Fast Company reporter Adele Peters spotlights Prof. Michael Strano’s work exploring how to embed nanoparticles into plant leaves, as part of an effort to see if they could serve as sensors. “We started asking the question, can we make living plants to do some of the functions that humans do by stamping things out of plastic and circuit boards—things that go into landfills?” says Strano.
MIT researchers have developed a way to embed spinach leaves with sensors, which would allow them to serve as sensors that could monitor groundwater for contaminates, reports The Guardian. “Plants are very environmentally responsive,” explains Prof. Michael Strano. “If we tap into those chemical signaling pathways, there is a wealth of information to access.”
Research scientist Brian Subirana speaks with The Economist’s Babbage podcast about his work developing a new AI system that could be used to help diagnose people asymptomatic Covid-19.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie spotlights Cyborg Botany, a project at the Media Lab aimed to tap into how plants react to their environments. The researchers grew plants with “conductive wires in their intercellular spaces. That allowed the plants to become inconspicuous motion sensors, sending a signal via microelectrodes to a laptop every time someone walked by.”
Prof. Fadel Adib speaks with BBC reporter Gareth Mitchell about a new battery-free underwater navigation system that his group developed. Adib explains that one of the key developments behind the new sensors is that they can “harvest power from sound.”
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that a new mask developed by Prof. Giovanni Traverso is embedded with sensors that change colors when it is properly positioned. “When you put on the mask, if the edge is in contact with the skin, you will have that temperature change indicating that you have contact,” says Traverso. “If not, then there won’t be that color change, and you can tell immediately.”
A new algorithm developed by MIT researchers could be used to help detect people with Covid-19 by listening to the sound of their coughs, reports Zoe Kleinman for BBC News. “In tests, it achieved a 98.5% success rate among people who had received an official positive coronavirus test result, rising to 100% in those who had no other symptoms,” writes Kleinman.
Mashable reporter Rachel Kraus writes that a new system developed by MIT researchers could be used to help identify patients with Covid-19. Kraus writes that the algorithm can “differentiate the forced coughs of asymptomatic people who have Covid from those of healthy people.”
MIT researchers have developed a new battery-free, underwater navigation system, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. “Ultimately, the system and future versions that are based on the same technology could enable future robotic submarine explorers to better map the ocean floor,” writes Etherington, “and perform all kinds of automated monitoring and sub-sea navigation.”
A new took developed by MIT researchers uses neural networks to help identify Covid-19, reports Alyse Stanley for Gizmodo. The model “can detect the subtle changes in a person’s cough that indicate whether they’re infected, even if they don’t have any other symptoms,” Stanley explains.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that MIT researchers have built a new AI model that can help detect Covid-19 by listening to the sound of a person’s cough. “The tool is detecting features that allow it to discriminate the subjects that have COVID from the ones that don’t,” explains Brian Subirana, a research scientist in MIT’s Auto-ID Laboratory.
MIT researchers have developed a new AI model that could help identify people with asymptomatic Covid-19 based on the sound of their cough, reports CBS Boston. The researchers hope that in the future the model could be used to help create an app that serves as a “noninvasive prescreening tool to figure out who is likely to have the coronavirus.”
MIT researchers have unveiled a new autonomous modular boat, called the Roboat II, which that uses lidar, GPS and other sensors to navigate its surroundings, reports Kyro Mitchell for Popular Mechanics. The Roboat II “can attach itself to other Roboat II’s to form one large vessel, which is then controlled by a main ‘leader’ boat.”
Prof. Fadel Adib has created a new underwater device that not only broadcasts and receives sound, but is also powered by sound, reports The Economist. In the future, Adib and his colleagues hope the device could be used to “transmit information about water temperature, acidity and salinity.”
Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia and senior postdoctoral associate Leslie Chan discuss their work developing a synthetic biosensor to diagnose lung disease. Chan explains that “instead of relying on naturally occurring breath volatiles, we wanted to be able to engineer the breath signal that we could use to monitor lung disease.”