An electric crop-spraying plane flies with nobody at the controls, an MIT robot copies puffins to fly and swim, and a researcher says he used ChatGPT to design a potential schizophrenia drug and synthesised it in his garage lab. [DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gGEBScDP) Tech [A person loads equipment into the open side compartment of a blue-and-white autonomous aircraft marked “EXPERIMENTAL” beside farm fields.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hJFfmU2G) [Will self-flying planes transform the skies?](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hJFfmU2G) Pyka's crop-spraying plane, an 11.5m-wingspan electric aircraft with no cockpit, flies over California farmland with nobody at the controls (it can fly lower than a human pilot dares, which means less spray drift and fewer chemicals). It's already the largest autonomous fixed-wing aircraft approved for US commercial use. Pyka wants to scale from two dozen planes a year to 1,000 by 2030. The founder is betting this route beats flying taxis to the "holy grail" of fully autonomous passenger flight. [A makeshift garage chemistry lab with glass distillation equipment, flasks, heating plates, chemical bottles, and gas cylinders.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BFgwTqcQ) [A ChatGPT-designed schizophrenia drug just got synthesised in a garage lab](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BFgwTqcQ) A researcher named Douglas Yao says he used ChatGPT to design a new drug candidate, PAC-3310, then built a chemistry lab in his garage to actually synthesise it. He describes it as a potential schizophrenia treatment that selectively activates a cell receptor called M4 (a target similar to that of Cobenfy, the recently approved schizophrenia drug). Interesting, but this is a self-reported claim with no published trial or peer review behind it yet. [A winged robot is shown in successive positions flapping upward from a lake, with mountains in the background.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vTMKgPtd) [How can a flapping robot fly and swim? MIT copied puffins](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vTMKgPtd) Instead of sealing itself against water, this MIT robot just lets water flood straight through its open frame, with each part waterproofed on its own. That keeps it light enough to fly (half a pound) but neutrally buoyant underwater (so it neither sinks nor floats upwards). The same flexible nylon wings do both jobs: flapping 5 to 6 times a second in air, then speeding up to around 10 times a second to punch through the surface. The puffin-inspired robot makes that switch from water to air in under a second. Poll In a group conversation, what role do you naturally take? Ask questions Tell stories Connect other people's points Mostly listen Correct details Last Week's Poll How often do you verify an answer from AI? Almost always 16% Only for high-stakes questions 25% Only when something feels wrong 43% Rarely 8% Never 8% This Week I Learnt [A Japanese astronaut vomits aboard a spacecraft while two crewmates react; a camera records him, with Mir visible through the window.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/A7BwumYr) [A Japanese TV network sent a journalist to space, and his Mir crewmates said they'd never seen a man vomit that much](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/A7BwumYr) [163 Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) employees applied to become the first Japanese person in space, all so the broadcaster could boost its TV ratings. The winner was Toyohiro Akiyama, a journalist, and only by default: camerawoman Ryoko Kikuchi was the original pick, but she got appendicitis a week before launch. Akiyama trained at Russia's Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and flew to Mir aboard Soyuz TM-11 on 2 December 1990, becoming both the first Japanese person in space and the subject of history's first commercially sponsored spaceflight (the Soyuz itself was covered in TBS and other Japanese company logos). He gave live daily reports from orbit, making him the first journalist to broadcast from space too. Akiyama suffered badly from space sickness, with his fellow cosmonauts later saying they'd "never seen a man vomit that much". He'd also smoked four packs a day before training forced him to quit, and when asked before launch what he was most looking forward to about returning to Earth, he said, simply, "I can't wait to have a smoke." TBS's ratings gamble didn't pay off either: viewership dipped by midweek, and the company reportedly lost $7.4 million on a mission that cost somewhere between $12 million and $37 million, depending on the report. Akiyama came home just over a week later aboard Soyuz TM-10, having earned a rather blunter nickname than "hero": the first antihero in space.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/A7BwumYr) [Concrete window seat with a white cushion and draped blanket overlooks a lush garden and neighboring timber house.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) [Concrete bathroom with a white bathtub, wall-mounted shower, skylight, and warm wood cabinetry.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) [Summer house interior with exposed stone walls, plywood cabinetry, a concrete counter, sink, and bathtub.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) [Interior of a converted stone summer house with dark textured walls, a concrete bench, and a daybed beside an open window overlooking greenery.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) [Summer House](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) [Panoši Újezd, Czech Republic](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9H6F3NkU) Data [US map showing the share of adults born in their state: highest in Louisiana at 74% and lowest in Nevada at 17%.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vw4eLJv4) [74% of Louisiana's adult residents were born there, compared with 17% in Nevada](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vw4eLJv4) [74% of Louisiana's adult residents were born there, the highest share of any US state in 2024, according to Census Bureau data. Michigan (72%) and Ohio (71%) come close behind, and most of the other high scorers cluster in the Midwest and South: Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama all sit at 62% or above. Among adults who never left their home state, 35% said staying near family was a key reason. Nationwide, 49% of adults, 133.7 million people, still live in the state where they were born, and the country splits almost evenly between states where most adults are locals and states where most aren't. Nevada sits at the opposite end, with just 17% of its adult residents born in-state, the lowest share in the country. That's less about people leaving lately and more about decades of arrivals piling up: Nevada's population grew 572% between 1970 and 2025, the biggest increase of any state, so most of today's adults simply moved there at some point rather than being born there. Florida tells a similar story at 25.8% (of its 18.9 million adult residents, only 4.9 million were Florida-born), and Arizona (29.5%), Colorado (31.9%), and Alaska (32.6%) round out the bottom five, shaped by retirees, job-seekers, and more recent growth spurts than the Midwest and South have seen.