According to a new study, there are tipping points in microbial ecosystems where even small perturbations are enough to cause a collapse. The authors, from the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, describe microbial communities as a network based on cross-feeding, the exchange of metabolic by-products between populations. This network of relationships can collapse abruptly if individual populations are lost, they conclude. This mechanism may explain why microbial diversity is difficult to maintain in the laboratory, they write in the journal PNAS.

Robots developed at MIT can now learn about an object’s weight, softness, or contents by picking it up and gently shaking it. A robot can accurately guess parameters like an object’s mass in a matter of seconds, without the need for cameras or other external sensors.