Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Congratulations to the Biobus and DIYBio NYC on being awarded the Editor’s Prize for their entry in the recent Maker Faire in New York City. Rather than experimental advances — though those may come — I think that in the near term where DIYBio can and will make a significant impact is through education, both […]
Nice slide, reposting from Boing Boing, a nice slide graphically explaining the scientific method, created by David Ng, a geneticist, science educator, part time writer, and faculty at the University of British Columbia.
Origami hang gliders soar on “wind” from your hands. More details here. At a recent science fair at my kid’s preschool, 4- and 5-year-olds were just as pleased with these super-easy paper “helicopters.” So much cheap/free science that kids are naturally excited about!
Know what the DIYbio crew is really good at? PR and marketing. This event today and tomorrow at UCLA — “Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio” — has the makings of historic significance, though. *This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Holiday Lectures for 2009, presented last week, introduced selected high school students to microbiologist Bonnie Bassler and Baldomero Olivera, an expert on poisonous snails, who discussed their seemingly esoteric studies and the powerful practical applications they are leading to. I’m a huge fan of Bonnie Bassler, a professor of molecular […]
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Life’s been too hectic lately to keep up with all the cool little synbio nuggets churned up by the Internet over the past couple of weeks. Just wanted to catch up with a few items I particularly enjoyed. First, this interview from Gizmodo with Michael Specter, who recently wrote a piece on synthetic biology in […]
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Some of the most contentious debates involving laypeople’s understanding of science hinge on the ability, or inability, to assess risk logically. From vaccines to genetically engineered foods to synthetic biology, when a technology is seen as having some risk, there is a tendency among certain people to simply label it “too risky.” Of course, doing […]