The term DNA immediately calls to mind the double-stranded helix that contains all our genetic information. But the individual units of its two strands are pairs of molecules bonded with each other in a selective, complementary fashion. Turns out, one can take advantage of this pairing property to perform complex mathematical calculations, and this forms the basis of DNA computing. Since DNA has only two strands, performing even a simple calculation requires multiple chemical reactions using different sets of DNA. In most existing research, the DNA for each reaction are added manually, one by one, into a single reaction tube, which makes the process very cumbersome.

An international team of scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that could one day be used in a system to assess vascular diseases, which are characterised by the abnormal condition of blood vessels. The AI-powered platform combines machine learning and a specially-designed microfluidic chip with analysis of 2D video images of blood flow and the application of physical laws, to infer how blood flows in 3D. In tests, it accurately predicted blood flow characteristics such as speed, pressure, and shear stress, which is the stress exerted by the blood flow on the vessel wall. The ability to determine these characteristics accurately could be a critical support for clinicians in detecting and tracking the progression of vascular diseases since the abnormalities that the platform could spot (such as an abrupt change in speed or shear stress of blood flow) may indicate the presence or progression of a vascular disease. The platform and its proof-of-concept findings from the research team led by NTU President and Distinguished University Professor Subra Suresh, Brown Professor George Em Karniadakis, and MIT Principal Research Scientist and NTU Visiting Professor Ming Dao are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on 22 March.

A robot has heard sounds through the ear of a dead locust in a world's first experiment that uses the Ear-on-a-Chip method to create a long-lasting sensory device. A team from Tel Aviv University announced their new'Ear-bot' that replaces an electronic microphone in a bio-hybrid robot with the insect's ear, allowing the machine to receive electrical signals from the environment and respond accordingly. The result is extraordinary, according to researchers, as when they clap once, the dead insect's ear hears the sound, the robot interprets the pulse and moves forward. Although the experiment seems bizarre, the team conducted the test to understand how biological systems, specifically sensory ones, can be more integrated into mechanical systems. To create the Ear-on-a-Chip, the team placed the insect's ear and nerve in an aquatic environment that allowed air and sound to flow through.

Reproducibility of experimental results is a cornerstone of biology research. Today, many of these experiments are done using automated machines such as robots and microfluidic chips However, published reports about the work explain the experimentation method in plain English, which must be interpreted by other groups to reproduce the experiment. Biological protocols give a recipe for a biological experiment. Ideally, we would like these protocols to be specified rigorously and precisely. Once we do that, we are a step away from automation, reproducibility, and also repurposing.

The "octobot" is a squishy little robot that fits in the palm of your hand and looks like something in a goody bag from a child's birthday party. But despite its quirky name and diminutive size, this bot represents an astonishing advance in robotics. According to the Harvard researchers who created it, it's the first soft robot that is completely self-contained. It has no hard electronic components--no batteries or computer chips--and moves without being tethered to a computer. The octobot is basically a pneumatic tube with a very cute exterior.

According to the Harvard researchers who created it, it's the first soft robot that is completely self-contained. It has no hard electronic components--no batteries or computer chips--and moves without being tethered to a computer. The alternating release of gas is what makes the bot do what looks like a little dance, wiggling its tentacles up and down and moving around in the process. The octobot can move for about eight minutes on one milliliter of fuel. So how do you even build something like this? "You have to make all the parts yourself," says Ryan Truby, a graduate student in Jennifer Lewis's lab at Harvard, where the materials half of this research is taking place.