Inventions

MIT engineers have taken one step forward to the realm of sci-fi gadgets, transforming bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide, and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts. Using cells as analog circuits Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing [...]

Conveyor belts are a near ubiquitous facet of life in the developed world. Whether one finds them in our factories and airports, or in smaller commercial applications such as in the local sushi bar or escalators at the mall, they are an integral part of our technological society. With such widespread usage of the technology fueled by [...]

It may be a little off to talk about invisibility when we’re not even in the visible spectrum, but ‘invisibility cloak‘ sounds just to awesome not to use it. Using a new kind of cloak that uses a very thin multilayer dielectric coating made of natural material (as opposed to metamaterials which are often used), [...]

If you still don’t know what graphene is, you’d better learn pretty soon – because it’s the stuff of the future. Graphene is a substance composed of pure carbon, with atoms arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern similar to graphite, but in a one-atom thick sheet. Ok, so what’s so special about it? Well, due [...]

A few months ago, we were telling you about the mind boggling properties the new material called graphene has, and how practical uses will not take long to follow. Apparently, things moved even faster than we expected them – Berkeley researchers have created the first ever graphene audio speaker: an earphone. Their quality, even in [...]

3D printing is the stuff of the future – today. It’s one of the most stunning pieces of relatively accessible technology; most notably in medicine, the precision offered by 3-D printing can make tiny surface details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow the bone to attach more easily. In [...]

Your smartphone amateur photos could be instantly converted into professional-looking pictures at the touch of a button, thanks to a chip developed by MIT researchers. The chip, built by a team at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory can perform a number of tasks, including creating a more realistic environment or enhanced lighting in a shot without [...]

MIT engineers have created genetic circuits in bacterial cells that not only perform logic functions, but also remember the results, encode them in the cell’s DNA and pass it on for generations to come. Biotechnology The circuits, which are described in Nature Biotechnology could have a swarm of appplications, most notably long-term environmental sensors, efficient [...]

I remember years ago, when I got my first computer – it had a storage capacity of 40 MB. A few years after that, I got a 1 GB hard drive, and nowadays, 1 TB is quite the standard – that’s a growth by a factor of about 250.000. However, data storage capacity has slowed [...]

Scientists have developed a new surface, which they call  ”superomniphobic”, that can repel virtually any liquid, even the most troublesome like blood or highly concentrated acids. Their findings brings us a step closer to manufacturing stain-proof, spill-proof clothing, protective garments and other products. Currently there is a wide range of clothing and garments that are water proof and offer protection [...]