3D printing has evolved from basic designs to a wide range of highly-customisable objects. Still, there’s a big issue: Once objects are printed, they’re final. If you need a change, you’ll need a reprint. But imagine if that weren’t the case — if, for example, you could change the colour of your smartphone case or earrings on demand. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intellig...

  MIT researchers have devised a miniaturised system that can deliver tiny quantities of medicine to brain regions as small as 1 cubic millimetre. This type of targeted dosing could make it possible to treat diseases that affect very specific brain circuits, without interfering with the normal function of the rest of the brain, the researchers say.

  When it comes to processing power, the human brain just can’t be beat. Packed within the squishy, football-sized organ are somewhere around 100 billion neurons. At any given moment, a single neuron can relay instructions to thousands of other neurons via synapses — the spaces between neurons, across which neurotransmitters are exchanged.

Before coming to MIT, Jeff Orkin SM ’07, PhD ’13 spent a decade building advanced, critically acclaimed AI for video games. While working on F.E.A.R., a survival-horror first-person shooter game, he developed AI that gave computer-controlled characters an unprecedented range of actions. Today, more than 10 years later, many video game enthusiasts still consider the game’s AI unmatched, even by modern standards.

What if you could run your air conditioner not on conventional electricity, but on the sun’s heat during a warm summer’s day? With advancements in thermoelectric technology, this sustainable solution might one day become a reality. Thermoelectric devices are made from materials that can convert a temperature difference into electricity, without requiring any moving parts — a quality that makes thermoelectrics a potentially ...

To most, an operating room and a manufacturing plant are as different as any two places can be. But not to Dennis Orgill. “To some degree when you do an operation it’s much like manufacturing something in a factory,” explains Orgill SM ’80, PhD ’83, who serves as medical director at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Wound Care Center and as a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Vision impairment is a major global issue. More than 2 billion people worldwide don’t have access to corrective lenses. Getting eyeglasses prescriptions is especially difficult in developing countries. Optometrists are generally located in urban centers and rarely see patients from rural areas, so many people suffer from uncorrected impairments. According to the World Health Organisation, this can lead to impaired quality of life, lear...

  For the past 10 years, the Camera Culture group at MIT’s Media Lab has been developing innovative imaging systems — from a camera that can see around corners to one that can read text in closed books — by using 'time of flight,' an approach that gauges distance by measuring the time it takes light projected into a scene to bounce back to a sensor.

It’s been another eventful 12 months in the world of technology. Further ground has been broken in the journey towards autonomous driving and the integration of technology in the healthcare sector. Plus the continued drive for smaller size, lower power devices. This has also been met with further concerns around data security as more and more ‘things’ around us become connected.

Certain treatments for patients suffering from chronic diseases, such as inflammatory bowel diseases, require multiple intravenous or subcutaneous injections of specific drugs. Because of the pain and anxiety associated with needles, some patients stop adhering to treatments. MIT spinout Portal Instruments has now landed a commercialisation deal for a smart, needle-free injection device that could reduce the pain and anxiety associated with ...

Neural networks, which learn to perform computational tasks by analysing huge sets of training data, have been responsible for the most impressive recent advances in artificial intelligence, including speech-recognition and automatic-translation systems. During training, however, a neural net continually adjusts its internal settings in ways that even its creators can’t interpret. Much recent work in computer science has focused on cle...

Imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk. MIT engineers have taken a critical first step toward making that vision a reality. By embedding specialised nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, they induced the plants to give off dim light for nearly four hours. They believe that, with further optimisation, such plants will one day be bright enough to...

MIT engineers have devised a 3D printing technique that uses a new kind of ink made from genetically programmed living cells. The cells are engineered to light up in response to a variety of stimuli. When mixed with a slurry of hydrogel and nutrients, the cells can be printed, layer by layer, to form 3D, interactive structures and devices. The team has then demonstrated its technique by printing a “living tattoo” &mdash...

Researchers at the Whitehead Institute have illuminated an important role for different subtypes of muscle cells in orchestrating the process of tissue regeneration. In a paper appearing online in Nature, they reveal that a subtype of muscle fibres in flatworms is required for triggering the activity of genes that initiate the regeneration program. Notably, in the absence of these muscles, regeneration fails to proceed.

Doctors have many drugs available to treat multiple myeloma. However, there is no way to predict, by genetic markers or other means, how a patient will respond to a particular drug. This can lead to months of treatment with a drug that isn’t working. Researchers at MIT have now shown that they can use a new type of measurement to predict how drugs will affect cancer cells taken from multiple-myeloma patients.

  In large parts of the developing world, people have abundant heat from the sun during the day, but most cooking takes place later in the evening when the sun is down, using fuel — such as wood, brush or dung — that is collected with significant time and effort. Now, a new chemical composite developed by researchers at MIT could provide an alternative.

Members of the MIT community who passed through the Stata Center courtyard likely found it hard not to notice the Lamborghini parked there as if it were visiting from the future. The car’s name — Terzo Millenio — says it all. Terzo Millenio is an automobile prototype for the third millennium, and its ability to deliver high peak power and regenerate kinetic energy, all while ensuring the ability to release and harvest electric p...

  By organising pigments on a DNA scaffold, an MIT-led team of researchers has designed a light-harvesting material that closely mimics the structure of naturally occurring photosynthetic structures. The researchers showed that their synthetic material can absorb light and efficiently transfer its energy along precisely controlled pathways.

  Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an accurate, scalable approach for monitoring cancer DNA from blood samples.

Researchers at MIT and several other institutions have developed a method for making photonic devices — similar to electronic devices but based on light rather than electricity — that can bend and stretch without damage. The devices could find uses in cables to connect computing devices, or in diagnostic and monitoring systems that could be attached to the skin or implanted in the body, flexing easily with the natural tissue.