Loren Looger and Scott Sternson became collaborators, and fast friends, after coming to Janelia Farm as group leaders in 2006. By Looger’s account, their partnership might be science’s version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. read story
Scott Sternson has always wondered what drives behavior, especially those fundamental motivations required for survival. Hunger, for example, is so crucial that it must be evolutionarily “hard-wired” deep within the brain. After all, as Sternson observes, “if the animal doesn’t eat, it dies.” read story
It might make for an interesting, albeit exhausting, research project to follow Roland Strauss as he moves through his world observing the ways insects maneuver through theirs. The 43-year-old neurobiologist and gadgetry guru never seems to sit still.
Meet Toddler, a walking robot that mimics the human gait. Created by computer engineer Russ Tedrake in the lab of computational neuroscientist and HHMI investigator H. Sebastian Seung at MIT, Toddler uses customized learning software to teach itself to walk in less than 20 minutes. The robot “doesn’t walk too much like a human, but we think it learns like a human,” Tedrake says. read in full issue (pdf)