MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
May 18, 2018
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

Plug-and-play diagnostic devices

Modular blocks could enable labs around the world to cheaply and easily build their own diagnostics.

Applying machine learning to challenges in the pharmaceutical industry

MIT researchers and industry form new consortium to aid the drug discovery process.

Featured video: The neuroscience behind "Yanny" vs. "Laurel"

MIT grad students explain why some people hear "Yanny" and others hear "Laurel" in the audio clip that's taken the world by storm.

Going with the flow

Ken Kamrin’s model of granular material flow could impact how we interact with sand, soil, pills, industrial materials, and more.

People power

State-level policy in the U.S. is responsive to public opinion, study shows.

TESS takes initial test image

Exoplanet-seeking satellite developed by MIT swings by moon toward final orbit.

In the Media

Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that MIT researchers have designed a kit that allows scientists to develop diagnostic tests quickly and cheaply. The kit, “uses modular blocks that can be connected in different patterns to replicate the function that would typically be built into a manufactured test for pregnancy, glucose, or an infection or other disease.”

WBUR’s Carey Goldberg recommends a video with neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute “for a quick, light and smart explanation” of the ‘Yanny vs. Laurel’ debate. “The same acoustic information is hitting everyone’s ears,” says graduate student Kevin Sitek. “But the brain is then going to interpret that differently, based on experience.”