20 | New Scientist | 3 October 2020Animal behaviourCurly the robot beats
athletes at curlingA ROBOT has beaten top-ranked
humans at the sport of curling.
Klaus-Robert Müller at the
Technical University of Berlin
in Germany and his colleagues
built the artificial-intelligence-
powered robot, called Curly,
to master the sport.
In curling, players slide stones
along ice towards a target. People
compete in two teams of four, with
most players taking turns turn toPowerful carbon-
based computersMICROCHIPS containing ribbons
of carbon just a few atoms wide
could let us build powerful
computers while also reducing
their power consumption.
Felix Fischer at the University
of California, Berkeley, and his
team have developed a way of
turning graphene nanoribbons –
ribbons of carbon that are only a
few atoms wide – into conductors,
which could be used to connect
carbon-based transistors.
There have been many efforts
to develop transistors based
on carbon because it has good
electrical properties, but a
key challenge has been making
wires out of carbon to transport
electrons between transistors.
“Just like the traditional
silicon-based architectures we
are using today, any carbon-based
transistor technology still requires
some form of interconnects thatComputing RoboticsYOUTHFUL male bats are the first of
their species to adjust to the reality
of a warming world, with older
generations being slower to adapt.
The noctule bat (Nyctalus
noctula), a common European
species, usually migrates more
than 1500 kilometres between
its northern summer roosts and
its southern winter hibernation
grounds. Now that is changing
one generation at a time, says
Kseniia Kravchenko at the Leibniz
Institute for Zoo and Wildlife
Research in Berlin, Germany.
The bats have a short lifespan,
averaging three years, and a
high reproductive rate, leading
to rapid generation turnover.
Kravchenko and her team studied
nearly 3400 noctule bats in a newly
colonised winter roost in Ukraine.
They identified the bats’ summerlocations by looking for hydrogen
isotopes in the bats’ fur, which
originate in the food and water
consumed by the animals. Having
followed the bats’ journeys over
12 years, the team determined
that young males settled first
in new winter colonies further
north. Later, young females and
eventually older adults join them
in staying closer year-round to their
northern summer homes, rather
than hibernating further south
(Biology Letters, doi.org/d96t).
“This bat species seems capable
of adjusting rapidly to the high pace
of climate change, which is good,”
says Kravchenko. “But what about
the other species of bats that have
longer generation times and don’t
migrate? Global warming might
be more difficult for them to cope
with.” Christa Lesté-LasserreYoung bats accept reality
of climate change faster
“throw” a stone or to use brooms
to sweep the ice in front of a
moving stone. Points are awarded
for stones closest to the centre
of the target and a team wins by
accumulating the highest score.
Curly (pictured) won three
out of four matches against top-
ranked South Korean women’s
curling teams and the country’s
reserve national wheelchair
curling team (Science Robotics,
doi.org/d96x). The robot throws
stones, but doesn’t sweep.
Mounted on wheels, the
robot has a crane-like neck with
a video camera to assess the
position of stones and a gripper
that can rotate and release stones.
Curly’s reinforcement learning
algorithm AI takes into account
the position of other stones
and the state of the ice when
deciding its next moves. Once the
game began, Curly continuously
learned how to improve on
its previous moves, based on
the errors that arose from its
preceding throws. Donna Luallow for the communication
between individual transistors
or other circuit components,”
says Fischer.
His team built nanoribbons
by creating smaller graphene
building blocks and connecting
them together (Science, DOI:
10.1126/science.aay3588).
Graphene, a two-dimensional
form of carbon, is known for
its exotic properties.
The next step will be to build
circuits containing graphene
nanoribbons and see if they can
outperform the most advanced
silicon-based semiconductor
technologies. If successful,
Fischer says they could one
day be integrated into everyday
devices, such as smartphones.
“Think about the possible
impact of a mobile phone with
comparable performance to
the fastest desktop computers,
but with a power consumption
that requires you only to
charge it every other month,”
says Fischer. Layal LiverpoolDA
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