links for 2009-04-28

"Direct synthesis of genes is rapidly becoming the most efficient way to make functional genetic constructs and enables applications such as codon optimization, RNAi resistant genes and protein engineering. Here we introduce a software tool that drastically facilitates the design of synthetic genes."

"On February 4, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group were the talk of TED2009 when Pattie demo’d their Sixth Sense technology. The technology was developed on hardware available today. The total hardware cost was around $350. The system gives the user fast access to a wealth of information."