"(MIT's Eric) Alm is among a small but growing cadre of scientists who are using themselves as research subjects. They are taking advantage of faster and cheaper technologies, ranging from custom apps on smartphones to gene sequencing, in order to monitor aspects of their behavior and biology in unprecedented detail."
"Among the youngest of startups, the most prestigious award is to win the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which recognizes pure potential only in its quest to find the greatest business plan on earth, or at least among the MIT community."
"Manipulating blurry digital images in TV programmes like CSI often produces unfeasibly clear pictures of a suspect's face, but it turns out that it is possible to extract important forensic details from shadowy images after all."
"Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes."
"Why does over 20 percent of the population still think that vaccines cause autism? And what happens when parents act on their fears, refusing to inoculate their own children against dangerous diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella?"
"Researchers have programmed a robot to learn how a mechanic likes to work, then to help the mechanic without breaking his or her rhythm. The researchers hope to see robot assistants working side by side with people someday, helping with small tasks."
"With a particular focus on creating jobs and promoting innovation, the initiative will be able to address some of the many questions posed by Big Data: How can we work smarter? How can we improve our processes? What are we leaving on the table?"
"Building each individual prosthetic remains an art, with amputees dependent on the craftsmanship and experience of individual designers, said David Moinina Sengeh, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
"'I was told that there is a great fish expert, Mr. London,' said Jevtov, standing in an MIT basement room stacked six rows high with 1,000 tanks holding 30,000 silvery zebra fish."