Tag Archives: MIT

Micromold technology: New technique for fabricating cells and tissues

News: Synthetic Biology    August 16, 2011
As they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Perhaps they should also say, there’s more than one way to make a cat skin. One of the key objectives of synthetic biology is to create materials that can imitate the functions of cells and tissues, like creating the building blocks of biological [...]
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New solar heat technology: Make electricity and hot water

News: Alternative Energy    May 3, 2011
Solar panels that directly capture energy from the sun and convert it into electrical energy are well known and recognized as a major source of alternative energy. Solar panels that make hot water are popular in some parts of the world (China, Europe, Brazil, India) and the technology is well known. Solar panels that use [...]
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The visual cortex can learn to do speech and language

News: Neuroscience    March 1, 2011
It’s been known for well over a century that different parts of the brain handle different tasks. This was certainly true for the autonomous functions, such as breathing and hormone activity, but it was also apparently true for higher level functions such as speech and language. Two regions of the brain, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s [...]
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A lasing germanium

News: Communications    February 5, 2010
Germanium, a semiconducting element, is not supposed to lase. That is, when it gets its electrons excited, they go flying off as heat – not light. So the conventional wisdom in microelectronic circles (and textbooks) is that germanium does not lase – and can’t be made to work in a laser. This was unfortunate, because [...]
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