Cybernetic Venus flytrap anyone? MIT researchers create plants that are part machine, all awesome, and could one day even be turned into living gas detectors. Freelancer Michael Franco writes about ...

Popeye was right when it came to the health benefits of spinach, but that simple sailor man couldn’t have predicted this unorthodox use of the superfood. Researchers at MIT have found a way to use ...

MIT researchers have engineered a bionic plant that can detect explosives and send a warning signal – without wires! – to scientists nearby. Talk about spinach as superfood, Popeye! In a new paper in ...

MIT engineers have embedded carbon nanotubes into spinach leaves, transforming the plants into sensors that can communicate with human users. This application is among the first demonstrations of ...

Researchers at MIT have boosted the photosynthetic power of plants by a factor of three after injecting them with specialized nanoparticles. In the future, these biologically uplifted plants could be ...

From your childhood dinner table to “Popeye,” spinach has long had the image of a healthy superfood that will make you strong. Now it turns out, with a little scientific engineering, the vegetable ...

Bionic plants that can detect explosives in real time could be the future of environmental monitoring and urban farming, researchers said in a new study. The spinach plants have carbon-nanotube-based ...

A team of biologists and engineers want to turn plants into chemical warfare detectors that can sniff out sarin gas or explosives. For now, though, they've succeeded in turning the flowering ...

Leaves of light Instead of mobile phone towers and street lights, imagine a world where trees light our way at night and branches are antennae. This vision to harness plants as a source of energy has ...

Nanomaterials can enable plants with novel and augmented functions. This Arabidopsis plant with carbon nanotubes inside its leaves has augmented light energy capture and could act as a photonic ...