New York Times reporter Austin Frakt writes that MIT researchers have found that hospitals that spend more on emergency care had better patient outcomes. “Hospitals that score well on patient satisfaction, follow good processes of care and record lower hospital mortality rates,” says Prof. Joseph Doyle, “do seem to keep patients alive and out of the hospital longer.”
The Economist highlights a study by J-PAL researchers examining the effectiveness of certain educational technologies. The researchers found that, “in nearly all the 41 studies which compared pupils using adaptive software with peers who were taught by conventional means the software-assisted branch got higher scores.”
Researchers at MIT have developed an algorithm that can identify recipes based on a photo, writes BBC News reporter Zoe Kleinman. The algorithm, which was trained using a database of over one million photos, could be developed to show “how a food is prepared and could also be adapted to provide nutritional information,” writes Kleinman.
Reporting for WBUR on efforts to develop a treatment for glioblastoma, Karen Weintraub highlights Prof. Paula Hammond’s work creating a method to get drugs across the body’s blood-brain barrier. “By disguising her tiny, drug-carrying nanoparticles as proteins that normally carry iron across the barrier, she's been able to sneak them past the armor that lines the brain’s blood vessels.”
MIT researchers have engineered an expandable liver from human liver cells that can grow up to 50 times its original size, reports Lindsay Kalter for the Boston Herald. In the future, the researchers would like to make the expandable livers smarter, “by embedding sensors in them to tell us how they are doing,” explains Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia.
New Scientist reporter Aylin Woodward writes MIT researchers used the MIT Bitcoin Project, which provided freshman access to bitcoin, as an opportunity to examine early-adoption behaviors. The study shows that if you make “early adopters feel special…their resulting enthusiasm seems to help technology go viral.”
MIT researchers have developed a new machine learning algorithm that can look at photos of food and suggest a recipe to create the pictured dish, reports Matt Reynolds for New Scientist. Reynolds explains that, “eventually people could use an improved version of the algorithm to help them track their diet throughout the day.”
CSAIL researchers have trained an AI system to look at images of food, predict the ingredients used, and even suggest recipes, writes Matt Burgess for Wired. The system could also analyze meals to determine their nutritional value or “manipulate an existing recipe to be healthier or to conform to certain dietary restrictions," explains graduate student Nick Hynes.
Boston Magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme writes that MIT researchers have developed a new gel-like coating that can be used on medical devices like catheters and IV tubes to reduce friction and ease patient discomfort. The substance, “can be moved, stretched, and twisted without breaking, “Ducharme explains, and also, “acts as a lubricant for the objects it coats.”
MIT researchers have developed a new way to engineer liver tissue that involves implanting tiny “seeds” of liver tissue, which expand to perform normal liver functions, reports Robert Preidt for U.S. News & World Report. The technique could one day “help reduce long wait lists for liver transplants.”
Science reporter Gloria Emeagwali reviews Prof. Clapperton Mavhunga’s new book, which examines how Africans have contributed to science throughout history. “Eurocentric assumptions about the history of science and technology, entrepreneurship, epistemology, and scientific methodology are directly challenged in this scholarly collection of essays that masterfully document the historical and contemporary scientific contributions of Africans.”
CBS This Morning’s Dana Jacobson explores how MIT researchers are developing technology to enable robots to assist with disaster response, including a robotic cheetah and a system that 3-D prints robots. Prof. Russ Tedrake says that, “there's a natural transition from the robots in the labs now into the robots doing meaningful work.”
Times Higher Ed reporter Matthew Reisz writes about a new study by MIT research that provides evidence that physical proximity helps drive collaboration. Reisz explains that the “research also confirms the importance of designing academic buildings to encourage cross-disciplinary research.”
The Economist reviews Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s latest book, which examines how new digital technologies will impact businesses. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “believe that the latest phase of computers and the internet have created three shifts in how work happens.”
MIT researchers have found that by 2050 climate change could deplete water basins and reduce crop yields, reports The Boston Globe’s Alyssa Meyers. If no action is taken to combat climate change, “numerous basins used to irrigate crops across the country will either start to experience shortages or see existing shortages ‘severely accentuated.’”