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Sep 14, 2019

Meet the 8 Tech Titans Investing in Synthetic Biology

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, computing, food, sustainability

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Bill Gates wrote this in 1995, long before synthetic biology – a scientific discipline focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA – was being harnessed to program living cells. Today, the cost to order a custom DNA sequence has fallen faster than Moore’s law; perhaps that’s why the Microsoft founder is turning a significant part of his attention, and wallet, towards this exciting field.

Bill Gates is not the only tech founder billionaire that sees a parallel between bits and biology, either. Many other tech founders – the same people that made their money programming 1s and 0s – are now investing in biotech founders poised to make their own fortunes by programming A’s, T’s, G’s and C’s.

The industry has raised more than $12.3B in the last 10 years and last year, 98 synthetic biology companies collectively raised $3.8 billion, compared to just under $400 million total invested less than a decade ago. Synthetic biology companies are disrupting nearly every industry, from agriculture to medicine to cell-based meats. Engineered microorganisms are even being used to produce more sustainable fabrics and manufacture biofuels from recycled carbon emissions.

Sep 14, 2019

This psychologist is making the world’s compassion surplus a powerful tool

Posted by in category: futurism

Life.


Making the world kinder.

🔎 Learn more about this year’s Technology Pioneers: https://wef.ch/2xlRxOX

Sep 14, 2019

MIT Breakthrough: New Aerogel Creates Passive Heat From Sunlight

Posted by in categories: energy, innovation

Life.


MIT has created this new aerogel which can produce large amounts of heat just from sunlight and could heat buildings free of electricity and fossil fuels.

Sep 14, 2019

Scientists Develop Gel That Can Regrow Tooth Enamel

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, materials

Lifeb.


Once tooth enamel breaks or wears away it’s over – it doesn’t grow back. That’s why dentists have to plug in the gaps with artificial fillings. But now, a team of scientists from China’s Zhejiang University and Jiujiang Research Institute says it has finally figured out how to regrow tooth enamel, a development that could totally upend dental care. The team developed a gel that has been found to help mouse teeth regrow enamel within 48 hours. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

parts of the tooth
What exactly is enamel and why can’t it regrow? It is a mineralized substance with a highly complicated structure that covers the surface of teeth. The structure is made up of enamel rods interwoven with inter-rods in a fish scale pattern which makes it the hardest tissue in the human body. It is initially formed biologically but once mature it becomes acellular, meaning it becomes devoid of the ability to self-repair. This is why cavities (tooth decay) are one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in humans.

Continue reading “Scientists Develop Gel That Can Regrow Tooth Enamel” »

Sep 14, 2019

Unique water-filled headphones

Posted by in category: futurism

These water-filled headphones will bring new meaning to ‘soundwaves.’

Sep 14, 2019

China’s is building a supersonic train

Posted by in category: transportation

China is building a supersonic train.

Sep 14, 2019

The self-healing car!

Posted by in categories: business, transportation

Watch what happens when I scratch Brent Rivera ‘s car…! It heals itself because of the SunTek Window Film Paint Protection Film it has on it. Highly recommend these guys! They use 3D scanning tech and also have the biggest film in the business which means no seam lines. Hit them up if you want your car to look like new for years and years… SunTekfilm & Envious Detailing.

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Sep 14, 2019

Can this headpiece help you lose weight?

Posted by in category: health

The makers of this Star Trek-looking device say it can help you lose weight without diet or exercise.

Sep 14, 2019

The first observation of a stable torus of fluid’s resonance frequencies

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A team of researchers at Laroche Laboratory, Université Paris Diderot and Université de Lyon has recently collected the first measurements of the resonance frequencies of a stable torus of fluid. The method they used to collect these observations, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could enable the modeling of a variety of large-scale structures that transiently arise in vortex rings.

Vortex rings are torus-shaped vortexes that can appear in both liquids and gases in a variety of settings. In nature, there are several examples of these vortex rings, including underwater bubble rings produced by divers or dolphins, smoke rings, and blood rings in the human heart.

“Although it has been shown that the dynamics of a vortex ring are dominated by large-scale structures at its periphery, the mechanisms governing their appearance are not well understood, reflecting to a large extent the experimental difficulties in generating a stable liquid torus under well-controlled conditions,” Eric Falcon, one of the researchers who carried out the recent study, told Phys.org. “It is in this context that we wanted to make a fluid ring stable.”

Sep 14, 2019

Using an optical tweezer array of laser-cooled molecules to observe ground state collisions

Posted by in category: particle physics

A team of researchers from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found that they could use an optical tweezer array of laser-cooled molecules to observe ground state collisions between individual molecules. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their work with cooled calcium monofluoride molecules trapped by optical tweezers, and what they learned from their experiments. Svetlana Kotochigova, with Temple University, has published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work—she also gives an overview of the work being done with arrays of optical tweezers to better understand molecules in general.

As Kotochigova notes, the development of optical tweezers in the 1970s has led to groundbreaking science because it allows for studying atoms and at an unprecedented level of detail. Their work involves using to create a force that can hold extremely tiny objects in place as they are being studied. In more recent times, have grown in sophistication—they can now be used to manipulate arrays of molecules, which allows researchers to see what happens when they interact under very controlled conditions. As the researchers note, such arrays are typically chilled to keep their activity at a minimum as the molecules are being studied. In this new effort, the researchers chose to study arrays of cooled calcium monofluoride molecules because they have what the team describes as nearly diagonal Franck-Condon factors, which means they can be electronically excited by firing a laser at them, and then revert to an after emission.

In their work, the researchers created arrays of by diffracting a single beam into many smaller beams, each of which could be rearranged to suit their purposes in real time. In the initial state, an unknown number of molecules were trapped in the array. The team then used light to force collisions between the molecules, pushing some of them out of the array until they had the desired number in each tweezer. They report that in instances where there were just two molecules present, they were able to observe natural ultracold collisions—allowing a clear view of the action.