INNOVATIONS

Graphene As a “Copy Machine: Breakthrough For Cheaper Semiconductor Wafers Source: Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office April 23, 2017 In 2016, annual global semiconductor sales reached their highest-ever point, at $339 billion worldwide. In that same year, the semiconductor industry spent about $7.2 billion worldwide on wafers that serve [..]

Novel Lens For Super-Resolution Imaging Source: NUS News April 21, 2017 The optical microscope is a critical equipment for scientific research and failure inspection in high precision industries. However, for centuries, the imaging resolution of microscopes is fundamentally limited by the diffraction limit of light. Existing efforts to break this [..]

Breakthrough In Gene-Editing  Source: SNU Media April 17, 2017 Professor Kim Jin-Soo and training researcher Kim Daesik, both of the Department of Chemistry, were part of a research team at the Center for Genomic Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), that proved that a newly developed gene editing [..]

No More Painful Biopsies For Myeloma Patients: MIT Research By: Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office April 15, 2017 Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells, which are white blood cells produced in bone marrow that churn out antibodies to help fight infection. When plasma cells become cancerous, [..]

Microscopes from droplets: MIT Research Source: Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office March 25, 2017 Liquid droplets are natural magnifiers. Look inside a single drop of water, and you are likely to see a reflection of the world around you, close up and distended as you’d see in a crystal [..]

New Discovery Towards Faster Data System : Novel Direction For “Valleytronic” Devices By: Helen Knight | MIT News correspondent March 25, 2017 Faster, more efficient data storage and computer logic systems could be on the horizon thanks to a new way of tuning electronic energy levels in two-dimensional films of crystal, discovered [..]

Drug Treatment Could Combat Hearing Loss By: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office March 05, 2017 Within the inner ear, thousands of hair cells detect sound waves and translate them into nerve signals that allow us to hear speech, music, and other everyday sounds. Damage to these cells is one [..]

Tiny Fibers Open New Windows Into The Brain March 05, 2017 David L. Chandler | MIT News Office For the first time ever, a single flexible fiber no bigger than a human hair has successfully delivered a combination of optical, electrical, and chemical signals back and forth into the brain, [..]

GOOD VENOM February 23, 2017 By: University of Buffalo The problems began sometime before JB turned 2. He was, by appearance, a healthy boy. He had a brilliant smile, striking blonde hair and eyes the color of the sea. He was fast becoming enamored with the stuff of boyhood: cars, [..]

Scientist Kill Brain Cancer In Mice With Combination Immunotherapies By: Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute February 22, 2017 A promising combination of immunotherapies delivers a one-two punch to brain cancer tumours with high cure rates in mice, scientific evidence published in Nature Communications says. Researchers at the Children’s [..]

Mount Sinai Scientists Develops A New Reference Database (RepurposeDB) of Drug Repositioning and Decodes Molecular Code of Therapeutic Reuse By: Vijay Soni, Ph.D. | Founder & C.E.O Scipreneur February 21, 2017 A drug discovery project takes 8-12 years and costs 8-15 billion dollars. It relies on various avenues of pre-clinical development, [..]

Turning Food Poisoning Microbe Into Powerful Cancer Fighter February 18, 2017 Source: Science Translational Medicine Cancer tends to stick around because it’s practically invisible to the body’s own defenses: The immune system doesn’t recognize the rogue cells because they aren’t foreign invaders. To activate the immune system to attack cancer, scientists [..]

Bacterial Protein Could Aid Development of New Antibiotics February 18, 2017 Source: Duke University Bacterial cells have an added layer of protection, called the cell wall, that animal cells don’t. Assembling this tough armor entails multiple steps, some of which are targeted by antibiotics like penicillin and vancomycin. Yet one [..]

Novel Direction Towards Diabetes Cure By: Vijay Soni, Ph.D. | Founder and C.E.O. of Scipreneur A team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC), New York have identified a novel trafficking pathway for a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR, the largest family of signaling receptors). The group has studied the trafficking [..]

Engineers Harness Stomach Acid to Power Tiny Sensors By: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office February 8, 2017 Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed and demonstrated a small voltaic cell that is sustained by the acidic fluids in the stomach. The system can generate enough power [..]

