Millions of people ride amusement park rides every year with few serious injuries--but experts say a few precautions still matter. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Going upside down might feel scary on a roller coaster, but it's very safe. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Summer is quickly approaching, which means more time for summer fun like checking out amusement parks.

Many manipulation tasks require memory beyond the current observation, yet most visuomotor policies rely on the Markov assumption and thus struggle with repeated states or long-horizon dependencies. Existing methods attempt to extend observation horizons but remain insufficient for diverse memory requirements. To this end, we propose an object-centric history representation based on point tracking, which abstracts past observations into a compact and structured form that retains only essential task-relevant information. Tracked points are encoded and aggregated at the object level, yielding a compact history representation that can be seamlessly integrated into various visuomotor policies. Our design provides full history-awareness with high computational efficiency, leading to improved overall task performance and decision accuracy. Through extensive evaluations on diverse manipulation tasks, we show that our method addresses multiple facets of memory requirements - such as task stage identification, spatial memorization, and action counting, as well as longer-term demands like continuous and pre-loaded memory - and consistently outperforms both Markovian baselines and prior history-based approaches. Project website: http://tonyfang.net/history

New York-based startup Barsys recently announced the Coaster, a smart saucer that guides the user on how to create a particular cocktail. By connecting the coaster to a smartphone with the complimentary app downloaded, users can choose from Barsys' existing library of cocktails or input their own recipe. Once a cocktail is selected, the user can simply start pouring ingredients one by one, and with each new alcohol or mixer, the coaster will light up when the correct amount has been added to the glass. The Barsys Coaster is regularly priced at US$149 (S$203), but interested customers can pre-order it here for US$95 (S$130). The device will start shipping in December.

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Welcome to another edition of In the Loop, the Los Angeles Times' theme park newsletter. I'm Funland theme park blogger Brady MacDonald, and this week, we drop in on the Wizarding World grand opening, taste-test Disney's Food and Wine Festival, bid farewell to the last-remaining Back to the Future ride and marvel at Phantasialand's visually stunning new coaster. Times columnist Mary McNamara writes that Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood is the place where "magic comes to life, or as close as it gets." For those who have never been on the world's best dark ride, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey turns the traditional dark ride experience on its head by placing riders on the end of a unique robotic arm. The often-overlooked Flight of the Hippogriff at Wizarding World is a short but fun ride that's perfect for young kids eager to climb aboard their first roller coaster.