In this video, CBS News correspondent Don Dahler speaks with Prof. Dina Katabi about her group’s work developing wireless technology that can track a person’s motion through walls. Katabi and her colleagues demonstrated how the system also detects a person’s elevation and could be used to help protect seniors at risk of falling.
MIT researchers have developed a new bandage that can detect infection and automatically release medication, reports Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald. “We are trying to design long-term, high-efficiency interfaces between the body and electronics,” explains Prof. Xunahe Zhao.
NBC News reporter Maggie Fox writes that MIT researchers have developed a stretchy, wet bandage that can deliver medications. The device could “carry a thermometer to continuously measure skin temperature, or tiny devices to keep an eye on blood sugar levels for someone with diabetes.”
BBC News reporter Michelle Roberts writes that MIT researchers have fine-tuned the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system to make it safer and more accurate. This development is "vital if it [CRISPR] is to be used in humans to cure inherited diseases or inborn errors,” explains Roberts.
MIT researchers have examined how droplets are formed in high-propulsion sneeze clouds, according to CBS Boston. “Droplets are not all already formed and neatly distributed in size at the exit of the mouth, as previously assumed in the literature,” explains Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
Prof. Lydia Bourouiba has modeled how droplets are formed after a person sneezes, reports Jonathan Webb for BBC News. “The process is important to understand because it determines the various sizes of the final droplets - a critical factor in how a sneeze spreads germs,” writes Webb.
MIT researchers have found that the high-velocity cloud created by the average human sneeze can contaminate a room in minutes, writes Robert Preidt for U.S. News & World Report. Sneeze droplets "undergo a complex cascading breakup that continues after they leave the lungs, pass over the lips and churn through the air," explains Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
Lincoln Lab researcher Albert Swiston speaks on NPR’s All Things Considered about the new sensor developed by MIT researchers that monitors vital signs through the gastrointestinal tract. “There are some bits of information from the body—namely the temperature of the body—that can only be monitored from inside the body,” explains Swiston.
Researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an ingestible device that monitors vital signs, reports Dialynn Dwyer of Boston.com. Dwyer explains that the device is a “pill-sized stethoscope with a microphone that, once swallowed, transmits data from inside the body.”
Writing for Popular Science, Lindsey Kratochwill reports that MIT researchers have discovered that the hundreds of eyes on a chiton's shell can see. Kratochwill explains that the researchers hope that by “understanding how these eyes work and the materials that make them up could lead to manmade materials that are both protective and perceptive of their environments.”
Atlantic reporter Ed Yong writes that MIT researchers have found that chitons, a type of mollusk, have a suit of armor dotted with hundreds of eyes that can perceive objects. The researchers found that chitons could “detect the shape of a 20-centimeter fish from a few meters away.”
LiveScience reporter Megan Gannon writes that MIT conservator Jana Dambrogio will virtually unfold a trove of unopened letterlocked notes from the 17th century. The researchers will use techniques like “3D X-ray microtomography to scan the letters and reconstruct the letterlocking strategies,” Gannon explains. “They'll also use scans to detect the ink and reconstruct the text inside.”
Nidhi Subbaraman reports for BetaBoston that MIT researchers have devised an ingestible microphone that allows doctors to monitor a patient’s vital signs. “A key innovation was developing algorithms that would distinguish important signals…from the noisy gurgling of the gut, and then translate them into numbers a physician can read and understand,” writes Subbaraman.
Researchers at MIT have developed an ingestible sensor that can measure vital signs without any external contact, reports Emily Reynolds for Wired. “The sensor works by using microphones—like ones found in mobile phones—that are able to pick up sound waves from the heart and lungs,” writes Reynolds.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Nancy Shohet West highlights Prof. Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine’s paper sculptures, which are on display at the Concord Center for the Visual Arts. “We started getting interested a number of years ago in curve creases and what was possible mathematically,” explains Prof. Demaine. “We started making models and then turned those into sculpture.”