In a Guardian article about how technology can be used to help refugees, Tazeen Dhunna Ahmad highlights MIT’s Refugee ACTion Hub (ReACT). ReACT is aimed at finding, “digital learning opportunities for a lost generation of children who, as a result of forced displacement, are losing their education.”
Graduate student Shriya Srinivasan speaks with Ira Flatow of PRI’s Science Friday about the surgical technique she and her colleagues developed to make prosthetic limbs feel more natural. Srinivasan explains that the technique allows patients to have, “finer prosthetic control — and be able to modulate position, velocity, and stiffness of prosthetic devices, which is a significant improvement to the clinical standard.”
Tangible Media Group researchers have created shape-shifting, edible pasta, writes Grace Williams for Fox News. The pasta, which transforms from a flat sheet into 3-D shapes, could cut packaging and shipping costs for “large supermarkets, mountain hikers and Mars travelers, or whoever has the need of saving shipping spaces,” says former MIT graduate student Lining Yao.
Reporting for WGBH about new technologies that can help reduce carbon emissions, Heather Goldstone spotlights how Media Lab researchers have developed shape-changing noodles that transform from a flat sheet of gelatin into 3-D shapes when dropped in water. “Those flat sheets can be shipped more efficiently,” explains Goldstone.
Wen Wang, a former grad student and research scientist, speaks with Janelle Nanos of The Boston Globe about the shape-shifting noodles she and her colleagues engineered. The technique, which transforms a flat sheet of noodles into 3-D shapes, could reduce food shipping costs and could eventually be used to feed astronauts. “You can save space in space,” explains Wang.
NBC News reporter Maggie Fox writes that MIT researchers have developed a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that could eventually offer relief to patients with diseases like Parkinson’s and epilepsy without requiring surgery. Fox explains that the method allows for sending, “electrical signals deep into the brain without affecting the layers in between.”
MIT researchers have developed a surgical technique that could make prosthetic limbs feel more natural, writes Karen Weintraub for Scientific American. “With this approach, we’re very confident that the human will actually feel position, will actually feel speed, will actually feel force,” says Prof. Hugh Herr. “It’ll completely feel like their own limb.”
In this video, CNN highlights how researchers from the MIT Media Lab have developed shape-changing noodles. The noodles transform from a flat sheet into 3-D shapes when submerged in water, and could cut down on shipping costs and environmental waste.
MIT researchers have developed a noninvasive method to stimulate specific neurons deep in the brain that could be used to help treat patients with diseases such as Parkinson’s, reports Meredith Wadman for Science. This new method could also allow scientists to “selectively prod deep-brain neurons into action,” explains Wadman.
Writing for Wired, Abigail Beal highlights how MIT researchers have developed a noninvasive technique to trigger reactions in deep brain cells using low frequency electrical signals. “If we could noninvasively stimulate deep regions, without hitting overlying regions, we might be able to help more people because we could stimulate deep regions selectively, without needing surgery,” explains Prof. Ed Boyden.
New York Times reporter Pam Belluck writes that MIT researchers have developed a new, non-invasive deep brain stimulation technique. The technique could be used to help treat, “a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders more cheaply and safely than current approaches,” writes Belluck.
MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive technique for deep brain stimulation, which could be used to help patients with brain diseases, reports Mo Costandi for The Guardian. “Targets for disorders such as depression, Alzheimer’s, PTSD, and so forth, are deep in the brain, and they might be more selectively stimulatable with our method,” says Prof. Ed Boyden.
Researchers at MIT have developed a surgical technique that could lead to more lifelike prosthetic limbs, reports Matthew Hutson for Science. The new technique, coupled with a smart prosthetic, should enable users to “feel the same way that they once felt when they had a limb,” says Prof. Hugh Herr.
Washington Post reporter Ben Guarino writes that a study by research scientist Nick Obradovich provides evidence that rising temperatures caused by climate change could increase the number of nights where people have difficulty sleeping. The researchers found that “increasing temperatures could add six additional restless nights per month per 100 people, and 14 nights by 2099.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Deborah Netburn examines a study by MIT researchers that shows climate change could affect how well people sleep at night. “There are going to be lots and lots of impacts of climate change and this is just another factor in a mosaic of negative factors,” says research scientist Nick Obradovich.