CNBC’s Robert Ferris reports that researchers at MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital have devised a new method to create 3-D heart models. The new technique allows doctors to 3-D print replicas of a patient’s heart within 24 hours, making it practical for hospital use, Ferris explains.
Researchers at MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital are developing a new technique to convert images from MRI scans into physical models of the human heart, writes Lindsay Kalter for The Boston Herald. “This can definitely impact clinical practice in terms of helping surgeons plan more efficiently,” explains graduate student Danielle Pace.
“Researchers from MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital say they’ve come up with a better, faster way to build heart models,” writes Barb Darrow for Fortune. The team has devised a method for 3-D printing model hearts from MRI scans that takes three to four hours compared to the 10 hours typically required using current methods.
Graduate student Eric Arndt discusses his research on the bombardier beetle’s ability to produce a boiling-hot stream of liquid on the PBS program SciTech Now. “Insects, as it turns out, are very good material scientists,” explains Arndt. “Just studying these fundamental systems has the possibility of opening up all kinds of doors in all kinds of industries.”
Bourree Lam reports for The Atlantic on an interactive map of U.S. counties produced using Prof. Amy Glasmeier’s Living Wage Calculator. “Glasmeier says that firms can use it to estimate how to pay their employees fairly,” writes Lam.
In an Atlantic article about how Zappos has implemented a system of self-governance, Jerry Useem speaks with Prof. Thomas Malone about how falling information costs allow for different organizational structures. “There comes a time when it’s economically feasible to bring information to all points, so in some sense, everyone can know everything,” says Malone.
Ana Swanson reports for The Washington Post on an interactive map created by Prof. Amy Glasmeier that displays the gap between minimum wages and living wages across the U.S. The map shows that the East Coast “is one of the most challenging places for minimum-wage workers to make ends meet.”
Using their “Living Wage Calculator,” Prof. Amy Glasmeier’s team has created a map of the communities in the U.S. that have the widest gaps between living wages and minimum wages, reports Rob Wile for The Huffington Post.
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee write for BBC News about how advances in automation and robotics can aid in the creation of new and better jobs for humans. They write that the answer “is not to slow the pace of technological progress, but to speed up our institutions so that entrepreneurs, managers and workers alike can thrive.”
Karen Weintraub writes for The Boston Globe about Prof. Ki Ann Goosens’ work examining the intersection of stress and mental illness. Weintraub explains that Goosens’ latest work looks at whether the medications used to treat PTSD make biological sense.
Olga Kharif writes for Bloomberg Businessweek that MIT researchers have proposed a new design for a smaller and cheaper fusion reactor. The prototype "builds on the design of fusion reactors that use magnetic fields to squeeze superhot plasma, fusing atoms of hydrogen to produce energy."
In this video, Ben Gruber reports for Reuters on an MIT robot that is controlled by an operator wearing an exoskeleton. Prof. Sangbae Kim explains that his motivation was to develop “the best robot for disasters where we can actually use robots instead of risking human life.”
Jon Christian reports for The Boston Globe on FitSocket, a device created by researchers in MIT’s Biomechatronics group that gathers data used to create personalized prosthetic sockets. “We’re treating the body as a mechanical thing, because it is,” explains graduate student Arthur Petron.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Xavier Giroud finds that startups that receive more attention from their investors tend to be more innovative, reports Eilene Zimmerman for Forbes. The researchers found that those startups that investors could reach via a direct flight “produced higher quality innovation and were more likely to go public or be acquired.”
Richard Waters of The Financial Times reports that Toyota is funding new research centers at MIT and Stanford to research technologies that could enable computer-assisted driving. Waters explains that the goal behind the new centers is to give “drivers the choice one day of handing over full control to the AI ‘brains’ in their vehicles.”