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vw4eLJv4) [Collage of vintage Paris buses, including an open-top tour bus near the Eiffel Tower and a driver inside a futuristic bus.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fQVYNrF2) [A vintage red-and-cream sightseeing bus carrying tourists beneath the Eiffel Tower, shown from two angles.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fQVYNrF2) [A vintage red-and-silver double-decker bus carrying passengers passes a lamppost on a Paris street at night.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fQVYNrF2) [Three futuristic red-and-silver double-decker buses line a Paris street, with historic buildings and trees behind them.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fQVYNrF2) [Citroen U55 Currus Cityrama tour bus that toured Paris in the 1950s](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fQVYNrF2) History [Two versions of an animated Hercules scene show the hero and companions facing a giant black boar in a stone courtyard.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TZG2Bqeb) [Disney’s films used to look different](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TZG2Bqeb) [Disney's animators painted and combined the image layers for Mulan on computers, using CAPS (a digital paint system Disney had Pixar build back in the '80s). But that wasn't the version that reached cinemas. Every finished frame was photographed off a cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor onto 35mm film, one frame at a time, then colour-corrected before anyone saw it in a theatre. Producer Don Hahn called this unavoidable: "you have to compromise when you go to film." For Mulan specifically, the effect was to mute the colours so they resembled Hans Bacher's concept art, itself inspired by traditional Chinese painting. On Beauty and the Beast, the same process turned a tunic the team had wanted "apple red" into something closer to rust. That's why the version of Mulan streaming on Disney+ today looks different from the one people saw in cinemas. Disney+ uses a direct transfer of the original CAPS files, skipping the film stage that used to be mandatory. Hahn likes the result, calling it "pristine," exactly as it looked on the animators' monitors while they were making it. But those monitor images were never meant to be the finished film. They were a working draft on the way to something else. So I’d argue the “authentic” streaming version is, in a real sense, the unfinished one, and the compromised, colour-corrected film print people actually paid to watch for decades is now the harder one to find.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TZG2Bqeb) [Source Library banner over an illustrated ancient map, promoting digitized Hermetic and esoteric texts translated for scholars, seekers, and AI.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/UhFMc3aq) [AI translation is unlocking Latin manuscripts](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/UhFMc3aq) The Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam (home to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, a collection of Hermetic and alchemical books) is using AI to translate its untranslated Latin manuscripts into English through Source Library. The project says it's building the world's largest open-access library of translated primary sources. Science [Four-step infographic: the striatum is isolated, neurons sorted into 31 subtypes, D1 and D2 outliers identified, and targeted treatments linked to opioid addiction and antidepressant response.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RjJt7bKU) [Atlas of the brain’s striatum could guide researchers to new drug treatments](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RjJt7bKU) MIT researchers sorted neurons (nerve cells) in the striatum (a brain region tied to movement, habit, and reward) into 31 subgroups based on their gene activity, building a map of different cell types and the genes they use. One group, called D1 outliers, showed high activity in genes linked to opioid addiction; another, called D2 outliers, showed high activity in genes that respond to antidepressants. That could give scientists specific cell types to investigate as drug targets instead of treating the whole region as one blob. [Two views show hands bending a transparent flexible sheet, with a laboratory hallway and cryogenic tank visible through it.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZHF3UiG5) [Engineers make transparent light-processing chips bendy enough to wrap around a small screw](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZHF3UiG5) MIT engineers bent a single silicon-photonics chip (which processes information using light) thousands of times round a cylinder as narrow as a small screw, with no drop in performance (it only started degrading when bent round something as thin as a toothpick). They did it by shaving a standard 300mm silicon wafer down to a flexible, see-through layer just a few microns thick. They used existing chip-manufacturing tools rather than one-off lab tricks, so the process could scale to things like curved augmented-reality displays in pilot visors or health sensors that flex with skin. [A pine cone and branch are shown with curved red-and-black layered strips and arrows illustrating adaptive material behavior.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RnvvqxZ9) [Researchers mix pine cone and wheat awn mechanics to build a new 3D-printed device that twists when heated](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RnvvqxZ9) Pine cone scales open and close in response to humidity, thanks to interactions at different levels of their structure, from cellulose fibres up to whole tissue layers. MIT researchers led by Lee Marom mapped that mechanism into mathematical “building blocks” using category theory (the maths of composing smaller systems into larger ones). They then mixed pieces from a pine cone's bending behaviour with the twisting behaviour of a wheat awn (a seed bristle) to fabricate a new actuator (a device that produces movement) that twists in response to heat, and it worked exactly as predicted, without any new design work. [Two CubeSats, one marked BOHR, are seen in orbit with Earth and clouds behind them.