Here�s what robots could learn from fire ants

mybb@mybb.ru (theory) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 16:25:11 +0300

Robots, take note: When working in tight, crowded spaces, fire ants know how to avoid too many cooks in the kitchen.

Observations of fire ants digging an underground nest reveal that a few industrious ants do most of the work while others dawdle. Computer simulations confirm that, while this strategy may not be the fairest, it is the most efficient because it helps reduce overcrowding in tunnels that would gum up the works. Following fire ants� example could help robot squads work together more efficiently, researchers report in the Aug. 17 Science.

Robots that can work in close, crowded quarters without tripping each other up may be especially good at digging through rubble for search-and-rescue missions, disaster cleanup or construction, says Justin Werfel, a collective behavior researcher at Harvard University who has designed insect-inspired robot swarms (SN: 3/22/14, p. 8).

Daniel Goldman, a physicist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, and colleagues pored over footage of about 30 fire ants digging tunnels during 12-hour stretches. �To our surprise, we found that there�s only about three to five ants doing anything� at a time, Goldman says. Although individual ants� activity levels varied over time, about 30 percent of the ants did about 70 percent of the work in any given 12-hour period.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wha … nts?tgt=nr

Cheese found in an Egyptian tomb is at least 3,200 years old

mybb@mybb.ru (theory) — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 16:23:14 +0300

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What may be the oldest known solid cheese has been found in an ancient Egyptian tomb.

Made from a mixture of cow milk and either sheep or goat milk, the cheese filled a broken clay jar unearthed from a 13th century B.C. tomb for Ptahmes, the mayor of the ancient city of Memphis, researchers report online July 25 in Analytical Chemistry.

Chemist Enrico Greco, who did the work while at the University of Catania in Italy, and colleagues used mass spectrometry to analyze the antique cheese � now a white, soapy lump weighing �several hundred grams.� Besides milk and whey proteins, the cheese contained remnants of bacteria that cause an infection called brucellosis, adding to evidence that ancient Egyptians may have grappled with the disease, Greco says.

Cheese making predates the new find by thousands of years, but preserved cheese is hard to come by (SN: 1/26/13, p. 16). Archaeologists found older curds draped around the necks of Bronze Age mummies in China, a different group of researchers reported in 2014 in the Journal of Archaeological Science. �There are other samples of dairy products in the literature, but not solid cheeses in the strict sense,� Greco says.

He says he did not sniff the cheese, but given its degraded state it is unlikely to have an odor, pleasant or not.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/che … old?tgt=nr

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Here�s what robots could learn from fire ants

Cheese found in an Egyptian tomb is at least 3,200 years old