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18 stories tagged ‘George Whitesides’
Using small explosions produced by a mix of methane and oxygen, researchers at Harvard have designed a soft robot that can leap as much as a foot in the air. That ability to jump could one day prove critical in allowing the robots to avoid obstacles during search and rescue operations.
In a new study of worm locomotion, researchers show that a single type of motor neuron drives an entire sensorimotor loop.
Having already broken new ground in robotics with the development, last year, of a class of “soft”, silicone-based robots based on creatures like squid and octopi, Harvard scientists are now working to create systems that would allow the robots to camouflage themselves, or stand out in their environment.
Smart suit improves physical endurance
Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering announced that it has received a $2.6 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a smart suit that helps improve physical endurance for soldiers in the field.
Changing the world, in under 9 minutes
The inaugural event “One Harvard: Lectures that Last” featured short talks by a dozen speakers representing Harvard’s graduate and professional Schools. The session was designed to reveal the crosscurrents of innovation that can flow from discipline to discipline, and to expose students to fresh ideas.
Incubator of Innovation – Innovation at Harvard
Medicine, business, politics....You never know where the spark of innovation may originate at Harvard.
Harvard Professor George Whitesides and his research team have developed an array of “soft” robots based on natural forms, including squids and starfish, that may one day be used to aid disaster recovery efforts by squeezing into the rubble left by an earthquake to locate survivors, or as a way to free up a surgeon’s hands in the operating room.
From oddities like breathable chocolate to history-making devices with profound societal effects, like the heart pacemaker, Harvard’s combination of questing minds, restless spirits, and intellectual seekers fosters creativity and innovation that’s finding an outlet in new inventions and companies.
It’s the ‘lab-on-a-chip’ model
With little more than a conventional photocopier and transparency film, anyone can build a functional microfluidic chip.
Living, breathing human lung-on-a-chip
Researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have created a device that mimics a living, breathing human lung on a microchip. The device, about the size of a rubber eraser, acts much like a lung in a human body and is made using human lung and blood vessel cells.
Gates on giving, getting, sharing
In a visit to Harvard, Microsoft’s Gates says that top minds need to focus on critical social problems — to find solutions.
Bringing new meaning to the term scientific paper
An insight from the labs of Harvard chemist George M. Whitesides and cell biologist Donald Ingber is likely to make a fundamental shift in how biologists grow and study cells – and it’s as cheap and easy as reaching for a paper towel. Ratmir Derda, a postdoctoral student co-mentored by Whitesides and Ingber at Harvard’s [...]
Taking a stride toward synthetic life
Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life’s workings. George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and member of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, reported the [...]
From overviews of landscapes to inner views of cells
The photographs are stunning abstracts that look as though they should be hung above a mantle or in a fine art gallery. But these aren’t primarily works of art; they are images of scientific phenomena. The images were made by Felice Frankel, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Initiative in Innovative Computing. Frankel brings [...]
Nanotechnology: Big issues from small stuff
Discoveries in nanotechnology could change the future. Where will such discoveries most likely to take place? Don’t assume it’ll be the United States, cautions Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry George Whitesides. Japan’s and Western Europe’s investments in nanotech R&D are on par with the United States, and China is coming up quickly. “We don’t yet know [...]
It’s called self-assembly, and essentially it’s the study of how tiny structures assemble themselves, such as happens in living organisms. At present, researchers who study self-assembly are working with nonliving or static devices. Professor George Whitesides’ team, for instance, oversaw the autonomous coming together of 1,500 tiny cubes of silicon on a surface smaller than [...]
Novel anthrax treatments explored
R. John Collier, Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School, has been working on anthrax toxin for 15 years. He started his research because he found the workings of the anthrax bacterium interesting from a biological point of view. The events of the fall of 2001, when anthrax-laced letters killed several [...]
A strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body
A Harvard Medical School research team has developed a strategy to neutralize anthrax toxin in the body. So far they have tried the treatment in rats. Normally, rats die within hours after being injected with anthrax toxin. But when the toxin was followed minutes later with an injection of an inhibiting agent known as a [...]
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