Month: December 2016

Agitating the aluminum pot Denis Paiste | Materials Processing Center December 8, 2016 Industrial aluminum slabs are typically produced by blending small amounts of copper or manganese in a reservoir of molten aluminum that is rapidly cooled, a process known as direct-chill casting. Variations in the way these elements solidify [..]

Unique visual stimulation may be new treatment for Alzheimer’s Anne Trafton | MIT News Office  December 8, 2016 Using LED lights flickering at a specific frequency, MIT researchers have shown that they can substantially reduce the beta amyloid plaques seen in Alzheimer’s disease, in the visual cortex of mice. This [..]

Printable electronics Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office  December 8, 2016 The next time you place your coffee order, imagine slapping onto your to-go cup a sticker that acts as an electronic decal, letting you know the precise temperature of your triple-venti no-foam latte. Someday, the high-tech stamping that produces [..]

Learning words from pictures System correlates recorded speech with images, could lead to fully automated speech recognition. Larry Hardesty | MIT News Office December 7, 2016 Speech recognition systems, such as those that convert speech to text on cellphones, are generally the result of machine learning. A computer pores through [..]

Stanford Unveils Innovative Solar Generating Station Leading the way in sustainability and innovative green technologies, Stanford celebrated the opening of the Stanford Solar Generating Station in Kern County, Calif. The station will provide more than 50 percent of Stanford’s electricity. DECEMBER 5, 2016 Leading the way in sustainability and innovative [..]

A More Energy Efficient New Memory Technology By Stanford Scientists While exploring the atomic-level forces at play in a new type of computer chip, researchers found an energy-saving surprise that could translate into longer battery life for next-generation mobile devices. By : TOM ABATE (Stanford News) Scientists often discover interesting [..]

Parkinson’s Disease Linked to Microbiome By Lori Dajose (CALTECH News) Caltech scientists have discovered for the first time a functional link between bacteria in the intestines and Parkinson’s disease (PD). The researchers show that changes in the composition of gut bacterial populations—or possibly gut bacteria themselves—are actively contributing to and [..]

Design your own custom drone CSAIL system lets users design and fabricate drones with a wide range of shapes and structures. By: Adam Conner-Simons | CSAIL  (MIT NEWS) December 5, 2016 This fall’s new Federal Aviation Administration regulations have made drone flight easier than ever for both companies and consumers. But [..]

Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time, Stanford researchers find New research finds that small regions of the brain cycle in and out of sleep, even when awake. The cycles shift toward “awake” when that part of the brain pays attention to a task. [..]

A Hydrogel That Helps Stop Uncontrolled Bleeding Works in patients on blood thinners or with bleeding disorders By Benjamin Boettner, Wyss Institute Communications Small blood clots called emboli are mostly known for traveling through the vasculature before they lodge and obstruct vessels, impeding blood and oxygen supply to organs such [..]

New Nontoxic Hydrogels : Aid in Food Production and Other Applications Hydrogels already form the absorbent layer in disposable diapers and the curve of soft contact lenses. A new process makes these materials useful for more applications, including wine-making and firefighting. BY GLEN MARTIN (Stanford News) Hydrogels are gelatinous amalgams [..]

Computer Learns to Recognize Sounds by Watching Video Machine-learning system doesn’t require costly hand-annotated data. Larry Hardesty | MIT News Office December 3, 2016     In recent years, computers have gotten remarkably good at recognizing speech and images: Think of the dictation software on most cellphones, or the algorithms [..]

A radiation-free approach to imaging molecules in the brain New probe induces blood flow changes that can be seen by MRI. Anne Trafton | MIT News Office December 3, 2016     Scientists hoping to get a glimpse of molecules that control brain activity have devised a new probe that [..]