Readers of the provocative bestseller “Capital in the 21st Century,” who want to take a closer look at the income database analyzed by economist and author Thomas Piketty can take advantage of a new online tool, Explorable Inequality, created by the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab.

Astrobotic Technology, a spinoff from Carnegie Mellon, has been selected as one of three companies that will partner with NASA to develop reliable and cost-effective lunar landing capabilities as part of the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown (CATALYST) initiative.

Timelapse, the project from Time magazine that uses Carnegie Mellon's GigaPan Time Machine technology to explore 30 years of Landsat imagery of Earth, has won the People's Choice Award for Best Use of Video or Moving Image in the 2014 Webby Award Competition. The Webbys are international awards for excellence on the Internet.

The robot-development skills of the Girls of Steel, a team of high-school-age girls from the Pittsburgh area, are being tested at the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship, April 23-26 in St. Louis, Mo. Several team members, however, already have put those skills to practical use in helping to build a robot for Autodesk, a leader in 3D design software.

Astrobotic Technology successfully tested the landing guidance system it will use to place a robot on the moon during a February test in the Mojave Desert aboard the Masten Aerospace Xombie, a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing suborbital rocket.

Like other scientists, astrophysicists first used computers as glorified calculators, but in the emerging era of Big Data, computers are poised to become true scientific partners. Automated tools being developed at Carnegie Mellon University in a new federally sponsored project could hasten that reality.

A high-power wall connector for Tesla electric cars has been installed for public use at Carnegie Mellon University’s Electric Garage in Oakland, joining eight existing vehicle recharging stations. The garage at 4621 Forbes Ave. will host an open house to celebrate the addition from 4 to 7 p.m., April 4.

Medrobotics Corp. has announced it will begin limited marketing in Europe of a robot-assisted surgical device that is based on the snake robot research of Howie Choset, Carnegie Mellon University professor of robotics. The Flex System is a flexible endoscopic system that enables surgeons to access and visualize hard-to-reach anatomical locations.

TIME magazine has employed the GigaPan technology developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab and NASA to produce a breathtaking panorama from atop the country’s newest and tallest skyscraper, One World Trade Center.

Carlow University has received a $205,000 grant commitment from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to establish a satellite on its campus of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab. The satellite will join three previously established CREATE Lab satellites at Marshall University, West Virginia University and West Liberty University in West Virginia.