Enlarge / A kitty named Clover prepares to play with a robot arm in the Cat Royale "multi-species" science/art installation. (credit: Blast Theory - Stephen Daly)

Cats and robots are a winning combination, as evidenced by all those videos of kitties riding on Roombas. And now we have Cat Royale, a "multispecies" live installation in which three cats regularly "played" with a robot over 12 days, carefully monitored by human operators. Created by computer scientists from the University of Nottingham in collaboration with artists from a group called Blast Theory, the installation debuted at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, Australia, last year and is now a touring exhibit. The accompanying YouTube video series recently won a Webby Award, and a paper outlining the insights gleaned from the experience was similarly voted best paper at the recent Computer-Human Conference (CHI’24).

"At first glance, the project is about designing a robot to enrich the lives of a family of cats by playing with them," said co-author Steve Benford of the University of Nottingham, who led the research. "Under the surface, however, it explores the question of what it takes to trust a robot to look after our loved ones and potentially ourselves." While cats might love Roombas, not all animal encounters with robots are positive: Guide dogs for the visually impaired can get confused by delivery robots, for example, while the rise of lawn mowing robots can have a negative impact on hedgehogs, per Benford et al.

Blast Theory and the scientists first held a series of exploratory workshops to ensure the installation and robotic design would take into account the welfare of the cats. "Creating a multispecies system—where cats, robots, and humans are all accounted for—takes more than just designing the robot," said co-author Eike Schneiders of Nottingham's Mixed Reality Lab about the primary takeaway from the project. "We had to ensure animal well-being at all times, while simultaneously ensuring that the interactive installation engaged the (human) audiences around the world. This involved consideration of many elements, including the design of the enclosure, the robot, and its underlying systems, the various roles of the humans-in-the-loop, and, of course, the selection of the cats.”

Enlarge (credit: Tommy Gilligan/USMA PAO/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

University of Rochester linguist Andrew Bray started out studying the evolution of the trademark sports jargon used in hockey for his master's thesis. For instance, a hockey arena is a "barn," while the puck is a "biscuit." When he would tell people about the project, however, they kept asking if he was trying to determine why American hockey players sound like "fake Canadians." Intrigued, Bray decided to shift his research focus to find out if hockey players did indeed have distinctively Canadian speech patterns and, if so, why this might be the case.

He discovered that US hockey players borrow certain aspects of the Canadian English accent, particularly when it comes to hockey jargon. But they don't follow the typical rules of pronunciation. In short, "American hockey players are not trying to shift their speech to sound more Canadian," Bray said during a press briefing. "They're trying to sound more like a hockey player. That's why it's most evident in hockey-specific terms."

It's a concept known as a "linguistic persona," a means of communicating how one identifies—in this case, as a hockey player— through speech. Bray gave a talk about his research today at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Ottawa, Canada, held in conjunction with the Canadian Acoustical Association.

Enlarge / John Milton citing Spenser on the recent history of Ireland in his 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. Note Milton's italic e, hooks and curls on letters and distinctive s's. (credit: Phoenix Public Library)

John Milton is widely considered to be one of the greatest English poets who ever lived—just ask such luminaries as John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Jonson, and Voltaire, who once declared, "Milton remains the glory and the wonder of England." But while Milton's own books continue to be widely read and studied, there are only a handful of books in collections today known to have been part of his personal library.

Add one more title to that small list, as scholars recently discovered a copy of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland in the Phoenix Public Library, containing handwritten notes in Milton's distinctive hand. This makes the volume extra-special, since only two other books once owned by Milton also contain handwritten notes. The scholars detailed their findings in a new article published in the Times Literary Supplement.

Holinshed's Chronicles is a hugely influential and comprehensive three-volume history of Great Britain, first published in 1577; it was followed by a second edition in 1587. A London printer named Reginald Wolfe started the project and hired Raphael Holinshed and William Harrison to help him create a "universal cosmography of the whole world." Wolfe died before the book could be completed, and the project was eventually scaled down to a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland, complete with maps and illustrations.

The second season of House of the Dragon premieres in about a month, and we have one final action-packed trailer to boost anticipation. While the first season felt smaller and quieter—in a good way, more focused on character relationships and political maneuvering—the show seems to be pulling out all the stops in S2 as all-out war breaks out in the legendary "Dance of Dragons."

