Category Archives: High-tech
Cells as living calculators
Anne Trafton, MIT News Office
MIT engineers have transformed bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide, and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts.
Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing genetic “parts,” or engineered genes, in novel ways.
The circuits perform those calculations in an analog fashion by exploiting natural biochemical functions that are already present in the cell rather than by reinventing them with digital logic, thus making them more efficient than the digital circuits pursued by most synthetic biologists, according to Rahul Sarpeshkar and Timothy Lu, the two senior authors on the paper, describing the circuits in the May 15 online edition of Nature.
“In analog you compute on a continuous set of numbers, which means it’s not just black and white, it’s gray as well,” says Sarpeshkar, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and the head of the Analog Circuits and Biological Systems group at MIT
New microbatteries a boost for electronics
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Though they be but little, they are fierce. The most powerful batteries on the planet are only a few millimeters in size, yet they pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye.
Developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the new microbatteries out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.
Biological computer closer due to DNA transistor
Finding could lead to new biodegradable devices based on living cells that are capable of detecting changes in the environment
Scientists believe they are close to building the first truly biological computer made from the organic molecules of life and capable of working within the living cells of organisms ranging from microbes to man.
The researchers said that they have made a transistor – the critical switch at the heart of all computers – from DNA and RNA, the two biological molecules that store the information necessary for living things to replicate and grow.
The First Honest Cable Company – YouTube
Very true!!!!
