Contributor

Kristin Houser

Staff Writer

Contact

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Kristin Houser is a staff writer at Freethink, where she covers science and tech. Her written work has appeared in Business Insider, NBC News, and the World Economic Forum’s Agenda, among other publications, and Stephen Colbert once talked about a piece on The Late Show, to her delight.

Prior to joining Freethink, Kristin was a staff writer for Futurism and wrote several animated and live action web series.

Extraterrestrials

Undergrad develops AI to hunt for alien signals

An AI trained to hunt for technosignatures from intelligent alien life found 8 interesting signals on its first deployment.

Kristin Houser

A digitally-colorized image of an E. coli bacterium

Biology

New “cyborg” cells could be the future of medicine

Semi-living “cyborg” cells might one day do everything from deliver cancer treatments to help clean up the environment.

Kristin Houser

A foot wearing a Moonwalker shoe on a colorful background

Wearables

World’s fastest “shoes” increase walking speed by 250%

Shift Robotics is taking pre-orders on Moonwalkers — $1,400 “shoes” that let you walk 2.5x faster without expending any extra energy.

Kristin Houser

An illustration of Bharat Biotech's nasal vaccine for COVID-19 on a colorful background

Coronavirus

First-of-its-kind nasal vaccine for COVID-19 deployed in India

India has begun deploying a nasal vaccine for COVID-19 that may be able to prevent infections, not just limit their severity.

Kristin Houser

Group of friends having a drink together at party

Biology

Your microbiome is influenced by the people you hang out with

The human microbiome is largely influenced by our social interactions, according to the largest study to date of microbiome transmission.

Kristin Houser

Asteroids

NASA’s “Lucy” will take a 40,000-mile detour to visit this asteroid

NASA has added a tenth asteroid flyby to the record-breaking Lucy mission so that it can test a new asteroid-tracking system.

Kristin Houser

An image of the rubble pile asteroid Itokawa.

Asteroids

This near-Earth asteroid is 4.2 billion years old and nearly indestructible

By analyzing just three dust particles, researchers learned that the rubble pile asteroid Itokawa is 4.2 billion years old and hard to kill.

Kristin Houser

Neuroscience

New brain implant breaks record for turning thoughts into text

Stanford researchers have developed a brain-computer interface that allowed a woman to “type” 62 words per minute using only her thoughts.

Kristin Houser

Healthcare

Simple tweak to cancer treatment reduces relapse risk by 28%

Delivering chemotherapy to colon cancer patients before and after surgery — instead of just after — reduces their risk of recurrence by 28%.

Kristin Houser

Computer Science

An open-source option is shaking up the microchip industry

The RISC-V architecture for microchips is transitioning from a novelty to a major player in the tech world.

Kristin Houser