As previously reported, the series is set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the beginning of the end of House Targaryen's reign. The primary source material is Fire and Blood, a fictional history of the Targaryen kings written by George R.R. Martin. As book readers know, those events culminated in a civil war and the extinction of the dragons—at least until Daenerys Targaryen came along.

(Spoilers for S1 below.)

Amazon's Prime Video made a major investment in The Rings of Power when it acquired the rights to the source material from the Tolkien estate, even committing to multiple seasons upfront. The casting was strong and the visuals were quite spectacular (including the opening credits). But while the first season had its moments, personally I found it a bit plodding, often more concerned with establishing this rich fictional world and the characters within it than moving the story forward.

Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have said that this was deliberate. They wanted to avoid a "villain-centric" story in S1 but promised they would be delving more deeply into "the lore and the stories people have been waiting to hear." That would be the rise of Sauron (Charlie Vickers), the forging of the titular rings of power, and the last alliance between elves and men to defeat Sauron's evil machinations. Judging by the teaser that dropped today, we'll be getting lots more action in S2, with the shape-shifting Sauron now handily disguised as an elf. Bonus: There's an accompanying behind-the-scenes preview of the second season.

(Spoilers for the S1 finale below.)

Fans of the dystopian sci-fi thriller series Orphan Black have been waiting to see more of the new TV show set in the same fictional world: Orphan Black: Echoes, starring Krysten Ritter (of Jessica Jones fame). That time has arrived with AMC's release of the official trailer.

(Some spoilers for the original Orphan Black series below.)

The original series was co-created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett. Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk) starred as Sarah Manning, a British con artist in Toronto who witnessed a woman who seemed like her doppelgänger commit suicide and assumed her identity as a police detective. Sarah soon discovered that both she and the dead woman were clones. And there were many more clones out there—all expertly played by Maslany, who finally won that richly deserved Emmy in 2016—thanks to the eugenics research of the Dyad Institute, the base of operations for the so-called "Neolution."

Enlarge / Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820. Toxocology analysis of the composer's locks of hair showed high levels of lead. (credit: Beethoven-Haus Bonn)

Last year, researchers sequenced the genome of famed composer Ludwig van Beethoven for the first time, based on authenticated locks of hair. The same team has now analyzed two of the locks for toxic substances and found extremely high levels of lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, according to a recent letter published in the journal Clinical Chemistry.

“It definitely shows Beethoven was exposed to high concentrations of lead,” Paul Janetto, co-author and director of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, told The New York Times. “These are the highest values in hair I’ve ever seen. We get samples from around the world, and these values are an order of magnitude higher.” That said, the authors concluded that the lead exposure was not sufficient to actually kill the composer, although Beethoven very likely did suffer adverse health effects because of it.

As previously reported, Beethoven was plagued throughout his life by myriad health problems. The composer began losing his hearing in his mid- to late 20s, experiencing tinnitus and the loss of high-tone frequencies in particular. He claimed the onset began with a fit in 1798 induced by a quarrel with a singer. By his mid-40s, he was functionally deaf and unable to perform public concerts, although he could still compose music.

Enlarge / UNSW Sydney engineers developed a new way to make cold brew coffee in under three minutes without sacrificing taste. (credit: University of New South Wales, Sydney)

Diehard fans of cold-brew coffee put in a lot of time and effort for their preferred caffeinated beverage. But engineers at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, figured out a nifty hack. They rejiggered an existing espresso machine to accommodate an ultrasonic transducer to administer ultrasonic pulses, thereby reducing the brewing time from 12 to 24 hours to just under three minutes, according to a new paper published in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry.

As previously reported, rather than pouring boiling or near-boiling water over coffee grounds and steeping for a few minutes, the cold-brew method involves mixing coffee grounds with room-temperature water and letting the mixture steep for anywhere from several hours to two days. Then it is strained through a sieve to filter out all the sludge-like solids, followed by filtering. This can be done at home in a Mason jar, or you can get fancy and use a French press or a more elaborate Toddy system. It's not necessarily served cold (although it can be)—just brewed cold.

The result is coffee that tastes less bitter than traditionally brewed coffee. “There’s nothing like it,” co-author Francisco Trujillo of UNSW Sydney told New Scientist. “The flavor is nice, the aroma is nice and the mouthfeel is more viscous and there’s less bitterness than a regular espresso shot. And it has a level of acidity that people seem to like. It’s now my favorite way to drink coffee.”