Prof. Canan Dagdeviren and colleagues at MIT have developed a wearable sensor that could help more easily detect breast cancer. “Dr. Dagdeviren hopes the device will allow for more frequent screening of women who are at high risk of developing breast cancer, such as those who had inherited the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, or people who have had cancer previously,” writes Sarah Knapton for The Telegraph.
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable ultrasound patch that could be used to allow women to monitor themselves for early signs of breast cancer, reports Amy Norton for HealthDay. “The hope is to one day use such portable technology to help diagnose and monitor a range of diseases and injuries – in a way that’s more accessible and cheaper than using traditional scanners housed at medical facilities,” explains Norton.
Researchers at MIT have developed a “flexible patch that can take ultrasound images comparable to those done by medical centers, but can fit into a bra,” reports Sara Kiley Watson for Popular Science. “The researchers tested their device on a 71-year-old subject with a history of breast cysts, and were able to detect cysts as small as 0.3 centimeters in diameter up to 8 centimeters deep in the tissue, all while maintaining a resolution similar to traditional ultrasounds,” writes Kiley Watson.
MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that attaches to a bra and could be used to detect early-stage breast tumors, reports Lizzy Lawrence for STAT. “I’m hoping to really make it real, and to touch people’s lives,” says Prof. Canan Dagdeviren. “I want to see the impact of my technology not only in the lab, but on society.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable patch that can allow drugs to pass through the skin using ultrasonic sound waves, reports Sandra Tsing for NPR. “The researchers say their lightweight design allows for reliable use on the go,” says Tsing. “This could treat skin conditions, both medical or cosmetic.”
Researchers from MIT have found that since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in the number of interactions between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, reports Danny Westneat for The Seattle Times. “It’s creating an urban fabric that is actually more brittle, in the sense that we are less exposed to other people,” says research scientist Esteban Moro. “We don’t get to know other people in the city … to know other people’s needs. If we don’t see them around the city, that will be impossible.”
Writing for Times Higher Ed, Prof. Carlo Ratti makes the case that in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action, big data and analytics could “help admissions officers quantitatively capture the kinds of disadvantages applicants face and the kinds of diversity they may represent.”
MIT has been selected as the world’s best university in the 2024 QS World University Rankings, reports Cecilia Rodriguez for Forbes. MIT has secured “the top position for the 12th consecutive year,” writes Rodriguez.
Researchers at MIT have showed that “they could induce people to dream about a particular subject and that doing so helped them become more creative,” writes F.D. Flam for Bloomberg. “The findings should remind us that the line between productivity and resting is blurry — especially in creative endeavors,” writes Flam.
Prof. Carlo Ratti writes for Nikkei Asia about the importance of world expositions. “We do not need expos to showcase products across the world, but we do need them as playful, experimental sandboxes for testing ideas and trialing concepts,” writes Ratti. “Putting the focus on innovation would not require wholesale reinvention, but instead a re-emphasis on an element that has been part of expos since the beginning.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti emphasizes that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic “urban areas need to fundamentally reweave their fabric to thrive in the era of flexible work: That means ending homogeneous zoning, promoting mixed-use developments, converting some offices into housing, and giving more space to arts and culture. We should recognize that the fundamental attraction of urban areas is the pleasure they provide to their residents — and that the affordability of housing needs to be seriously tackled.”
Writing for The Conversation, postdoc Ziv Epstein SM ’19, PhD ’23, graduate student Robert Mahari and Jessica Fjeld of Harvard Law School explore how the use of generative AI will impact creative work. “The ways in which existing laws are interpreted or reformed – and whether generative AI is appropriately treated as the tool it is – will have real consequences for the future of creative expression,” the authors note.
New York Times reporter Natasha Singer spotlights the Day of AI, an MIT RAISE program aimed at teaching K-12 students about AI. “Because AI is such a powerful new technology, in order for it to work well in society, it really needs some rules,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. Prof. Cynthia Breazeal, MIT’s dean of digital learning, added: “We want students to be informed, responsible users and informed, responsible designers of these technologies.”
Undergraduate student Kathleen Esfahany speaks with GBH host Jeremy Siegel about her work discovering that people are most creative in the early stages of sleep. “The biggest finding and the thing that I think most people would relate to is that there was a nice effect of people being more creative after a nap, versus staying awake,” says Esfahany. “And I think this is well-corroborated by a lot of other studies, but this was just really exciting to be able to see.”