Nathalia Holt writes for Popular Science about Professor Feng Zhang’s work with gene-editing systems, in particular TALENs and CRISPR, and how these new techniques could be used to help tackle deadly diseases.
Liat Clark reports for Wired on Changing Environments, an MIT Media Lab spinoff that is developing solar-powered smart benches to be placed around Cambridge and Boston. These benches allow users to charge their mobile devices and download environmental data.
Contessa Gayles writes for CNN Money about Promise Tracker, an app developed at MIT that helps to determine whether politicians keep campaign promises. Promise Tracker is being piloted in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte this fall to monitor the mayors of those cities.
R. Colin Johnson of EE Times reports that MIT researchers are, “aiming for a multicore architecture that can scale to any number of cores, with cache coherency. So far, they've prototyped a 36-core version.”
Liat Clark writes for Wired about the FingerReader, a 3-D printed device developed at the MIT Media Lab that can translate text from printed materials into a robotic voice for the visually impaired. The device has been in development for three years.
“Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a ring-shaped device that slips around a user’s pointer finger, scans any text above the fingertip, and reads it aloud in a robotic voice,” writes Dan Kedmey for Time.
“Lexington-based MicroCHIPS, a developer of implantable drug delivery devices, has been quietly working on a birth control product that can be embedded in a woman’s body,” writes Steve Annear of Boston Magazine. The technology was originally developed in Professor Robert Langer’s lab.
Associated Press reporter Rodrique Ngowi writes about how researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a prototype of an audio reading device for the blind. The device, which is in the early stages of development, is produced by a 3-D printer and is equipped with a small camera that scans text.
Washington Post reporter Emily Badger writes about the Social Computing Group’s transportation visualization maps showing which mode of transportation is the most efficient between two points in a city.
“We may be just years away from the longest-lasting and most hassle-free contraceptive ever invented,” writes Eliana Dockterman for Time about new implantable contraception being developed by MIT startup MicroCHIPS.
“The concept was conceived two years ago when Bill Gates visited Robert Langer’s MIT lab,” writes Sarah Gray for Salon about a new implantable, contraceptive microchip. The chip can be controlled remotely and lasts for 16 years.
Rachel Raczka writes for Boston.com about MIT startup MicroCHIPS’ new remote-controlled contraceptive device. The implantable microchip releases levonorgestrel, an active ingredient in certain forms of oral contraception, and can be turned on or off with the flip of a button.
BBC News reporter Dave Lee writes that MIT researchers have developed an implantable contraceptive chip that can be controlled via remote control. "The ability to turn the device on and off provides a certain convenience factor for those who are planning their family," explains Robert Farra.
Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard memorializes the life and work of MIT Professor John G. King. “John G. King wanted students, and essentially everyone else, to watch science unfold before their eyes. It was, he believed, the only way to truly learn a subject,” Marquard writes.
In a piece for The Washington Post, Gregory Rodriguez highlights new MIT research on diversity. “The authors concluded that homogenous groups ‘were actually further than diverse groups from an objective index of accuracy,’” Rodriguez writes.