GBH interviews a Brigham and Women's doctor involved in a trial of Pfizer's flu vaccine, which like its Covid-19 shots, would involve lab-built RNA designed to stimulate an immune response, a technique that could speed delivery of new vaccines.
The Supreme Judicial Court concluded today that "electrons" stored at a Cambridge data center and used to assemble Web pages and feed apps for a California auto-parts retailer do not mean the retailer has a "physical presence" in Massachusetts. Read more.
Pfizer and its German partner today filed a counter claim against Moderna's patent-infringement suit over Covid-19 vaccines, saying that not only didn't they use Moderna's patented technology to develop their own Covid-19 vaccine, they're not a bunch of greedy money-grubbers seeking to re-write the history of mRNA technology - which they say started long before Moderna even existed. Read more.
A couple of guys from Brockton and Rockport were sentenced to federal prison today for a phone-based hacking scheme to steal people's social-media accounts and then use those to grab some cryptocurrency. Read more.
The tray would be empty if the pipette tips of the previous batch met specs, Ginkgo charges.
A South Boston life-sciences company that relies on robotic systems to squirt small amounts of things into tiny containers is suing a company that sold it $3.3 million worth of pipette tips it says kept making its robots stop working. Read more.
Stat reports that researchers at BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories on Albany Street- designed to study killer microorganisms - grafted the spike of an omicron variant of the virus onto one of the OG strains from Wuhan to see whether something on the spike was changing the virus's virulence. Read more.
Jared spotted this guy with his new droid heading over to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters, um, walking in Sullivan Square with his Piaggio Gita robot.
The Boston Dynamics AI Institute, named for the robotics company Hyundai is the majority owner of, has set up shop on Broadway. Read more.
Researchers intrigued by the way fireflies signal each other at night have built robotic analogs the weight of paperclips, MIT News reports.
The tiny artificial muscles that control the robots’ wings emit colored light during flight.
This electroluminescence could enable the robots to communicate with each other. If sent on a search-and-rescue mission into a collapsed building, for instance, a robot that finds survivors could use lights to signal others and call for help.
The Harvard Gazette reports a global shortage of helium, caused in large part by sanctions on Russia, which ships much of the world's supply, is beginning to affect research in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and medical research, all of which use the gas to cool things down to temperatures way, way below freezing. Read more.
A Riverside Line trolley had some pantograph performance issues in the tunnel between Haymarket and Government Center shortly before midnight. Not long after, Transit Police reported numerous drunk young men running on the tracks from Government Center to Park after one train was evacuated to Government Center. Before the dead train was emptied, Charles reported:
A bunch of fellas are yelling at each other and I think they’re about to do the Good Will Hunting bar scene.
MassLive reports a robot named "Alfred" is now working as a sous-chef at Bonapita, a pita place in the Star Market strip mall on Spring Street in West Roxbury. No word if he gets paid in cans of motor oil.
They did it, of course, for science: MIT News reports physics students who puzzled over why the cream in an Oreo tends to stick to just one wafer when you unscrew it not only developed a device to apply different amounts of force to the unscrewing process but realized they had a good experiment for hands-on rheology: "The study of how a non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise stressed." Read more
The Supreme Judicial Court today set out ways that police can subpoena tens of thousands of cell-phone records to try to link specific phone calls to crimes, in a case in which they used the technique to connect a Canton man to the murder of Jose Luis Phinn Williams at a Dorchester gas station and to a series of other similar, if less deadly, robberies that year in Mattapan, Canton and Cambridge. Read more.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Suffolk County prosecutors can use as evidence a gun seized from a Roxbury man after a gang-unit officer watched him in a Snapchat video displaying the weapon. Read more.
The Boston City Council agreed today to look at creating a public alternative to private broadband providers, saying events of the past couple of years have proved broadband has become a necessity that private business may be unwilling to provide at a price that all residents can afford. Read more.
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