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Making Steak out of Spinach: How bioengineering could change meat production

by George Touloumes figures by Brad Wierbowski Would you ever consider eating meat that was grown in a lab instead of raised on a farm? What if it were both healthier and more sustainable than conventional meat? Silicon Valley venture capital firms and major meat companies like Tyson Foods are now investing tens of millions of dollars in bioengineering research to produce exactly that kind … Continue reading Making Steak out of Spinach: How bioengineering could change meat production

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Sticky Light: Physicists discover new Photon Interactions

Light is made of little particles called photons that usually don’t interact. Imagine how strange it would be if the light from your window ricocheted off the light from computer screen! Our brains couldn’t make sense of these images and we’d be stuck in a blurry—albeit bright—world. Professors Vladan Vuletic and Mikhail Lukin, at MIT have made this mindbender a reality. By shining a weak laser … Continue reading Sticky Light: Physicists discover new Photon Interactions

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SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket Successfully

Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket launched successfully from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier this week. Musk, The SpaceX CEO, said that the chances of a successful launch might only be 50-50. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket since the Space Shuttle, and it lifted clear of its pad without incident on February 6, 2018. The aim was to send a car … Continue reading SpaceX Launches Falcon Heavy Rocket Successfully

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Achoo! Is Adenovirus making you sick this winter?

It’s the middle of February and flu season is in full swing. Perhaps you’ve already experienced the body aches, fever, and fatigue that signal the influenza virus. However, there is a chance that these same symptoms were not caused by the flu. A family of viruses called adenovirus is also making the rounds and resembles the flu. The adenovirus kills significantly fewer people than the … Continue reading Achoo! Is Adenovirus making you sick this winter?

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Edit Thyself: Biohacking in the age of CRISPR

by Patrick Griffin figures by Olivia Foster Wincing slightly, Josiah Zayner depressed the plunger of the syringe in his right hand. “This will modify my genes to give me bigger muscles,” he told the crowd—attendees of a biotechnology conference in San Francisco last October. They nervously laughed and then applauded, having witnessed the first instance of someone trying to edit their own genome using a … Continue reading Edit Thyself: Biohacking in the age of CRISPR

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The Circle of Lactate: How cancer cells can reuse their own waste

by Lara Roach figures by Aparna Nathan There are trillions of cells in the human body, and each one needs nutrient molecules they can convert into energy or useful chemicals to survive, grow, and divide. Cells can get their “fuel” from a variety of sources, but the most common is the sugar glucose, which is abundant in foods like fruit and honey. When cells transform … Continue reading The Circle of Lactate: How cancer cells can reuse their own waste

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Naked Mole Rats: An Exception to the Rule

Naked mole rats are a peculiar species in the animal kingdom for a number of reasons. These wrinkled rodents are immune to cancer, insensitive to pain, and capable of surviving for up to 18 minutes in zero-oxygen environments. Recently, researchers have discovered that in addition to these peculiarities, naked mole rats — unlike all other mammalian species — simply do not age. In 1825, British … Continue reading Naked Mole Rats: An Exception to the Rule

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A Freeway for Light: Topology Protects Lasers from Defects

If you want to admire the beauty behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics – topological phases of matter, take a course in topology, followed by graduate-level solid state physics. But if you ask for a concrete application of this topic, you now have an excellent example. Harnessing the concept of topology, scientists have engineered a new way to channel light in lasers. Originally a … Continue reading A Freeway for Light: Topology Protects Lasers from Defects

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Help me “photophoretic-trap volumetric displays.” You’re our only hope.

Anyone who has seen Star Wars envisions the future of visual displays as “holograms,” where 3D objects materialize out of light in thin air. However, anyone who has looked at a true hologram will likely have been disappointed at the reality.  Not only does the image not pop out in its full glorious 3-dimensions in front of you, but the object is typically only visible … Continue reading Help me “photophoretic-trap volumetric displays.” You’re our only hope.

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Monkey see, monkey do: scientists have created the first cloned primates

No, we won’t be seeing designer babies anytime soon. But scientists have successfully cloned monkeys for the first time, establishing a technique that could be used to create better disease models using primates, the closest animals to humans. These cloned monkeys, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, are alive and well in China. They were created using the same technology (somatic cell nuclear transfer) used to … Continue reading Monkey see, monkey do: scientists have created the first cloned primates

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