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Tag Archives: innovation

What Is a Hackerspace?

Hard to say exactly, but “you know when you’re in one,” says Mitch Altman of Noisebridge in San Francisco’s Mission District. They have one rule: Be excellent to each other. Video by KQED Quest, via Boing Boing.

The Mars Shot

Emergent Playground Architecture

My friend Erin at the Cooper-Hewitt museum recently showed me a video about this collaboration between nonprofit playground builder Kaboom and architect David Rockwell, called the Imagination Playground. Got a bunch of press last fall, which I somehow missed. But this system of “loose parts” for kids play looks great. Official kits are kinda pricey, […]

Visible Results: 2009 iGem Roundup

In its sixth year, iGem certainly looks like a viable colony, actively self-replicating. Once containable within the disorienting confines of the Stata Center, the event is now a sprawling, all-over-campus thing. With more than 100 teams and some 1,700 participants, this year’s competition took over lecture halls in five separate buildings clustered along “iGem Lane.” […]

American Ingenuity

I just love Maria Kalman’s work. Love. This  … I don’t know what you call it — a graphic editorial? — manages to provide a succinct and compelling biography of Benjamin Franklin and say something important about the nature of American ingenuity not to mention the path to personal fulfillment. And it’s also just really […]

Bonnie Bassler on the Social Life of Bacteria

In this recently posted footage from the TED Conference in February, Princeton University professor and MacArthur fellow Bonnie Bassler offers a compelling introduction to the cutting edge of molecular biology. Bessler is probably most famous for uncovering the mechanism that bacteria use to communicate via chemical messages, called “quorum sensing.” Bacteria aren’t simple, lonely, isolated […]

iGem on Lehrer News Hour; Sloan Foundation Grants to Study SynBio “Societal Issues”

Just found video of the segment on synthetic biology and iGem. Also, from the website of Medical Technology Business Technology Europe, news that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is launching an initiative to study the societal issues associated with synthetic biology, now that the focus is shifting from merely reading the genetic code to writing […]

iGEM 2008 Winners

Results are in. Go, Slovenia! Here’s a good early piece on the subject of synthetic biology and MIT’s resident former MIT, now Stanford-based synbio guru Drew Endy, a pioneer in the field. And a followup story, from earlier this year.

iGEM 2008 at MIT

I spent an eye-opening day at MIT on Saturday, attending the iGEM Jamboree, a competition for undergrads from schools around the world who are working in the emerging field of synthetic biology. I don’t pretend to be an expert AT ALL on this, but I am blown away by what these kids are doing — […]