Researchers at the Tangible Media Group have developed “programmable droplets” of water that can be used to communicate words. “One potential application is a mirror that, when steamed, allows someone to display a message from a smartphone” writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “The larger idea is to provoke surprise and delight, the way only the natural world can.”
James Gallagher of BBC News speaks with several experts about the microbiome and how diversity in gut bacteria is essential to health. “One thing that we're learning is, based on the microbiome, different people may need to consume different diets in order to get the same effect,” says Prof. Eric Alm.
Assistant Prof. Canan Dagdeviren speaks with Charles Q. Choi of The Atlantic about developing an implantable device that can produce electricity from internal movements of the muscles and organs. As the movements generate what is known as piezoelectricity, the implant can “run biomedical devices like cardiac pacemakers instead of changing them every six or seven years when their batteries are depleted,” Dagdeviren explains.
New research from MIT and the Whitehead Institute suggests that “the body’s own mechanism for healing” may cause cancerous cells to spread after breast cancer-related surgeries, reports Karen Weintraub for WBUR CommonHealth. “The post-surgical wound-healing response somehow releases…cells that have already spread to distant sites in the body,” explains Prof. Robert Weinberg, “releasing them from the constraints that have previously prevented them from growing actively.”
Synlogic, founded by Prof. Jim Collins and Associate Prof. Tim Lu, is programming probiotic bacteria to treat certain genetic or acquired metabolic disease, reports Robin Seaton Jefferson for Forbes. One product is used for people whose bodies can’t maintain a healthy level of ammonia and “has been specifically engineered to convert the excess ammonia to a harmless metabolite,” explains Seaton Jefferson.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Elise Takahama describes new research by MIT’s Sukrit Ranjan and colleagues that suggests sulfudic anion molecules provide evidence for the origins of life. Takahama also highlights the varying disciplines in the research team, which joined molecular chemistry experts with planetary scientists. “One of the most exciting things,” says Ranjan, is “how different communities, when they talk to each other, can really make dramatic advances.”
The Koch Institute has chosen 10 new scientific images from MIT researchers to display in a public gallery in its lobby. The images “span a range of subject matters and approaches, capturing both fundamental biology and how that biology is upended by disease processes,” writes Lisa Raffensperger of STAT.
MIT researchers have discovered a new family of viruses in the ocean that appears to play a key role in ocean ecosystems and could help provide insights on how viruses evolve, reports Marin Finucane for The Boston Globe. Finucane explains that the findings could also lead to, "a better understanding of human biology.”
Boston Magazine reporter Hayley Glatter spotlights how two MIT seniors - Mary Clare Beytagh and Matthew Chun - were among this year’s winners of the Rhodes Scholarship.
Boston Globe reporter Alyssa Meyers writes that MIT researchers have observed how the flu spreads between cells in the body. “Once it’s infected a cell and has commandeered its inner workings, the virus makes copies of itself that gather into buds attached to the membrane. The buds then break free from their host and go on to infect other cells.”
Boston Magazine reporter Jamie Ducharme writes that MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive technique for assessing cells, which could eventually be used to help diagnose diseases. The researchers are “working with doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, who hope to use the technique to study diseases such as cancer and asthma.”
Nature reporter Anna Nowogrodzki spotlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s quest to map every cell in the human body. “One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things,” says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
During a panel discussion during the Koch Institute’s 16th Annual Cancer Research Symposium, participants discussed how the convergence of biology and engineering could accelerate treatments for cancer and other diseases, writes Robert Weisman for the Boston Globe. “To my mind, this is the 21st century’s innovation story,” said President Emerita Susan Hockfield.
Xconomy reporter Ben Fidler writes about the life and legacy of Henri Termeer, a life member of the MIT Corporation who died at age 71. Institute Prof. Phillip Sharp explains that Termeer was, “a transformational leader in biotechnology of orphan diseases. Many children now have hope of a healthy life because of his vision and 40 years of creative business leadership.”
Prof. Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute, writes for The Washington Post about the importance of federal funding for scientific research, noting that scientific advances help drive the American economy. “When scientific breakthroughs spawn new industries and jobs, those benefits occur right here in the United States,” Lander explains.