ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

Many arboreal lizards leap and glide from tree to tree, but what if they can't glide to a gentle, four-point landing? Researchers documented many such leaps of the common house gecko, and found that they often hit trees headfirst and rebounded violently. Their recovery strategy -- grab on with the back feet and leverage their tail to prevent falling. The team created a soft robot with reactive tail that could replicate this previously unknown fall-arresting behavior.

Many electronic devices today are dependent on semiconductor logic circuits based on switches hard-wired to perform predefined logic functions. Physicists have developed a novel molecular memristor, or an electronic memory device, that has exceptional memory reconfigurability.

The cichlids of Lake Tanganyika in Africa are highly diverse -- including with regard to sex chromosomes. These have changed extremely frequently in the course of the evolution of these fish and, depending on the species, can be of the type XY or ZW.

Researchers describe a novel molecular device with exceptional computing prowess. Reminiscent of the plasticity of connections in the human brain, the device can be reconfigured on the fly for different computational tasks by simply changing applied voltages. Furthermore, like nerve cells can store memories, the same device can also retain information for future retrieval and processing.