A public showcase event in Shanghai let visitors interact directly with humanoid robots, part of China's broader effort to promote and accelerate its robotics industry. Organizers say such events matter because hands-on exposure builds public familiarity, even as humanoid robot development globally remains slow and uneven.
A Harvard Business School analysis led by Professor Mark Egan finds that interchange fees baked into retail prices generate about $9.2 billion annually in net rewards for affluent credit card users, while cash and debit customers pay the same higher prices but receive little or none of that money back. Across the broader economy, the researchers estimate roughly $30 billion moves each year from cash and debit users to credit card users at the same stores.
Harvard researchers studying ribosomal RNA in the California two-spot octopus discovered an unprecedented gap that splits a normally single RNA fragment into two pieces, a feature not seen in any other animal studied so far. This structural quirk, published in Current Biology, appears to help ribosomes assemble proteins with unusual precision, and so far turns up only in octopus lineages with enlarged nervous systems capable of complex behavior.