In a new study, Northwestern University scientists developed a 90s-style video game to help chronic stroke survivors regain lost arm function. While wearing a small device on their impaired arm and using a laptop computer, players use their arm muscles to complete tasks such as flying a helicopter around the screen to hit a moving target. The muscle retraining helps separate the brain’s uncoordinated movement signals, enabling muscles to work independently again.

With poppy seed-sized brains, jumping spiders compute distances in a highly efficient manner. Their eyes contain multiple retinal layers, each focused at a different depth. By comparing differences in sharpness, they estimate distance. New camera mimics this strategy while consuming less energy than a nightlight. It could enable a new generation of battery-powered devices that need to gauge their surroundings, like wearable technologies, assistive devices, robots and drones.

Jaspreet Singh Randhawa, a Mississippi State assistant professor of physics, has received a prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to support a $700,000 research project on the nuclear reactions that power stellar explosions and other extreme cosmic events.

This study debunks a decades-old myth that tropical mountain flowers evolved to attract hummingbirds because high altitudes are too cold and wet for bees and finds that hummingbirds are simply much better at moving pollen. This is because hummingbirds just drink the nectar, while bees constantly groom themselves to save pollen as food for offspring—leaving less of it for the next flower. Over generations, flowers will change shapes, colors, and scents to favor hummingbirds over bees. These tiny adaptations can result in entirely new plant species without requiring any major climate or environmental changes.