Lifeboat Foundation

Breaking the bacteria barriers.

If that field is at just the right magnitude, it will open up pores within the cell membrane, through which DNA can flow. But it can take scientists months or even years to figure out the exact electric field conditions to reversibly unlock a membrane’s pores.

A new microfluidic device developed by MIT engineers may help scientists quickly home in on the electric field “sweet spot” — the range of electric potentials that will harmlessly and temporarily open up membrane pores to let DNA in. In principle, the simple device could be used on any microorganism or cell, significantly speeding up the first step in genetic engineering.

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And act like nothing happened.

New research supports an old, more intuitive theory of how sub-atomic particles behave. Cathal O’Connell explains.

Good news for chocolate lovers: eating the sweet treat has been found to have a positive association with cognitive performance, according to a new study.

Published in the journal Appetite, researchers used data collected from a Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS), in which 968 people aged between 23 and 98 were measured for dietary intake and cardiovascular risk factors, as well as cognitive function.

The researchers found that regularly eating chocolate was significantly associated with cognitive function “irrespective of other dietary habits”.

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Thanks to “room-scale” VR, full-body gaming is coming. WIRED’s Peter Rubin tries out “Raw Data,” a first-person shooter that turns players into jumping, shooting, crouching, katana-slicing action heroes. Your living room will never be the same again.

Your smartwatch screen may soon be rather more impressive: This 4.7-inch organic LCD display is flexible enough to wrap right around a wrist.

Produced by FlexEnable from the UK, the screen squeezes a full-color organic LCD onto a sheet that measures just one hundredth of an inch thick, which makes it highly conformable. The company claims that it can easily run vivid colour and smooth video content, which is a sight better than most wearables.

It’s not the first flexible display, of course. LG already has an 18-inch OLED panel that has enough flexibility to roll into a tube that’s an inch across. But this concept—which, sadly, is all it is right now—is the first large, conformable OLCD designed for wearables that we’ve seen.

Continue reading “This 4.7-Inch Organic LCD Wraps Right Around Your Wrist” »

We’ve just wrapped up the second day of Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile technology conference in Barcelona. We’ve seen smartphones, VR headsets, and some batshit crazy stuff (see photo above)—and almost all of it has been awesome. Here are some of our favorites:

UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, have developed a 3D printing process for creating basic electronic components, such as resistors, inductors, capacitors, and integrated wireless electrical sensing systems.

As a test, they printed a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detected signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.

New technology could take us to Mars in as fast as 3 days.