Author: Ms. R.

Getting results from a blood test can take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis. Now, MIT engineers have identified a new optical signature in a widely used class of magnetic beads, which could be used to quickly detect contaminants in a variety……

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Senior staff accountant Abisola Okuk’s role has changed a lot since she first came to MIT back in 2014. She started in the Media Lab as an administrative assistant, then moved to the MIT Sloan School of Management’s external relations team, and is now senior staff accountant in the Office of the Vice President for Finance (VPF). Over that time, she’s discovered an interest in finance and developed new skills to advance her career. “After six years at the……

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Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and their collaborators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation (CURT) have developed a new medical imaging device: the Noncontact Laser Ultrasound (NCLUS). This laser-based ultrasound system provides images of interior body features such as organs, fat, muscle, tendons, and blood vessels. The system also measures bone strength and may have the potential to track disease stages over time. “Our patented skin-safe laser system concept seeks to transform medical ultrasound……

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Should artificial intelligence be allowed to make care decisions for patients? Though the future of AI may conjure up doomsday visions of robots and computers intent on rendering human existence superfluous, the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (Jameel Clinic) addressed questions surrounding the use of AI in health through their inaugural summer program focused on educating high school students.  The Jameel Clinic Summer Program, which took place July 10-21, accepted a total of 51……

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The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has selected three new research projects that will receive support from the initiative. The research projects aim to accelerate progress in meeting complex societal needs through new business convergence insights in technology and innovation. Established in MIT’s School of Engineering and now in its third year, the MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative is furthering its mission to bring together technological experts from across business and academia to share insights……

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Growing up in the Tidewater region of Virginia, Dyanna Jaye had a front row seat to the climate crisis. She recalls beach stabilization efforts that pumped sand from the bottom of the ocean to the shore in response to rising sea levels. And every hurricane season, the streets would flood. “I was thinking at a younger age about some pretty big questions,” says Jaye. “Can I call this place home for the rest of my life? Probably not. The……

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Imagine you want to carry a large, heavy box up a flight of stairs. You might spread your fingers out and lift that box with both hands, then hold it on top of your forearms and balance it against your chest, using your whole body to manipulate the box.  Humans are generally good at whole-body manipulation, but robots struggle with such tasks. To the robot, each spot where the box could touch any point on the carrier’s fingers, arms,……

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When MIT electrical engineer Reja Amatya PhD ’12 arrived in Rwanda in 2015, she was whisked off to a village. She saw that diesel generators provided power to the local health center, bank, and shops, but like most of rural Rwanda, Karambi’s 200 homes did not have electricity. Amatya knew the hilly terrain would make it challenging to connect the village to high-voltage lines from the capital, Kigali, 50 kilometers away. While many consider electricity a basic human right,……

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What’s the winning number for next week’s Mega Millions? If Julie knew the number, Leah would know the number. But you know that neither person holds this precious secret — and not just because Mega Millions hasn’t been drawn yet. You know because you understand the implication of the sentence, even though it is free of any “not,” “no,” or other form of negation. How you understand sentences like this — how you make what linguists call a “counterfactual inference”……

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To understand the full relationship between brain activity and behavior, scientists have needed a way to map this relationship for all of the neurons across a whole brain — a so far insurmountable challenge. But after inventing new technologies and methods for the purpose, a team of scientists in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT has produced a rigorous accounting of the neurons in the tractably tiny brain of a humble C. elegans worm, mapping out how its……

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