Plants and electronics frequently get along, but you don’t see electronics in plants — not surprisingly, it’s hard to insert circuitry without killing the host. Swedish scientists just overcame one of the biggest hurdles to creating these strange cyborgs, however. They’ve successfully made the key elements of an electronic circuit inside of a rose and light up ions inside the flower’s leaves. The trick was to insert a special polymer that … Read More → "Researchers create working electronics inside a rose"

The Food and Drug Administration has granted regulatory approval for genetically modified salmon, saying the “food from the fish is safe to eat.” It’s the first genetically modified animal to be approved for human consumption.

The fish in question is AquaAdvantage Salmon from AquaBounty Technologies. The company created its first batch of genetically modified fish in 1989 and sent over safety data to the FDA in 1995, according … Read More → "FDA names salmon the first genetically modified animal safe to eat"

Gordon Briggs and Matthias Scheutz, from Tufts University’s Human-Robot Interaction Lab, are trying to figure out how to develop mechanisms for robots to reject orders that it receives from humans, as long as the robots have a good enough excuse for doing so.

In linguistic theory, there’s this idea that if someone asks you to do something, whether or not you really understand what they want in a context … Read More → "Researchers teaching robots how to best reject orders from humans"

NASA wants to send its 6-foot-tall, 290-pound humanoid robot R5 (which also goes by the more intimidating name “Valkyrie”) to Mars and other extraterrestrial locations. The agency originally designed the R5 for search-and-rescue missions, though, so to prepare the machine for a future of exploration in harsh environments, it’s sending two units to college. One will go to MIT, specifically to the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the other to Northeastern … Read More → "NASA sends its Valkyrie humanoid robots to college"

The National Institutes of Health has announced that it’s bringing its chimpanzee testing programme to an entire halt, sending its 50 remaining primates to sanctuaries.

Nature reports that the NIH director Francis Collins announced to the agency earlier this week that the 50 chimpanzees that it owns will be retired. Meanwhile, other chimps that are supported by the NIH—though not directly owned by them—will also no longer be associated with the agency.
… Read More → "The NIH is retiring all of its research chimpanzees"

Synesthesia is a mix-up of sensory perception where stimulation of one sense leads to a stimulation of a second sense. This is the condition where Wednesdays can be blue, the best part of your favorite song can be orange, and six can be up and to the right of seventy-three. While you can’t teach yourself synesthesia – it’s something you’re born with – [Zachary] decided to emulate color … Read More → "Smell colors with a synesthesia mask"

Used to be that if you damaged your vocal cords and needed a new set, doctors would have to shoot you full of immunosuppressants to keep your body from rejecting the cadaver-sourced replacements. Not anymore. Researchers at University of Wisconsin Medical School have published a preliminary study in the journal Science Translational Medicine wherein they successfully cultured 170 sets of vocal cords in the lab. These organs do not require the course of immunosuppressants that conventional transplants  … Read More → "Doctors can now grow human vocal cords in a lab"

What was once the busiest freight port in the world recently held another freight hauling competition, but with a catch: all the boats were remote-controlled, had to fit in a 2’x2’x2′ box, and had to be 3D printed. The Red Hook Regatta was a race to see how many “shipping containers” (actually, brick sized pieces of foam) teams could ferry to “cranes” (guys with fishing poles dangling down from the pier) through the choppy waters … Read More → "3D printed boat race"

You shouldn’t believe everything you read—even if it’s a label inside a natural history museum. A new study from researchers at Oxford University and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh suggests that up to 50 percent of the specimens in their collections are labeled incorrectly.

When samples are sent to a natural history museum, they often arrive without a name. Even for biology experts, differentiating between certain insect or plant species can turn into … Read More → "Half of the world’s natural history specimens might be labeled wrong"

Data journalist Ilia Blinderman analyzed 10,000 Craigslist Missed Connections posts from Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Antonio, and San Diego during the month of January. He dug deep to figure out who posts—what cities they live in, how old they are, and what the gender breakdown is—when they post, and what words they use. He molded this data into a series of visualizations that reveals just how weird Missed Connections can be.</ … Read More → "The most common phrases in craigslist ‘Missed Connections’ posts, visualized"