Robotic research benefited in the last ten years of a standardized common open-source platform for research on embodied artificial intelligence (AI): the humanoid robot iCub. Born in Italy, today it is available in 36 copies in laboratories across Europe, USA, South Korea, Singapore and Japan and more than hundred researchers worldwide contribute to develop its skills.

Some 50,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD) every year. The American Institute of Neurology estimates there are one million people affected with this neurodegenerative disorder, with 60 years as average age of onset. Falls and fall-related injuries are a major issue for people with Parkinson's - up to 70 percent of advanced PD patients fall at least once a year and two-thirds suffer recurring falls.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers from the University of Bristol have analysed mood indicators in text from 800 million anonymous messages posted on Twitter. These tweets were found to reflect strong patterns of positive and negative moods over the 24-hour day.

Circadian rhythms, widely referred to as the 'body clock', allows people's bodies to predict their needs over the dark and light periods of the day.

Playing an adventure video game featuring a fictitious, young emergency physician treating severe trauma patients was better than text-based learning at priming real doctors to quickly recognize the patients who needed higher levels of care, according to a new trial led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The results, published by The BMJ, held even though doctors assigned to the game enjoyed it less than those assigned to traditional, text-based education.

A team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota has 3D printed lifelike artificial organ models that mimic the exact anatomical structure, mechanical properties, and look and feel of real organs. These patient-specific organ models, which include integrated soft sensors, can be used for practice surgeries to improve surgical outcomes in thousands of patients worldwide.

In the science-fiction movie Gattaca, visitors only clear security if a blood test and readout of their genetic profile matches the sample on file. Now, cheap DNA sequencers and custom software could make real-time DNA-authentication a reality. Researchers at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center have developed a method to quickly and accurately identify people and cell lines from their DNA.

Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have managed to control the behavior of individual bacteria by connecting them to a computer. The interdisciplinary team including experimental biologist Remy Chait and mathematician Jakob Ruess (now at the Institut Pasteur and Inria Saclay in France) as first authors of the study, as well as Professors Calin Guet and Gasper Tkacik used the setup to build a genetic circuit that is partly living and partly digital.