On March 7, 17-year-old high-school student Panna Felsen squared off against three stalwart competitors in the first-ever human-robot arm-wrestling match. Each of the robots was powered by a distinct variety of electroactive polymer, also known as artificial muscle. The contenders varied in size and shape, and their creators’ budgets ranged from $800 to roughly $250,000.

The competition was designed to promote the development of materials that could someday animate prosthetic limbs, shape-shifting airplane wings and a host of other devices.

Over the past two decades, up to 1 million head of cattle around the world have been infected with mad cow disease. Although fewer than 200 people have died from the human version, known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), it´s likely that hundreds of thousands of people have eaten mad-cow-contaminated meat.