A new study finds algae, mussels, and starfish flock to munitions dumped in the Baltic Sea. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. As the ink dried on Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, celebrations erupted across the world. People cheered, wept, and kissed in the streets as World War II finally came to an end in Europe. A few months later at the Potsdam Conference, Germany agreed to demilitarize and dismantle its once formidable army, leaving the nation with lots and lots of leftover munitions.

An artificial skin is helping a robot to recognise the difference between picking up inanimate objects and living sea creatures such as starfish and shellfish. That sense of touch could prove useful in cleaning up the ocean, doing underwater exploration or even carrying out deep-sea mining on the seafloor. The artificial skin's sense of touch harnesses what is known as the magnetoelastic effect – changes that occur in the magnetic field of materials as they are pushed and pulled.

An artificial skin is helping a robot to recognise the difference between picking up inanimate objects and living sea creatures such as starfish and shellfish. That sense of touch could prove useful in cleaning up the ocean, doing underwater exploration or even carrying out deep-sea mining on the seafloor. The artificial skin's sense of touch harnesses what is known as the magnetoelastic effect – changes that occur in the magnetic field of materials as they are pushed and pulled.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, wants to throw the power of its AI behind a mission to monitor sea life around the ocean. According to a blog post, a project called Tidal - part of Alphabet's'X' division that develops'moonshot' projects - is creating a computer vision system that uses AI to monitor thousands of fish. The goal, says the company, is to help glean understanding of how over-fishing and other human impacts of fish populations affect sea life across the globe. With that information, Alphabet hopes that people will not just understand what happens beneath the ocean's surface, but help fix the problems that plague ocean life and habitats. 'One of the biggest barriers to protecting the ocean -- and our future -- is that we don't know much about what's going on under the water.