Researchers from a number of universities, including MIT, have developed a new refillable, implantable device that can deliver drugs to the heart tissue to help treat a heart attack, reports Xinhua. "After a heart attack we could use this device to deliver therapy to prevent a patient from getting heart failure," explains Prof. Ellen Roche.
Xinhua reports that MIT engineers have developed a new method of harvesting water from industrial cooling towers that could decrease the operating cost of power plants. Eventually the new method could also be used to harvest, “safe drinking water for coastal cities where seawater is used to cool local power plants.”
Writing for IEEE Spectrum, David Wagman spotlights a new technology from MIT researchers that could offer water-scarce cities, “a new source of the precious resource” by capturing and reusing water from cooling towers. Prof. Kripa Varanasi notes that their system, “can achieve on the order of 99 percent efficiency,” in capturing the water droplets.
MIT researchers have developed a system that captures water from power plant cooling towers, writes Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. Finucane explains that, “the captured water would be pure, distilled water and could be piped to a city’s water system or it could be used in the power plant’s boilers, which, unlike the cooling system, require clean water.”
MIT researchers developed an electrically charged fog collector that can attract and collect more water droplets than a regular fog harvester, writes Matt Simon for Wired. The technology could eventually be used to recover water from power plant cooling towers where it can, “capture the plumes and collect that water,” explains Prof. Kripa Varanasi.
In an article for The Verge, Angela Chen highlights a new technique developed by MIT researchers to harvest water from fog. In the future, the researchers hope to place the harvesters, “near cooling plumes to collect and reuse water that would otherwise be lost.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that captures large amounts of water from the cooling towers used on power plants and data centers. Prof. Kripa Varanasi explains that he hopes this new technology can be used to address water scarcity: “We are thinking of each of these cooling towers as water farms.”
Xinhua news agency reports that MIT researchers have developed a robotic glider based on an albatross that can skim along the water’s surface “while surfing the waves like a sailboat.” “The researchers hope that in the near future, such compact and speedy robotic water-skimmers may be deployed in teams to survey large swaths of the ocean.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have designed a kit that allows scientists to develop diagnostic tests quickly and cheaply. The kit, “uses modular blocks that can be connected in different patterns to replicate the function that would typically be built into a manufactured test for pregnancy, glucose, or an infection or other disease.”
Forbes contributor Frederick Daso describes the vision of two mechanical engineering alumni, Victoria Gregory and Gabriel Alba-Rivera, who co-founded Magis Industries, which develops consumer products based on viral social media trends. “Going forward,” writes Daso, “the team hopes to not only develop more products, but also continue to improve the process of product development itself.”
Alumni Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack, will be inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in July for hosting NPR’s famed show Car Talk for 25 years. “On the show, listeners would call in to describe their car problems, often trying to imitate the sound that their cars were making,” writes Chris Isidore for CNNMoney. “The brothers would offer a diagnosis, and a number of jokes.”
NBC Mach’s Denise Chow writes about MIT research being done to develop color-changing, 3D printed clothing using UV light. “We wanted to know, how can we update the color of an object at any time?” said Prof. Stephanie Mueller.
Jesus Diaz of Co.Design explains how MIT scientists have found that Legos can be used more easily to assemble microfluidic laboratories. Historically, doing so "required expensive custom prototyping and manufacturing methods."
MIT scientists have found that Legos can be used to create a portable, complex microfluidics lab, reports John Biggs of TechCrunch. While the Legos did have to be modified to run fine channels, the precision of the bricks and panels mean “you don’t need much more than a drill and some tubing to prototype a working microfluidics lab,” explains Biggs.
Kaya Yurieff reports for CNN that CSAIL researchers have developed a system that allows the colors of 3-D printed objects to be altered after they have been fabricated. Prof. Stefanie Mueller explains that, “this sort of technology could help minimize the amount of waste that is produced from updating products."