The new research could help advance the use of microrobotics in environmental fieldwork and medical interventions.

According to the ranking, physicists are the safest from automation, while meat packers are the most in danger.

The device can reduce people’s metabolic rates by up to 48% as they walk, by pulling at a counterintuitive time in the walking cycle.

When powered by heat or near-infrared light, the fibers pulled upward and downward or oscillated back and forth.

People quickly learned to control the extra thumb in daily life, but behavioral tests and MRI scans showed that the brain space devoted to representing the biological hand shrank over the same period.

The optimizing algorithm helped a team of drones survey two Adélie penguin colonies in Antarctica in record time.