Slicing bread, pouring a cup of coffee, and sitting down at the kitchen table are a part of everyday life for most people, but for people with physical impairments such as limb amputations or neurological lesions, these tasks can present an insurmountable challenge without support. Pooling their efforts, researchers from the engineering and medical sciences are on a quest for smarter, more precise assistive devices ultimately piloted by the patients' minds.

The use of drones to document and monitor the Fifa landscape in Jordan for the past three years reveals that looting continues at the site, though at a measurably reduced pace, according to Morag M. Kersel, a DePaul University archaeologist. "Drones are proving to be powerful new tools to archaeologists for documenting excavation, mapping landscapes and identifying buried features. They also can be applied to monitor site destruction and looting in the present," she said.

Does living near an oil or natural gas well affect the quality of your drinking water? 'The answer to that question is usually 'no,' but there are exceptions,' said Stanford Professor Rob Jackson. He has found very high levels of natural gas in the tap water near active wells, and a surprising number of hydraulically fractured wells that penetrate shallow freshwater aquifers. 'In no other industry would you be allowed to inject chemicals into a source of drinking-quality water,' Jackson said.

Northwestern University researchers have taken CSI to a new level: employing science to investigate details of the materials and methods used by Roman-Egyptian artists to paint mummy portraits more than 2,000 years ago. Clues about the paintings' underlying surface shapes and colors provide very strong evidence as to how many of the portraits and panel paintings were made. The researchers concluded that three of the paintings likely came from the same workshop and may have been painted by the same hand.