Lead Story
Tokyo police arrested Ryoji Akashi, 27, in January after his mother reported that he was planning a massacre at a class reunion because many former schoolmates had bullied him in junior high. The mother became suspicious on the day before the reunion when she smelled gasoline in his room and found the diary entry “I will kill them with bombs and poison.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Weird Zoology
Randall D. Beer, a Case Western Reserve University professor, has created an artificial cockroach using a computer program that simulates a cockroach’s “thinking” and behavior. Next he plans to build a six-legged robot to test and improve his design. Said Beer, “Cockroaches are infamously robust and flexible, and they adapt to complex dynamics. Those are qualities we’d like to see in artificial-intelligence systems.”
