-Newtonian theories of physics, a rudimentary plan for a flying machine and many, many sketches of birds in flight. The Mona Lisa, with her secretive smile, is a universe of intimacy captured on a relatively small panel of wood. But the landscape behind his captivating subject shows the world as you would see it from atop a tall hill--or from the vantage point you would get if you had hitched a ride on the back of a giant bird. Even as da Vinci was perfecting one way of seeing a face, he was dreaming of other ways of looking.

Drones may be a relatively new technology, but artificial intelligence (AI) is already taking the controls. Autonomous drones are beginning to see use in jobs that require smooth, consistent flying, such as deliveries, and NASA and Google have even teamed up to experiment with how autonomous drones compare to human pilots when racing against each other. They discovered that even though humans won the race in the end, they needed to spend more time practicing before they were able to outspeed the autonomous drones. AI is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the drone industry. Right now, though, AI has an even more important task than providing autonomous flight: processing data collected in the field and turning it into actionable insights.

On a video screen projected to a crowd attending the United Nations' summit Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, a small drone whizzes past a tech executive. It shoots a projectile into the skull of a test dummy, detonating an explosive that could kill a human. In front of an audience, the executive pitches the drones as "unstoppable" and calls them capable of "an airstrike of surgical precision" that could render nuclear weapons obsolete. The scene quickly cuts to the drones being hijacked by terrorist organizations and going on a killing spree, targeting politicians and social media activists. The film, titled Slaughterbots and produced by the Future of Life Institute, shows how easily autonomous weapons could become weapons of mass destruction.

This past semester I added research to my already full schedule of math and engineering classes, as any masochistic student eagerly would. Packed schedule aside, how do you pass up the chance to work on implementing 360 virtual teleportation to anywhere in the world, in real-time. Yes, it is indeed the same concept as the cult worshipped Star Trek transporter, minus the ability to physically be at the location. Perhaps we can add a, "beam me up, Scotty" command when shutting down. The research lab I was working with is the Laboratory for Immersive CommunicatiON (LION).

Maverick Romanian serial entrepreneur Radu Negulescu, 30, is the founder of Trencadis, an IT company that develops software solutions for governments worldwide to streamline their interactions with the public. Magazine have recently nominated Trencadis as one of the fastest growing companies in Europe. Negulescu is also a co-owner of Autonomous Flight Technologies (AFT), a pioneer in Romania's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry. AFT has been developing and producing UAV systems since 2004. Today, it is the leading UAV producer in Central and Eastern Europe, delivering multifaceted solutions with civilian and military applications.

You don't have to wait for food delivery drones... if you live in the right part of China. Alibaba's online meal giant Ele.me has been cleared to use drones for delivering orders in Shanghai's Jinshan Industrial Park. The initiative won't deliver directly to your abode, but it will save you a lot of travel time: there are 17 routes, each of with two fixed drop-off points. Your food should arrive within 20 minutes, which isn't always possible with conventional cars slogging through traffic. Despite the automation, Ele.me believes this could be better for drivers.

This terrifying footage shows what it would be like to be eaten by a great white shark. Researchers got more than they bargained for when a great white shark took a bite of the underwater camera drone they were using to film in the Pacific Ocean. The resulting footage shows a shark powering through the water, before attempting to swallow the drone in a single bite. Inside the mouth of the predator, the camera continues to film and shows the muscles inside the shark's jaw contracting with effort. The shark eventually spits out the camera and swims away, defeated.

The government has announced measures to tackle the dangers drones can pose to people, aircraft and airports. From 30 July, drones will be banned by law from flying above 400ft and within 1km of an airport boundary, because of fears they could damage the windows or engines of planes and other aircraft during takeoff or landing. From 30 November, pilots of drones that weigh 250g or more will have to register with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and will be required to pass a safety test online. The restrictions were previously included in the CAA's drone code and will now become law as an amendment to the Air Navigation Order, as a stopgap before a drones bill is passed. The number of near-misses between drones and aircraft has risen year on year, from six in 2014 to 93 in 2017, and the government has previously said new laws were needed to ensure drones were used safely and responsibly.