Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with WHDH about his team’s work developing an acoustic fabric that can listen to and record sound, a development inspired by the human ear. "The fabric can be inserted into clothes to monitor heart rate and respiration. It can even help with monitoring unborn babies during pregnancy."
Bloomberg News spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new material that works like a microphone, converting sounds into vibrations and then electrical signals. “The development means the possibility of clothes that act as hearing aids, clothes that answer phone calls, and garments that track heart and breathing rates,” writes Bloomberg News.
Researchers from MIT and the Rhode Island School of Design have developed a wearable fabric microphone that can detect and transmit soundwaves and convert them into electrical signals, reports Shi En Kim for Popular Science. “Computers are going to really become fabrics," says Prof. Yoel Fink. "We’re getting very close.”
MIT researchers have created a flexible fiber that can generate electrical impulses that are conveyed to the brain as sound, reports Miriam Fauzia for The Daily Beast. “The researchers see endless possibilities for their smart fabric,” writes Fauzia. “The obvious application is in improving hearing aids, which Fink said have trouble discerning the direction of sound, particularly in noisy environments. But the fabric could also help engineers design wearable fabrics that can measure vital signs, monitor space dust in new kinds of spacecraft, and listen for signs of deterioration in buildings like emerging cracks and strains.”
Graduate student Matt Groh speaks with Scientific American reporter Sarah Vitak about his team’s work studying whether human detection or artificial intelligence is better at identifying deepfakes and misinformation online. “One of the things that we would suggest for the future development of these systems is trying to figure out ways to explain why the AI is making a decision,” says Groh.
Axios reporter Erin Broadwin spotlights Dimagi, a digital tool for health workers in remote areas that was started by researchers from the MIT Media Lab and the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program.
PBS Nova premiered “Augmented,” a documentary film that features Prof. Hugh Herr and his research team’s work in developing brain controlled robotic limbs and reimagining amputation procedures. “Herr is teaming up with an injured climber and a surgeon at a leading Boston hospital to test a new approach to surgical amputation that allows prosthetic limbs to move and feel like the real thing,” writes PBS Nova.
Wall Street Journal reporter John Anderson spotlights “Augmented” a new PBS documentary featuring Prof. Hugh Herr and his work in robotic limbs and surgery.
A new documentary titled “Augmented” spotlights Prof. Hugh Herr and his work developing bionic limbs at the MIT Media Lab, reports Dana Gerber for The Boston Globe. “The long-term hope for the procedure is that people with Ewing amputations will be able to further adapt to the bionic limbs shown in the film, which Herr’s team is developing at MIT,” writes Gerber.
Researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have developed a theoretical, high-performance transaction processor for a Central Bank Digital Currency using open-source software, reports Jason Brett for Forbes. "What is clear is that open-source software provides an important way to collaborate, experiment, and implement,” says Neha Narula, director of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. “In addition to supporting collaboration, monetary systems benefit from transparency and verifiability, which open-source offers."
Boston Business Journal executive editor Doug Banks highlights new research from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in developing two sets of computing source code for a hypothetical Central Bank Digital Currency. The researchers “selected concepts from cryptography, distributed systems, and blockchain technology to build and test platforms that would give policymakers substantial flexibility in the potential creation of a CBDC,” writes Banks.
Reuters reporter Jonnelle Marte writes that researchers from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have developed two different approaches to processing transactions in a hypothetical digital currency. “The first phase of the multi-year project, dubbed ‘Project Hamilton,’ resulted in code that is capable of handling 1.7 million transactions per second,” writes Marte. “Researchers also found the ‘vast majority’ of transactions settled in under two seconds.”
Bloomberg reporter Allyson Versprille spotlights how researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have released a new paper and open-source code, called OpenCBDC, aimed at furthering understanding of how a hypothetical central bank digital currency might be developed. Of the importance of making the software open-source, Neha Narula, director of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, explains that “we believe that this is the best way to ensure that OpenCBDC is vetted by a large number of people--all of whom will bring unique knowledge, skills, and ideas for improvement.”
Researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have released a new paper and open-source code to help further understanding of how a hypothetical central bank digital currency might be developed, writes Tory Newmyer for The Washington Post. Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative, explains that they aimed to “create a flexible system that can work with a variety of models.”
Boston Globe reporter Jim Puzzanghera writes that researchers from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston have developed experimental open-source software, called OpenCBDC, to help further examine a potential Central Bank Digital Currency. Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative, said she was optimistic that they could develop a system that “can help preserve strong privacy for users.”