Microbial manufacturing By: Rob Matheson | MIT News Office February 4, 2017 Using advanced fermentation technology, industrial biotech startup Manus Bio hopes to make manufacturing flavors, fragrances, and other products greener and more cost-effective — and maybe create new products in the process. The MIT spinout has created a low-cost [..]

New Catalyst to Add Fluorine-Containing Groups, For Better Drug Anne Trafton | MIT News Office January 31, 2017 Drugs that contain one or more fluorine atoms tend to be more stable, more powerful, and easier for the body to absorb. For those reasons, drug developers would like to be able [..]

New Sensors to Detect Single Protein Molecules: MIT Research By: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office January 26, 2017 For the first time, MIT engineers have designed sensors that can detect single protein molecules as they are secreted by cells or even a single cell. These sensors, which consist of chemically [..]

GPS For Tracking Immune Cells as They Hunt for Tumors By: JENNIE DUSHECK, Stanford News January 23, 2017 A study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has for the first time demonstrated a way to visualize and monitor the behavior of immune cells used to treat cancer patients. The [..]

Toxic Brain Cells May Caues Many Neurodegenerative Diseases By: BRUCE GOLDMAN; Stanford News January 23, 2017 While most of us haven’t heard of astrocytes, these cells are four times as plentiful in the human brain as nerve cells. Now, a team led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has [..]

Wearable Biosensors Can Tell When You Are Getting Sick By: JENNIE DUSHECK : Stanford News January 20, 2017 New research from Stanford shows that fitness monitors and other wearable biosensors can tell when an individual’s heart rate, skin temperature and other measures are abnormal, suggesting possible illness. Wearable sensors that monitor heart [..]

A Step Toward Renewable Diesel By: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office January 18, 2017 MIT engineers have genetically reprogrammed a strain of yeast so that it converts sugars to fats much more efficiently, an advance that could make possible the renewable production of high-energy fuels such as diesel. The [..]

A 20-cent, Hand-Powered Blood Centrifuge: Inspired by a Whirligig Toy   January 10 2017 By: Kris Newby (Stanford News) Here’s how to build a whirligig: Thread a loop of twine through two holes in a button. Grab the loop ends, then rhythmically pull. As the twine coils and uncoils, the button spins at [..]

Some Catalysts Contribute Their Own Oxygen For Reactions By: David L. Chandler | MIT News Office January 10, 2017 Chemical reactions that release oxygen in the presence of a catalyst, known as oxygen-evolution reactions, are a crucial part of chemical energy storage processes, including water splitting, electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction, [..]

Strongest And Lightest Material Discovered by MIT Scientists By: David L. Chandler | MIT News Office January 9, 2017 A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The new material, a [..]

Three Atom Wide Electrical Wire Using World’s Smallest Diamonds    January 4, 2017  By: Menlo Park (Stanford News) Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a way to use diamondoids – the smallest possible bits of diamond – to assemble atoms into the thinnest [..]

New Way to Test Biological Force Sensor Technology : With Nanopartical Eating Worms By Taylor Kubota (Stanfor NEWS) January 4, 2017 Millimeter-long worms digesting a nanoparticle-laced meal of their favorite bacteria could eventually lead to a new way to see cellular forces at play within our own bodies, including processes like [..]

More Sensitive 3-D antibody Arrays : Useful for Disease Diagnosis By: Anne Trafton | MIT News Office January 4, 2017 Exploiting a process known as molecular self-assembly, MIT chemical engineers have built three-dimensional arrays of antibodies that could be used as sensors to diagnose diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis. [..]

New Biomarker Oncogene For The Early Detection of Breast Cancer December 27, 2016 News SNU An oncogene discovered by NUS scientists could be used as a biomarker for the early detection and prognosis of breast cancer. This may happen as soon as next year, as the patent has been licensed [..]

Effect of “Ineffective” Treatment on Some Glioblastoma Patients December 26, 2016 By KRISTA CONGER (Stanford News) A subgroup of patients with a devastating brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme benefited from treatment with a class of chemotherapy drugs that two previous large clinical trials indicated was ineffective against the disease, according to a [..]