A small city that boasts big ideas, bright minds

Cambridge: One small city, so many great leaps forward. Nowadays, much of the thinking and tinkering takes place in Harvard and MIT labs on the Boston side of the river, but the epicenter remains in the first city of intellectual capital. From the north bank of the Charles springs earthshaking research that has upended the way we think and talk and move and eat and gaze at the stars.

You may have heard of MIT’s investigation of Earth-like planets, or of the four Harvard students who invented “sOccket” so kids in developing countries can generate electricity just by kicking a ball.Consider the MIT inventors who created a wallet that gets harder to open the lower you drain your bank account. Or Harvard’s new artificial hand, inspired by a cockroach. Today, the mashup of physical,engineering and life sciences—tagged “convergence”—is spurring breakthroughs on both campuses. Local wizards are exploring the mutability of DNA. The red-hot fields of optogenetics and epigenetics are poised to revamp our understanding of the stuff from which we’re made.

Typically, you learn what these researchers are up to only after their works are published in journals or heralded by the media. But here are some coming attractions about how our neighbors are changing the world.

Read the full article in Improper Bostonian