National Science Foundation (NSF)

MIT engineers have created a bioadhesive ultrasound device that can be adhered to a patient’s skin and record high-res videos of internal organs for up to two days, reports Sophie Bushwick for Scientific American. “The beauty of this is, suddenly, you can adhere this ultrasound probe, this thin ultrasound speaker, to the body over 48 hours,” says Zhao. “This can potentially change the paradigm of medical imaging by empowering long-term continuous imaging, and it can change the paradigm of the field of wearable devices.”

Researchers at MIT, led by Prof. Xuanhe Zhao, have created a wearable ultrasound medical device, reports Jeremy Hsu for New Scientist. “The ultrasound stickers may provide a more flexible imaging option for hospitals to monitor patients without requiring human technicians to hold ultrasound probes, and they could be useful in situations where technicians are in short supply,” writes Hsu.

Prof. Xuanhe Zhao and his research team have developed a stick-on ultrasound patch that can scan a person’s insides as they go about their daily life, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “The wearable patch, which is the size of a postage stamp, can image blood vessels, the digestive system and internal organs for up to 48 hours, giving doctors a more detailed picture of a patient’s health than the snapshots provided by routine scans,” explains Sample.

Researchers from MIT have produced a miniature ultrasound device that sticks to the body, reports Maggie Chen for Wired. “By sticking the patch on different parts of the subject’s body, the researchers could get images of the stomach, muscles, blood vessels, lungs, and heart,” explains Chen.

MIT engineers have developed a medical ultrasound system that uses a patch the size of a postage stamp, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The new MIT system would allow a doctor or technician to attach a patch directly over the area to be scanned,” explains Bray. “The patch is plugged into a device that captures the ultrasound signal, converts it to a viewable image and records it for future reference.”

Prof. Nikta Fakhri and her colleagues have placed hundreds of starfish embryos into salt-water tanks where they arrange themselves into honeycomb-like patterns at the water’s surface, reports Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. “These structures, which had never been seen before, may form because of the embryos’ swimming style and body shape,” explains Padavic-Callaghan.

MIT researchers have created Thesan, the most detailed model of the early universe to date, reports New Scientist. “Thesan shows how radiation shaped the universe from 400,000 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang,” writes New Scientist.

MIT researchers have developed FuseBot, a new system that combines RFID tagging with a robotic arm to retrieve hidden objects from a pile, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “As long as some objects within the pile are tagged, the system can determine where its subject is most likely located and the most efficient way to retrieve it,” writes Heater.

Wired reporter Maggie Chen spotlights Prof. Katharina Ribbeck and her lab’s work deconstructing how glycans hidden inside mucus can work to keep specific organisms healthy. Glycans “can be beneficial – assisting in food digestion, regulating immunity, and protecting against germs – but that can be harmful if they outcompete one another or become virulent, potentially leading to infection,” writes Chen.

Researchers from MIT have discovered a hardware vulnerability in Apple’s M1 chip using an attack called PACMAN, reports Harry Guinness for Popular Science. “Attackers can only use PACMAN to exploit an existing memory bug in the system, which can be patched,” explained Guinness.

CSAIL researchers have found a security vulnerability in Apple’s M1 chip, reports Philip Tracy for Gizmodo. “The flaw could theoretically give bad actors a door to gain full access to the core operating system kernel,” explains Tracy.

MIT researchers have discovered a hardware vulnerability in Apple’s M1 chips that can allow attackers to break through its security defenses, reports Carly Page for TechCrunch. “Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, however, have created a novel hardware attack, which combines memory corruption and speculative execution attacks to sidestep the security feature,” writes Page.

Scientists from MIT and other institutions have developed the largest, most detailed computer model of the universe’s first billion years, which could help shed light on how the early universe evolved, reports Charles Q. Choi for Scientific American. The model, named THESAN, “can track the birth and evolution of hundreds of thousands of galaxies within a cubic volume spanning more than 300 million light-years across.”

Inverse reporter Charles Q. Choi writes that MIT astronomers have observed what appears to be the most tightly coupled black widow binary yet. "The one thing I know for sure is we really have never seen anything quite like this object,” says postdoctoral fellow Kevin Burdge, “and that there is probably a lot more to learn from it and other similar objects that I am finding right now, and that's what has me so excited about these."

MIT astronomers have detected what appears to be a black widow binary with the shortest orbital period ever recorded, reports Becky Ferreira for Vice. “It behaves exactly like a black widow in many, many ways,” says postdoctoral fellow Kevin Burdge, “but it also does a few new things that we've never seen before in any known black widow.”