MIT Battling Cancer Cells With DNA-coated Nanotubes!

At MIT researchers have figured out a way to coat carbon nanotubes with bespoke DNA strands. The DNA-coated 'tubes react differently when they make contact with healthy or cancerous cells, allowing doctors to determine if the chemotherapy is being effective.

So, a minute chunk of basic carbon, mated with a minute chunk of basic human = cancer fighting detecto-bot.

What a miraculous union of humanity and technology!

"We've made a sensor that can be placed in living cells, healthy or malignant, and actually detect several different classes of molecules that damage DNA," said Michael Strano, associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT."

Science! Epic win!

Here is an article from computerworld with more intel.

Lecturefox

A lot of top-tier schools are making their courses available online nowadays.
Lecturefox has done us all a mitzvah and organized them all in one place.

Wanna learn about "Advancements in Underwater Vehicles" from MIT? Go right ahead!
"Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics" from Yale? All yours.
"Consciousness and the Brain" from Vanderbilt? Can can.

The site is a bit beta right now, but will no doubt grow and improve.

Go learn something new @ Lecturefox.

Brian Neltner and His Ultraluminous LEDs

Brian Neltner, you've got the goods.

Who is Brian Neltner?

Well, according to his site:
"Brian Neltner is a third year graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. His research involves using viruses to biotemplate catalysts suitable for converting ethanol into hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide." Sweet.

He's a blackbelt in Karate, electronic music composer, teaches at MIT on the side. A good guy.

He did something the other day that SuperForest is really down with, namely, he shared.

According to Gibbs-Duhem on Slashdot: "He's designed custom LED light fixtures which are seven times brighter than the closest similar commercial models, and include colors which can't be reproduced by a normal RGB cluster."

So Brian designed a very bright, super energy efficient light, that looked better than anything commercially available, could reproduce colors much more faithfully, and was essentially seven times better than every other LED lamp, and what did he do?...

He put the whole thing online.

Schematics, plans, parts list. He put everything up for anyone who wanted it. Free of charge. All here on his site: Ultraluminous LEDs

A generous gift, selflessly made.

Bravo, Sir!

As we said before, Brian Neltner, you've got the goods.

You get the SuperForest Good Person award!

Neil Gershenfeld @ TED

Personal Fabrication = What you want, when and where you want it.

An amazing TED talk about the present of technology from Neil Gershenfeld.