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Cyborg ray made of rat cells is driven by light
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Cyborg ray made of rat cells is driven by light
“There’s something about this perfect storm of identity politics plus the internet,” she says. “What the post-truth era allows is for politicians to get away with it with no consequence,” says Rabin-Havt. It’s all just part of politics – but the the web speeds everything up. Even if the truth is more of a hard sell than ever, Binkowski says it’s worth it if snopes.com’s efforts to set the record straight reach just 1 per cent of people. Kiely at FactCheck hasn’t lost hope either. “We’re seeing huge spikes in our traffic,” he says. n
only just beginning to learn how to use living cells as a material, which is a challenge because they need specific conditions to stay alive. Previously, Parker was part of a team that made a cyborg jellyfish, also using heart tissue – but it was much less complex. However, Parker’s ultimate goal is not to build living robots. Rather, these creations are a way for him to better understand the workings of muscular pumps and heart disease. “My real interest is in building a heart,” says Parker. He has also been involved
“The artificial stingray is a living machine – we are starting to learn how to use cells as a material” in building mini-organs, which could ultimately be wired up to create a “human on a chip”. Hanno Meyer from Bielefeld University in Germany, who also makes bio-inspired robots, thinks the cyborg ray is a good example of how to create a simple model of a life form that can interact with its environment. “The combination of artificial and living parts provides insight into creating a durable bio-hybrid system, which could be relevant when creating new brain-machine interfaces,” he says. Sandrine Ceurstemont n Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach
regardless of whether it will eventually prove unfounded (see also “Trumping reason”, page 18). “Trump, for example, consistently says things that are demonstrably untrue and then takes them back,” she says. “He is getting people to believe things and relying on them to forget that he, or someone else, may correct it later on,” says Shaw. What’s more, any sharing of the results of fact-checking typically lags the misinformation by 10 to 20 hours, according to a recent study by Chengcheng Shao at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, China, and colleagues. Still, there are those who challenge the idea that online media has dramatically sidelined truth from politics. After all, the popularity of conspiracy theories is nothing new.
THEY’VE created a monster! Or at least a coin-sized cyborg stingray made from rat heart cells that can be controlled underwater using light. Designed by Kevin Kit Parker from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and his team, the 16-millimetre-long soft robot has a gold skeleton overlaid with a flexible polymer. Its muscles are made up of about 200,000 rat heart cells laid down in layers. “My building material is alive,” says Parker. To get the tiny robot to move, the team tweaked the rat-cell genes to make them light-sensitive. When exposed to light, the cells contract and the layers act as a kind of pump, pushing down on the skeleton so that the tiny robot can mimic the movements of a real stingray. “We kind of cheated compared to what nature does but it works,” says Parker. Shining specific frequencies on the robot causes a wave of contractions to spread down its body, making it undulate, and different –What will you trumpet today?– frequencies make it move at different speeds. Shining light on one side of its “Many of the same things were body just before the other allows it to turn. Controlled by light in this way, happening before Facebook,” the robot successfully swam through says David Lazer, a computer and political scientist at Northeastern an obstacle course. The artificial stingray is a living University in Boston. “I have not machine, but Parker says that more seen a compelling answer to complex robots made from living whether this has really changed.” tissue are still a long way off. We are Binkowski thinks otherwise.
–Little ray of light– 16 July 2016 | NewScientist | 21
Cyborg ray made of rat cells is driven by light
“There’s something about this perfect storm of identity politics plus the internet,” she says. “What the post-truth era allows is for politicians to get away with it with no consequence,” says Rabin-Havt. It’s all just part of politics – but the the web speeds everything up. Even if the truth is more of a hard sell than ever, Binkowski says it’s worth it if snopes.com’s efforts to set the record straight reach just 1 per cent of people. Kiely at FactCheck hasn’t lost hope either. “We’re seeing huge spikes in our traffic,” he says. n
only just beginning to learn how to use living cells as a material, which is a challenge because they need specific conditions to stay alive. Previously, Parker was part of a team that made a cyborg jellyfish, also using heart tissue – but it was much less complex. However, Parker’s ultimate goal is not to build living robots. Rather, these creations are a way for him to better understand the workings of muscular pumps and heart disease. “My real interest is in building a heart,” says Parker. He has also been involved
“The artificial stingray is a living machine – we are starting to learn how to use cells as a material” in building mini-organs, which could ultimately be wired up to create a “human on a chip”. Hanno Meyer from Bielefeld University in Germany, who also makes bio-inspired robots, thinks the cyborg ray is a good example of how to create a simple model of a life form that can interact with its environment. “The combination of artificial and living parts provides insight into creating a durable bio-hybrid system, which could be relevant when creating new brain-machine interfaces,” he says. Sandrine Ceurstemont n Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach
regardless of whether it will eventually prove unfounded (see also “Trumping reason”, page 18). “Trump, for example, consistently says things that are demonstrably untrue and then takes them back,” she says. “He is getting people to believe things and relying on them to forget that he, or someone else, may correct it later on,” says Shaw. What’s more, any sharing of the results of fact-checking typically lags the misinformation by 10 to 20 hours, according to a recent study by Chengcheng Shao at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, China, and colleagues. Still, there are those who challenge the idea that online media has dramatically sidelined truth from politics. After all, the popularity of conspiracy theories is nothing new.
THEY’VE created a monster! Or at least a coin-sized cyborg stingray made from rat heart cells that can be controlled underwater using light. Designed by Kevin Kit Parker from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and his team, the 16-millimetre-long soft robot has a gold skeleton overlaid with a flexible polymer. Its muscles are made up of about 200,000 rat heart cells laid down in layers. “My building material is alive,” says Parker. To get the tiny robot to move, the team tweaked the rat-cell genes to make them light-sensitive. When exposed to light, the cells contract and the layers act as a kind of pump, pushing down on the skeleton so that the tiny robot can mimic the movements of a real stingray. “We kind of cheated compared to what nature does but it works,” says Parker. Shining specific frequencies on the robot causes a wave of contractions to spread down its body, making it undulate, and different –What will you trumpet today?– frequencies make it move at different speeds. Shining light on one side of its “Many of the same things were body just before the other allows it to turn. Controlled by light in this way, happening before Facebook,” the robot successfully swam through says David Lazer, a computer and political scientist at Northeastern an obstacle course. The artificial stingray is a living University in Boston. “I have not machine, but Parker says that more seen a compelling answer to complex robots made from living whether this has really changed.” tissue are still a long way off. We are Binkowski thinks otherwise.
–Little ray of light– 16 July 2016 | NewScientist | 21