MIT engineers have developed an augmented reality headset that uses RFID technology to allow wearers to find objects, reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The device is intended to assist workers in places like e-commerce warehouses and retail stores to quickly find and identify objects,” writes Tran. “It can also help technicians find tools and items they need to assemble products.”
MIT researchers have developed a new two-step electrochemical process to remove carbon dioxide out of seawater, reports John Fialka for E&E News. The new approach “cuts energy costs and expensive membranes used to collect CO2 to the point where merchant ships that run on diesel power could collect enough CO2 to offset their emissions,” Fialka writes.
An augmented reality headset developed by MIT engineers, called X-AR, uses RFID technology to help users find hidden objects, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “X-AR’s creators were able to guide users with nearly 99 percent accuracy to items scattered throughout a warehouse testing environment,” writes Paul. “When those products were hidden within boxes, the X-AR still even boasted an almost 92 percent accuracy rate.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel and First Street Foundation have found that based on warming climate conditions and patterns, future storms will increase in intensity and travel farther north up the East Coast, reports Leslie Kaufman and Eric Roston for Bloomberg.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporters Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon about future hurricane trends. “The bottom line is the models that are being used by the existing [catastrophe] modeling industry are based strictly on historical statistics,” says Emanuel. “The historical record isn’t very long, and it isn’t very good when you get back to before 1970.”
Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul writes that MIT engineers have developed a new chip for smart phones that blocks unwanted signals, which could “greatly reduce production costs, make devices smaller and more efficient, and potentially even improve battery life.” Graduate student Soroush Araei explains that “our research can make your devices work better with fewer dropped calls or poor connections caused by interference from other devices.”
Bloomberg reporter Tanaz Meghjani writes that MIT researchers created a new system to 3D print a customized replica of the human heart, which could help improve replacement valve procedures. The new system “mimics blood flow and pressure in individual diseased hearts, suggesting a way to predict the effects of various replacements and select the best fit, avoiding potential leakage and failure,” Meghjani writes.
MIT engineers have developed a new technique for 3D printing a soft, flexible, custom-designed replica of a patient’s heart, report Gabrielle Emanuel and Amy Sokolow for WBUR. The goal of the research is to “provide realistic models so that doctors, researchers and medical device manufacturers can use them in testing therapies for different types of heart disease,” Emanuel and Sokolow explain.
Aera Therapeutics, founded by Prof. Feng Zhang, is working to “debut a type of protein nanoparticle that it believes can be used to ferry all sorts of genetic medicines around the body,” reports Lisa Jarvis for Bloomberg.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Erin Kelly shares her research on the impact of remote work. “The challenge is setting boundaries and feeling it’s acceptable to set them, and that requires deliberate company policies,” writes Kelly.
Graduate student Ziv Epstein speaks with Vice reporter Rachel Cheung about the legal implications of the development and use of AI tools being used to create art. “We need more both technical and social research, understanding how these things work, how people feel about them, and then we can make those decisions based on good science,” Epstein said. “Because right now, we’re just really at the brink of the beginning.”
MIT researchers have constructed a mini city to test to safely test algorithms designed for autonomous vehicles, reports Mashable. “The idea of the mini city is that we have lots of cars going at the same time and we can actually test out new algorithms in a safe environment,” says graduate student Noam Buckman.
A new study co-authored by Prof. S.P. Kothari “analyzes the stock returns of thousands of companies from 1988-2020, comparing those that repurchased shares against firms that didn’t, adjusting for their size and other factors,” reports Jason Zweig for The Wall Street Journal. “We don’t see massive misuse as some people allege,” says Kothari. “This isn’t a rigged game where CEOs are lining their pockets.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere are analyzing patients’ speech patterns to see if they can detect Lou Gehrig’s disease in its early stages, reports Ben Leonard, Ruth Reader, Carmen Paun and Erin Schumaker for Politico. “Catching it early and beginning treatment can improve patients’ quality of life and delay symptom onset,” they write.
Prof. Feng Zhang founded Aera Therapeutics, a startup working to deliver curative genetic medicine to hard-to-reach parts of the body, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. “If Aera’s approach works in people, it could broaden the reach of genetic therapies, which currently have limited clinical applications – partly because there aren’t enough methods for getting those medicines to hone in on the right cells,” writes Cross.