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MIT researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence system that uses a person’s breathing pattern to help detect Parkinson’s sisease, reports Susannah Sudborough for Boston.com. “The device emits radio signals, analyzes reflections off the surrounding environment, and monitors the person’s breathing patterns without any bodily contact,” writes Sudborough.
Researchers at MIT and other institutions have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can analyze changes in nighttime breathing to detect and track the progression of Parkinson’s disease, reports Casey Ross for STAT. “The AI was able to accurately flag Parkinson’s using one night of breathing data collected from a belt worn around the abdomen or from a passive monitoring system that tracks breathing using a low-power radio signal,” writes Ross.
Loh Down on Science host Sandra Tsing Loh spotlights Prof. Cathy Wu and graduate student Vindula Jayawardana and their work developing a new method for self-driving vehicles that would help minimize idling at red lights. “In their method, self-driving can be taught to minimize stops at red lights. To make this work, traffic lights and self-driving cars would have sensors. This would let them check in with each other on their surroundings,” says Loh.
Alumna Anurupa Ganguly SB ’07, MNG ’09 speaks with Forbes contributor Rod Berger about Prisms of Reality, a virtual reality platform she founded that provides math learning through movement, experience and discovery. “We envision a dramatic re-engagement of our students with their education,” says Ganguly. “Our students, many for the first time, will find a profound sense of purpose in their math learning and their lives.”
Computer science lecturer Iddo Drori and his team have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that can solve college-level math problems at a human level, reports Susan D’Agostino for Inside Higher Ed. “The model can also explain the solutions and generate new problems that students found indistinguishable from human-generated problems,” reports D’Agostino.
Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with Forbes contributor Russell Flannery about his work using finance to help lower the cost of drug development for cancer treatment and therapies. “I started thinking about how we could use finance pro-actively to lower the cost of drug development, increase success rates, and make it more attractive for investors,” says Lo. “Because that's really what the issue is: you need investors to come into the space to spend their billions of dollars in order to get these drugs developed.”
Mark Lee MS ’94 spoke with Forbes reporter Karen Walker about the success of Splashtop, a company he co-founded that is developing cloud-based software that allows secure and remote access and support.
The MIT mini cheetah broke a speed record after learning to adapt to difficult terrain and upping its speed, reports Rienk De Beer for Popular Mechanics.
Postdoctoral researcher Murat Onen and his colleagues have created “a nanoscale resistor that transmits protons from one terminal to another,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “The resistor uses powerful electric fields to transport protons at very high speeds without damaging or breaking the resistor itself, a problem previous solid-state proton resistors had suffered from,” explains Wilkins.
Ifueko Igbinedion PhD ’22, Marlyse Reeves PhD ’22 and Wharton alumni Isoken Igbinedion, and Simone Kendle founded Parfait, a company that uses technology to more efficiently design and create wigs, reports Ron Miller for TechCrunch. “The four women have built a solution that lets women simply choose a wig and answer a series of questions to come up with the final design,” explains Miller. “They have mixed this with machine learning to help with sizing and proper tinting, while bringing in human stylists to make the final decisions when needed.”
MIT researchers have developed a new system that enabled the mini robotic cheetah to learn to run, reports John Koetsier for Forbes. ““Traditionally, the process that people have been using [to train robots] requires you to study the actual system and manually design models,” explains Prof. Pulkit Agrawal. “This process is good, it’s well established, but it’s not very scalable. “But we are removing the human from designing the specific behaviors.”
MIT researchers have created a thin, lightweight and flexible loudspeaker that is as thin as a few sheets of paper and can stick to most surfaces while producing high quality sound, reports Kendra Redmond for Science News Explores. “Because the design is so flexible and durable, companies could potentially integrate speakers into T-shirts or other personal items,” writes Redmond. “Or users could make their own.”
Ross Trethewey, co-host of This Old House, visits Prof. Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano, to learn more about the future of solar technology, including an electricity-generating film that can be applied to windows and other materials. “Dramatic advancements are on the horizon,” says Bulović. “We can make solar cells that don’t weigh very much at all so deployment of them on top of your roof could be as simple as unrolling a carpet and stapling it to the roof with a plug. Maybe your windows will be turned into solar cells.”
Francis Plaza ’13 co-founded PayMongo, a fintech firm designed to digitalize the Philippine’s cash-based economy, reports Catherine Wang for Forbes. “PayMongo now not only plans to expand beyond the Philippines to other Southeast Asian countries, but also to broaden its remit by becoming a platform for scaling small business in the region,” writes Wang.
Alumnus Andrew Lau co-founded Jellyfish, an engineering management software platform designed to assess contextual business data and engineering signals to promote transparency into how engineering organizations work and operate, reports Bruce Rogers for Forbes. “We know leading a large engineering team is hard, not because necessarily of the coding, it's actually the intersection of technology and the business” says Lau.