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A robot designed to fight tunnel fires has been built in Italy. Mounted on a ceiling rail, the torpedo-shaped bot can patrol tunnels at up to 100 kilometres an hour, and uses infrared sensors to detect fires and aim its high-pressure water jets. Co-developer Bruno Siciliano at the University of Naples, says the work was prompted by the 1999 Mont Blanc tunnel fire in France, which killed 39 people.

A prosthetic hand has been made using just a glove, a piece of elastic and some chalk plaster powder. Rezia Molfino at the University of Genoa, Italy, designed the hand as…

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