ICYMI: Fire-starting drone, Stanford bird studies and more

Today on In Case You Missed It: A prototype for a fire-starting drone was deployed in Nebraska last week, dropping small balls of accelerant to create a controlled burn over grasslands. The idea is that future firefighters could use UAVs like the University of Nebraska-Lincoln model to stop an out of control wildfire with drone-created fire breaks, or for other uses.

Stanford engineers are also getting in on the UAV action, but in the most Earth Mother of ways. They've just built a one of a kind wind tunnel and are putting birds through their (voluntary, working for food) paces in it, using slow motion cameras to track how their wings automatically adjust. The end goal of the study is to design better drones, based on what the birds automatically do in the wind.

And Shell has designed a city-car concept that would be all gas, but get 107 miles a gallon.

If you've recently gotten a VR headset, you'll enjoy this amazing video making the rounds. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.