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Ginkgo Bioworks founders Jason Kelly PhD ’08, S.B. ’03 and Reshma Shetty PhD ’08 speak with Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner about the inspiration for and growth of the company, which is focused on manipulating genetic material to get living cells to perform new jobs. Shetty notes that the Ginkgo Bioworks team is “dedicated to making biology easier to engineer."
MIT researchers have developed a new robot with a tactile sensing finger that can find objects buried in sand or rice, reports Emmett Smith for Mashable. “The robot could eventually perform other underground duties like identifying buried cables or disarming bombs or land mines.”
An electric, autonomous boat developed by MIT researchers is being tested in the canals of Amsterdam as part of an effort to ease traffic, reports Aleksandar Furtula and Mike Corder for the AP. The Roboat project is aimed at developing “new ways of navigating the world’s waterways without a human hand at the wheel,” write Furtula and Corder. “The vessels are modular so they can be easily adapted for different purposes, carrying cargo or workers.”
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater writes that MIT researchers have developed a new robotic finger, dubbed the Digger Finger, that can sense and identify objects underground. “It’s a useful skill that could someday be deployed for landmines, finding underground cables and a variety of other tasks.”
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson writes that MIT researchers have developed a new light-sensitive paint, dubbed ChromoUpdate, that makes it easy for people to change the color and pattern on a variety of objects. Wilson notes there are a number of applications for ChromoUpdate, from testing out different colors on a product to “quickly projecting what is essentially data onto everyday objects could make smart homes even smarter, without the use of more screens in your house.”
MIT researchers are applying machine learning algorithms typically used for natural language processing to identify coronavirus variants, reports Brian Browdie for Quartz. “Besides being able to quantify the potential for mutations to escape, the research may pave the way for vaccines that broaden the body’s defenses against variants or that protect recipients against more than one virus, such as flu and the novel coronavirus, in a single shot,” writes Browdie.
Senior Research Scientist Stephanie Seneff co-authored an opinion piece for The Washington Post, which examines how the high level of herbicide chemicals found in Florida waterways is contributing to a record number of manatee deaths. “If we want to stop manatees from starving, we have to stop using this harmful chemical on our crops, on our lawns and in our waterways,” they conclude.
CSAIL researchers have developed a new material with embedded sensors that can track a person’s movement, reports Mashable. The clothing could “track things like posture or give feedback on how you’re walking.”
Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran spotlights how CSAIL researchers have crafted a new smart fabric embedded with sensors that can sense pressure from the person wearing it. “Sensors in this new material can be used to gather data about people’s posture and body movements,” writes Segran. “This could be useful in a variety of settings, including athletic training, monitoring the health of elderly patients, and identifying whether someone has fallen over.”
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights how MIT researchers have devised a neural network to help optimize sensor placement on soft robots to help give them a better picture of their environment.
Gizmodo reporter Victoria Song spotlights how CSAIL researchers have developed a new type of smart material that can measure movement. “The researchers have created a special type of fiber that can tell how a person is moving by sensing pressure and turning that pressure into electrical signals,” Song explains.
Forbes contributor Roslyn Layton spotlights a new paper by CSAIL researchers that explores the market for domain names. “The authors observe that the intellectual property associated with domain names and the value of DNS itself as embedded, reliable infrastructure,” writes Layton. “However, changing behavior is reducing the value and function of DNS by separating names from addresses.”
Graduate student Crystal Lee speaks with Slate reporter Rebecca Onion about a new study that illustrates how social media users have used data visualizations to argue against public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The biggest point of diversion is the focus on different metrics—on deaths, rather than cases,” says Lee. “They focus on a very small slice of the data. And even then, they contest metrics in ways I think are fundamentally misleading.”
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater are developing a new prototype for a robot that can transform from soft to hard. “Combining the two fields could go a ways toward building safer collaborative robots for interacting with human workers,” writes Heater.
The Economist spotlights how MIT researchers created a virtual technique to decipher the contents of a letter that was sealed 300 years ago. The letter was originally sealed by its sender using the historical practice of securing correspondence called letterlocking. The new virtual technique “seems to hold plenty of promise for future research into a fascinating historical practice.”