Second Skin Delivers Drugs, Makes You Look Younger [video]

by Bruce Brown | May 10, 2016 | General News, Health, Medical

What do chocolate, coffee, red wine, and MIT’s second skin have in common? They each deliver on two fronts. Each can have significant health benefits while at the same time helping you feel great or look good. Co-developed by scientists from MIT, Massachusetts...

Simple Device Turns Skin into Touchpad [video]

by Alfred Poor | May 10, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News

Frequent readers of this site will know that I’m particularly interested in the problem of user interfaces to control wearable (and implanted) devices. Keyboards, buttons, touch screens, speech recognition, and gesture interfaces all have potential, but they...

A Brand New Eliza, This One Alerts You When to See a Therapist

by Bruce Brown | May 9, 2016 | General News, Health

There’s a new ELIZA in town, and she’s more proactive than the original. In the 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory wrote a program that reacted to typed input as a Rogerian therapist would. The big test in artificial...

MIT Launches Campaign for a Better World

by Alfred Poor | May 9, 2016 | Enabling Tech, General News, Health, Medical

I recently had the opportunity to sit in a large meeting room filled with exceptionally smart people from all around the world. They were there to pool their skills and knowledge to tackle a shared problem. I was impressed by the give and take, and the deep insights...

Play a Game for Two Minutes, Help With Dementia Research [video]

by Bruce Brown | May 6, 2016 | General News, Health, Medical

Dementia is a general term for a group of diseases that affect millions of people. Overall brain deterioration and loss of memory are the major signs of dementia, but it can be further categorized into specific diseases, the most common and well-known of which is...

Crowd-Sourced Big Data Sheds Light On Sleep

by Alfred Poor | May 6, 2016 | General News, Health

What is the average bedtime, and how does it link to sunset? How does the average wake up time compare with local sunrise? Do these results vary for different parts of the world? How do you gather data for such a research project? These were some of the questions...