Science Market Update

It's getting to the point where there's less and less relevant distinction to be made between life science and physical science research. It was clearer when one lab had petri dishes and the other had circuitboards, but what happens when you have both? That's the case in the Harvard University labs of chemist Charles Lieber and his medical school colleague Daniel Kohane, where the bio research team has successfully created living tissue embedded with tiny nanowires capable of running an electrical current so subtle that it does not harm the tissue cells. These 3D bioelectronic structures could potentially both relay complex information about what's going on inside the tissue and receive signals from an outside source such as instructions for repairs. Several news outlets are calling it cyborg tissue and envision its future use in implants, prosthetics, or even some kind of therapeutic microbot. More immediately it will most likely be used for drug testing in labs, as a precursor to animal or human trials.

There's been a lot of news coming out of Chicago this week from the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Two announcements concerning prostate cancer research are especially worth broadcasting. An Ann Arbor pathologist, Arul M. Chinnaiyan, of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, will be leading a "dream team" of specialists from 5 of the top cancer research institutes in the world in a $10M, 3-year research project titled “Precision Therapy for Advanced Prostate Cancer.” The funding comes from AACR partner, Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), and the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF). Heading up the team with Dr. Chinnaiyan is Dr. Charles L. Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) undergraduate competition is an annual event sponsored by MIT that challenges teams of undergraduate scientists around the world to design and build novel biological systems from standardized "biological parts".  The 2011 Competition just wrapped up, with the World Championship Jamboree held at MIT over the weekend of Nov. 5-7. Sixty-five teams advanced to the Championships from the three Regional Competitions: the Americas, Asia, and Europe.  The Grand Prize was taken by the team from the University of Washington, in Seattle.

       The research involved in measuring infant cognitive ability over the past two decades has clearly demonstrated that babies only a few months old have a solid, basic grasp on the physicalities of the world. Now, MIT's Josh Tenenbaum has co-led a team of international researchers to explore how infants can use that knowledge to form incredibly surprising expectations of how certain new and unfamiliar situations will turn out.

In the world of everyday computer technology, we know that the adjective "smart" (as in smartphone) refers to a flexible system that performs a variety of tasks on demand.  My smartphone can be a camera, a calculator, a music player, a video chatting device, or an internet portal.  If it were intuitive, like the car I don't yet own, it would automatically adjust its suspension for varied terrain or steer itself back onto the road if I dozed, without even requiring my input to maintain my comfort and safety.