Research

Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma about the growing field of smart textiles and his work creating fabrics embedded with computational power. Fink and his colleagues “have created fibers with hundreds of silicon microchips to transmit digital signals — essential if clothes are to automatically track things like heart rate or foot swelling. These fibers are small enough to pass through a needle that can be sown into fabric and washed at least 10 times.”

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.”

A new study from researchers at MIT and Dartmouth suggests that the speed of automation should be halved, reports Adi Gaskell for Forbes. Their paper showed that “while investments in automation usually result in higher productivity in firms, and therefore often more employment, it can be harmful to those who are displaced, especially if they have few alternative options,” writes Gaskell.

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.”

Researchers from CSAIL and elsewhere have found that Irish judges are using Wikipedia articles as a source in their rulings, reports Shane Phelan for Independent. “This work shows that Wikipedia reaches even farther than that, into high-stakes, formalized processes like legal judgments,” says research scientist Neil Thompson. “The worst outcome would be for a judge’s reliance on Wikipedia to lead them to decide a case differently than they would have if they had read either an expert secondary source or the cited precedent itself.”

Researchers from CSAIL, Cornell University, and Maynooth University have released a study concluding that judges in Ireland are utilizing Wikipedia articles to help inform their decisions, reports Colleen Hagerty for Popular Science. Based on their findings, the researchers suggest “the legal community increases its efforts to monitor and fact-check legal information posted on Wikipedia.” 

Prof. James Poterba speaks with Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein about his work with the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee in determining if a recession is underway in the U.S. “By far, the most important thing to try to convey is that the committee is not trying to do real-time dating of whether we’re in a recession,” said Poterba. “There’s often enormous amount of interest in that question and what many people are hoping for, but the committee’s task is to create a consistent historical record of the turning points — the peaks and the troughs in the U.S. economy.”

Postdoctoral fellow Joshua A. Schwartz and University of Pennsylvania PhD candidate Sabrina B. Arias write for The Washington Post about their research exploring how American cities and towns are taking action to help reduce carbon emissions. “Major urban areas account for about 30 percent of the U.S. carbon footprint,” they write. “This means even relatively narrow efforts focused on those cities could still have a significant impact.”

MIT researchers have found a way to amplify the signals from particles in quantum relationships to make them easier to read, reports Juandre for Popular Mechanics. “Their method could lead the way to better measurements of many tiny phenomena, from atomic clocks to the search for elusive dark matter,” writes Juandre.

CAMP4, a startup founded by Prof. Richard Young, is developing a new class of RNA-based therapies to treat genetic diseases, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. The “startup’s experimental approach will allow it to dial up the output of genes to treat genetic diseases, with an initial focus on a severe form of epilepsy and life-threatening live diseases,” writes Cross.

Institute Prof. Emeritus Peter Diamond speaks with Boston Globe reporter Scot Lehigh about the Fed’s attempts to control inflation. “My message to the Fed would be, yes, we need to cool the economy, but we need to go slowly in doing so, and see how this plays out, because we shouldn’t have confidence in our predictions,” says Diamond.

Researchers at MIT and the University of Waterloo have discovered two properties of accelerating matter that they believe could lead to the direct observation of the Unruh effect, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. “We’d like to build a dedicated experiment that can unambiguously detect the Unruh effect, and later provide a platform for studying various associated aspects,” says Prof. Vivishek Sudhir.