Robotic Plant Grows Roots
Plants could soon have robotic counterparts. Barbara Mazzolai from the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa and colleagues are creating a system that mimics the...
NEWS INDEX
Plastic from Grass
Nearly all the plastics sold today come from petroleum and aren’t biodegradable. But researchers at Metabolix in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are bioengineering switchgrass to produce a...
Glass Project for Blinds
Recent advances in optogenetics have opened the possibility of restoring light sensitivity to vision cells using a simple injection and gene-based therapy. But how can...
The first bionic eye to be approved for patients in the U.S. is getting software upgrades.
The FDA-approved Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System from Second Sight Medical Products transmits images from a small, eye-glass-mounted camera wirelessly to a microelectrode array implanted...
Micro-Machines for the Human Body
Tiny sensors and motors are everywhere, telling your smartphone screen to rotate and your camera to focus. Now, a team of researchers at Tel Aviv...
Scientists Visualize How Cancer Chromosome Abnormalities Form in Living Cells
For the first time, scientists have directly observed events that lead to the formation of a chromosome abnormality that is often found in cancer cells....
Wiring diagram of retinal neurons is first step toward mapping the human brain.
The human brain has 100 billion neurons, connected to each other in networks that allow us to interpret the world around us, plan for the...
Stanford’s bioengineering boot camp for high schoolers
High school students in a Stanford bioengineering boot camp tackled real-world projects, such as using sensors to ensure that surgeons don't accidentally leave pieces of...
Human Epigenomic Map Extended
Ten years ago, scientists announced the end of the Human Genome Project, the international attempt to learn which combination of four nucleotides—adenine, thymine, cytosine, and...
IBM Research reveals new silicon chip foundation inspired by the human brain
Scientists from IBM unveiled a software ecosystem designed for programming silicon chips that have an architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume...
Researchers find key signal that guides brain development
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have decoded an important molecular signal that guides the development of a key region of the brain known...
The temperature tastes just right to insects
Scientists discover previously unknown thermal sensor in insects linked to taste, smell.Call it the Goldilocks Principle — animals can survive and reproduce only if the...
Brain Molecule Regulating Human Emotion, Mood
A RIKEN research team has discovered an enzyme called Rines that regulates MAO-A, a major brain protein controlling emotion and mood. The enzyme is a...
World’s first lab-grown burger to be cooked and eaten
The world's first lab-grown burger is to be unveiled and eaten at a news conference in London on Monday. Scientists took cells from a cow...
Soft Robotic Devices Using Water-Based Gels
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating devices out of a water-based hydrogel material that can be patterned, folded...
