Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung about the how hospitals around the world around increasingly adopting new technologies. “Countries with a centralized healthcare system, or centralized healthcare records, can do a much better job because they have so much data and so much ability to monitor what AI tools are doing," says Barzilay.
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Newsweek reporter Jasmine Laws about the anticipated price increase in employer health benefit plans for the coming year. Due to higher costs, “some may stop taking up employer coverage altogether while others may move to less expensive plans,” explains Gruber.
Beth Pollack, a research scientist in the Department of Biological Engineering, speaks with The Guardian’s Science Weekly hosts Madeleine Finaly and Ian Sample about her research on chronic fatigue syndrome (MF CFS) and other chronic illnesses. “There are a number of interesting treatments addressing the different aspects of immune disfunction with different immunomodulators,” says Pollack.
Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Newsweek reporter Alexis Kayser about how new AI tools are implemented in health care settings. “You need to know how to safely bring it into the [health care] system," says Barzilay. "There is a new science, which is the science of implementation."
In an effort to develop non-invasive ways to treat depression, PTSD, brain tumors and other conditions, researchers from MIT Lincoln Lab are looking to better understand human consciousness, reports Steph Solis for Axios. “There's the goal to analyze how it could help understand or treat PTSD and mood disorders in veterans,” says Solis of the inspiration for this research, “and then there's the existential question that stumps neuroscientists — how does our human experience arise from brain activity?”
Interesting Engineering reporter Saoirse Kerrigan spotlights a number of MIT research projects from the past decade. MIT has “long been a hub of innovation and ingenuity across multiple industries and disciplines,” writes Kerrigan. “Every year, the school’s best and brightest debut projects that push the boundaries of science and technology. From vehicles and furniture to exciting new breakthroughs in electricity generation, the school’s projects have tackled an impressive variety of subjects.”
In a new paper, Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues highlight the results of a clinical trial that showed “a pill taken just once a week, gradually releasing medicine from within the stomach, can greatly simplify the drug schedule faced by schizophrenia patients,” writes Dennis Thompson for HealthDay News. “These final-stage clinical trial results are the product of more than 10 years of research by Traverso’s lab.”
MIT researchers have developed Boltz-2, an AI algorithm “that unites protein folding and prediction of small-molecule binding affinity in one package,” reports Laura Howes for Chemical & Engineering News. “The researchers say their new AI model approaches the level of accuracy achieved by traditional computational chemistry—such as methods involving free-energy perturbation calculations—but much more quickly and cheaply,” explains Howes.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed Boltz-2, an open-source generative AI model that can help researchers find new medicines faster, reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. The tool “can not only predict the structure of proteins, it can also predict its binding affinity–that is, how well a potential drug is able to interact with that protein,” explains Knapp. “This is crucial in the early stages of developing a new medicine.”
Graduate students Anika Jane Beamer, Nanticha Ocharoenchai, Pratik Pawar and Paulina Rowińska write for GBH to highlight health care deserts in the Boston area. “There are no hospitals or emergency care facilities in Mattapan,” they write. “With the closure of Carney Hospital, the nearest emergency room is at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, over three miles away. Getting there can be difficult.”
Prof. Sebastian Lourido speaks with Salon reporter Elizabeth Hlavinka about the risks associated with parasite cleanses. “When you cause significant changes in the intestine, you are at times obliterating many of the beneficial organisms that are helping us digest food, but in some cases, producing vitamins that are actually occupying that niche and preventing bad organisms from taking over,” says Lourido.
Dr. Mallika Marshall joins CBS Boston to discuss E-BAR, a new mobile robot developed by MIT researchers to physically support the elderly and prevent them from falling as they move around their homes. Marshall notes that E-BAR could also “lift someone from sitting to standing or vice versa, and catch someone safely by rapidly inflating side airbags if they begin to fall.”
Syntis Bio, a biopharmaceutical company co-founded by Prof. Giovanni Traverso and Prof. Robert Langer, is developing a daily obesity pill that mimics the effects of gastric bypass, reports Emily Mullin for Wired. “This material is something you would take as a capsule or liquid, but the next day it's gone because of the natural turnover of our mucosal surface in the GI tract,” says Traverso.
Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, writes for The New York Times about the history and future of food safety programs in the U.S. “The United States clearly still needs the safety systems that were so painstakingly built over the last 120 years, and to make them better and stronger,” writes Blum. “The labs and scientists and inspection teams that have been recently lost should not only be restored but expanded. And the mistakes of the 19th century should stay firmly in the history books.”
“AT MIT innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-earth creativity,” notes Chronicle during a visit to campus to peek behind the scenes at the innovations underway at the Institute. Classes taught by Prof. Erik Demaine are a “mix of rigorous math and creative collaboration,” host Anthony Everett explains, highlighting how Demaine’s work in computational origami has found its way into practical applications in such fields as medicine, architecture and space exploration. “I think origami provides a really powerful tool for making transformable shapes,” Demaine relates.