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TV6LhCYn) [A tiny satellite is testing whether tritium decay alone could one day power spacecraft](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TV6LhCYn) A tiny satellite called BOHR launched on 7 July aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, carrying a nuclear power source that never needs sunlight. It's called NanoTritium, built by City Labs, and it turns the beta particles thrown off by decaying tritium straight into electricity using a semiconductor (no heat conversion step like older nuclear designs). Right now BOHR still runs on solar panels while the tritium device is tested on the side (it currently produces only small amounts of electricity). City Labs hopes it could eventually provide power for places the sun barely reaches, like the permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's south pole that NASA's Artemis missions are targeting. [Renovated six-story pale green apartment building with many windows, viewed through leafless trees beside a playground and path.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Green-tiled apartment façade with rows of cream-framed windows and balconies; two people walk past the entrance.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [A blue-green tiled apartment building with balconies is partly obscured by large leafless trees and garden foliage.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Close-up of weathered green ceramic tiles covering a building facade and recessed entrance in Brussels.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Multi-story apartment building in Brussels with rows of windows and recessed balconies.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Multi-story apartment building with rows of windows and balconies, partly obscured by willow and other trees.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Rotiers (Cité Van Nerom) renovation](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) [Brussels, Belgium](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/5SXYZP3K) Random [An empty glass jar with a gold lid and a gold trophy symbol on its label.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/U4Ajo52c) [In 2010, the Royal Society of Chemistry offered £1 million to anyone who could produce the UK's first chemical-free product](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/U4Ajo52c) [The prize, announced in February 2010, was designed to be impossible to win: chief executive Dr Richard Pike just wanted someone to hand him a material that wasn't made of chemicals. The stunt was aimed at cosmetics marketing, after cosmetics-industry research found 52% of women and 37% of men said they actively sought out “chemical-free” products, despite everything we eat, drink, and wear being made of chemicals, natural or synthetic.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/U4Ajo52c) [Infographic linking a horse’s personality to housing, human interaction, time outdoors, and living alone or in a herd.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/bbw4fMot) [How we manage and engage with our horses shapes their personality](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/bbw4fMot) A University of Turku survey in which 2,257 owners rated 2,767 horses found that horses kept alone consistently scored lower on sociability with other horses than those living in pairs or herds. Horses owned by the same person for over ten years scored about 12% higher on sociability with people than those owned less than a year. Researcher Océane Liehrmann says the study can't prove causation: everyday choices, like housing and unstructured time with an owner, were linked to personality scores, but a horse's personality could also influence those choices. [Five glass ampoules labeled “VSMOW” lie in protective packaging, each containing a small amount of reference water.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QZU4DVuH) [The most official water you can buy costs $120,000 a gallon](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QZU4DVuH) A 5ml ampoule of the world's official reference water costs $159, which works out to about $120,000 per US gallon. It's called VSMOW (Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water), and it exists because not all H2O is identical: water made with heavier forms of hydrogen and oxygen atoms (called isotopes) freezes at a higher temperature, so scientists needed one exact, agreed-upon recipe for precise measurements, including thermometer calibration. Design [Three street scenes show modern designs with 21–22% support versus traditional designs with 76–78% support.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RsLqqBu5) [Most people prefer traditional architecture… except architects](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RsLqqBu5) [In 1979, the town of Metuchen, New Jersey, paid Rutgers University researchers to find out what locals actually thought of their own streets. The team took hundreds of photos of local buildings and asked residents to rate them at a public meeting. The results were consistent: people liked traditional, detailed, walkable streets with a small-town feel, and disliked blank, featureless buildings and wide, car-choked roads. That exercise became the first in what's now a small industry of “visual preference surveys” (studies that show people two buildings or streets and simply ask which they prefer), and the pattern keeps repeating. In every properly sampled survey run since the 1990s, across Britain, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Chile, over 60% of respondents have picked the traditional option over the modernist one, and some surveys put that figure above 85%. The preference barely shifts with age, gender, politics, class, or nationality. There's one group it does shift for, though. In a 1987 study, Cambridge undergraduate David Halpern (later a well-known behavioural psychologist) showed volunteer students photos of twelve buildings and asked them to rate how attractive each one was. Students from different subjects mostly agreed on which buildings looked best, except architecture students, whose rankings often ran in the opposite direction. One building came dead last with everyone else but placed second out of twelve among architecture students. So the main divide suggested by these studies isn't between different kinds of ordinary people, who broadly agree with each other across the backgrounds surveyed. It's between ordinary people and the professionals who design the buildings they end up living with.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RsLqqBu5) [“A design isn’t finished until someone is using it.”](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CUjECyJ8) [Brenda Laurel](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CUjECyJ8) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/rdVuQBqC) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/YF6vcYrA) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/NG2swGce)