Writing for Scientific American, Larry Greenemeier explores the pod the MIT Hyperloop team developed to compete in the upcoming SpaceX Hyperloop competition. “One of the most interesting parts of the Hyperloop is the attempt to go significantly faster than any other type of land travel,” says MIT team member and graduate student Greg Monahan.
In this video, Dave Lee reports for the BBC News from the MIT Hyperloop team’s unveiling event, during which the team revealed the prototype pod they designed for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition. Lee explains that the MIT team developed a “droplet-shaped pod [that] uses magnets to lift itself off the aluminum track, reducing friction.”
Professors Edward Boyden and Max Tegmark are honored as “Game Changers” in a Boston Globe special section dedicated to highlighting people and organizations for their work. The Globe features Boyden’s work developing tools to better understand the brain, and Tegmark’s involvement in the Future of Life Institute.
K.G. Orphanides writes for Wired about an ingestible origami robot developed by MIT researchers to patch wounds in the stomach and remove foreign objects. “The robot is swallowed in a capsule and unfolds once in the stomach as its container dissolves,” Orphanides explains.
A pill-sized origami robot developed by MIT researchers could be used to help retrieve swallowed items, such as button batteries, reports Kate Baggaley for Popular Science. “The origami robots could help to move the battery through the digestive system faster, before it has time to break down and start leaking,” Baggaley explains.
Huffington Post reporter Thomas Tamblyn writes that MIT researchers have developed a tiny, origami robot that can be ingested liked a normal pill to retrieve swallowed items from the stomach and to patch small wounds. Tamblyn writes that once the robot “reaches the stomach the acids break away the outer shell allowing the robot to expand.”
In an effort to address the problems associated with children swallowing button batteries, MIT researchers have created an ingestible origami robot that can retrieve swallowed items and patch stomach wounds, reports Shanika Gunaratna for CBS News. Gunaratna explains that once “inside the body, the robot opens itself up and is steered by external magnetic fields.”
Hiawatha Bray highlights Prof. Amos Winter’s method for purifying groundwater as part of The Boston Globe's "Game Changers" section, which highlights innovators in a variety of fields. “We want to provide clean water to hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world,” says Winter, “in a way that’s low enough in cost so it can be scaled up and sustained through free-market mechanisms.”
Prof. Daniela Rus and her team at CSAIL have developed an ingestible origami robot that can unfold itself in the body and retrieve items that may have been swallowed accidentally, like batteries. “The only thing a patient would have to do, in theory, is swallow — a bit like gulping down a spider to catch a wayward fly,” according to Ben Guarino at The Washington Post.
Jamie Ducharme at Boston Magazine writes about the new ingestible origami robots from researchers at CSAIL, University of Sheffield, and Tokyo Institute of Technology “that could be used to remove swallowed objects, patch stomach wounds, and deliver medication.”
New Scientist reporter Jacob Aron writes that MIT researchers have “created three simulated Turing machines with behaviour that is entwined in deep questions of mathematics. This includes the proof of the 150-year-old Riemann hypothesis – thought to govern the patterns of prime numbers.”
Fortune reporter Katie Fehrenbacher features MIT startup Grove Labs in a piece about companies aimed at making our day-to-day lives more sustainable. Fehrenbacher explains that Grove's aquaponics-based gardening systems are aimed at providing “eco-minded customers a way to grow their own food.”
PBS NewsHour correspondent Miles O’Brien visits MIT to see the Hyperloop team in action as they work on building a prototype pod that would travel on a high-speed transportation system. O’Brien explains that the MIT team is “testing arrays of common magnets that would levitate the pod over an aluminum track.”
CNN’s Jareen Imam writes that MIT researchers have developed a new topical solution that can make wrinkles invisible and could potentially deliver medications to the skin. "We hope this can be used for many different things," explains Prof. Daniel Anderson. "For example, if you need it for a large area of skin you might put it on like sunscreen."
CBS This Morning highlights the “second skin” material developed by MIT researchers that can help tighten wrinkles and protect the skin. CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus says that the material is “really an amazing work in chemical engineering,” highlighting how the material could be used to deliver medication to the skin.