The Ocean Alliance of Gloucester and Olin College of Needham have teamed up on a drone-based tool for taking vital signs from whales without shooting them with darts from loud motorboats. Read more.
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Technology
By adamg - 6/24/15 - 7:54 am
N. Anthony Coles, who recently returned to head up a biotech startup (based on work at MIT, natch), writes about the area's emergence as the world's leading innovation center in the field:
It has become an almost utopian community, where intellect knows no bounds, and science always trumps difficult disease treatment problems, cracking code after code to derive new state-of-the-art therapies with space-age technologies.
By adamg - 6/12/15 - 8:25 am
WBUR reports on work at Northeastern to deal with the fact that Lyme Disease often doesn't seem to completely die off after treatment with antibiotics: Researchers are looking at how to kill off the "persister" spores that can erupt back into infection after a patient is given a regular course of the drugs - by adding additional courses of medication over a period of time.
By adamg - 6/11/15 - 12:24 pm
The Boston Business Journal reports a Boston startup is getting ready to ship wristbands that you can use to give your self an electric shock every time you're about to do something you shouldn't - such as smoke a cigarette.
Pavlok's eponymous device can be set to supply as little as a "pinprick" or as much as 450 volts of searing electropain. The Journal reports interest is particularly strong among Norwegians, Brits and Germans.
By adamg - 6/8/15 - 8:20 am
Xconomy reports that Spero Therapeutics today announces a $30-million round of investments for its search to find new drugs to fight bacteria that have gained resistance to current antibiotics.
By adamg - 5/4/15 - 12:11 pm
CyPhy of Danvers, started by the co-founder of the equally local iRobot, today launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $250,000 for making drones it swears any idiot with a smartphone can fly.
By adamg - 4/28/15 - 2:49 pm
A BU spinoff that is selling panels in a centralized solar farm is suing crowdsourcing site Indiegogo after the site blocked its campaign, the Boston Business Journal reports.
CloudSolar had raised nearly $450,000 in pledges before Indiegogo decided to halt the campaign and refund all the money, the Journal reports.
By adamg - 4/18/15 - 12:49 am
Makezine reports MakerBot shut its three retail stores, including the one in Boston, and laid off 100 workers.
By adamg - 4/5/15 - 10:22 am
DronesX, a startup seeking to become the authoritative source on the burgeoning drone industry, is seeking a reporter to cover droney things in the Boston/Cambridge area. "Actors who look good on camera" eagerly sought, but they have to have reporting chops, too, and not be a human drone.
By adamg - 3/31/15 - 1:43 pm
City Councilor Michelle Wu breaks the news: On April 6, the City Council moves from RealPlayer streaming to YouTube streaming - and closed captioning - for its meetings and committee hearings.
By adamg - 3/25/15 - 12:05 am
@lmbbos @universalhub here's a video of it, for those who are curious. pic.twitter.com/YnA0wnJs9S
— Ryan miller (@Millllertime) March 25, 2015
Ryan Miller caught one of the two giant $1.5 million wind-turbine blades that turned up in Grove Hall on its way to Charlestown's Wind Turbine Testing Center, only the lead blade got stuck.
By adamg - 2/23/15 - 9:28 pm
Kara Pernice writes she is sick of a stupid gadget that thinks it's smarter than she is:
When I turned the dial to increase the heat to 66 degrees, rather than responding by making the house warmer, or by informing me that it is now working toward this, it read, "in 1 hour and 20 minutes 66 degrees until 10:00PM.” The next day the house temperature plummeted to a punishing 50 degrees (I realize I may be spoiled) for no reason I was privy to. Here, by the way, is another usability heuristic not heeded: visibility of system status.
By CopleyScott17 - 2/22/15 - 2:12 pm
My promotional deal with Comcast just expired and my bill jumped by a HUGE amount. My place is both Comcast- and RCN-ready, but before I switch to RCN, has anybody made the change? I'm just looking for HD/DVR TV, maybe HBO, plus high-speed internet services. Any thoughts/experiences/warnings would be most appreciated!
By adamg - 2/6/15 - 11:11 am
A Massachusetts man who says he's lucky to get five hours use out of a Lenovo laptop that promises nine hours of battery life is suing the manufacturer for the more than $5 million he says he and "hundreds of thousands" of other Lenovo users are owed for the allegedly deceptive advertising.
In a suit filed this week in US District Court in Boston, Orlando Medeiros said he never would have shelled out the extra money for the allegedly high-end Yoga 2 Pro if he knew the "up to nine hours" of advertised battery life was really closer to just four - even when he puts the computer in "power saver" mode. Also:
By adamg - 1/16/15 - 8:37 pm
President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say they will harness the collective geekpower of trans-Atlantic Cambridges in a bid to help squelch cybercrime. As MIT reports:
By adamg - 1/13/15 - 7:56 pm
In his State of the City address, Mayor Walsh said he plans to turn the Mayor's Hotline into an easier-to-remember 311 system, like Somerville and New York have.
Walsh added he will hire a "startup czar" to help entrepreneurs start new businesses in Boston, from the Innovation District to new neighborhood innovation centers.
He added the city is working on an app to let people use their phones to pay for parking spaces.
By adamg - 12/25/14 - 1:46 pm
Harvard professors are working on it. The idea of tanks of microbes making things isn't new - remember the giant tanks of Chinese hamster ovary cells along the Charles in Allston - but the Harvard boffins say they've figured out how to up the production of whatever 30fold:
By adamg - 12/18/14 - 7:53 am
Xconomy profiles CAMX Power, which is working to boost the power storage of lithium batteries. It's largely funded by Kenan Sahin, who made a bundle selling his eponymous software company to Lucent in 1999.
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