Новости за 26.04.2023

Health data is all around us. Your electronic health records (EHRs) include your medical issues, test results, vital signs, allergies, prescriptions, and surgeries. Your health insurer’s database collects the claims paid on your behalf. Your pharmacy may record your flu and covid-19 shots. Maybe a smartwatch counts your steps and measures your heart rate; perhaps…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: The Education issue —Mat Honan, editor in chief Welcome to the Education Issue, our latest print magazine. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re in an entirely new place when it comes to…

Elizabeth Carr is head of commercial development at Genomic Prediction, a New Jersey genetic testing startup that says it will assess embryos created in IVF clinics for their future chance of common diseases and then rank them, so parents can pick the one with the best future.  It’s a controversial area that has some critics…

Artist Ariel Aberg-Riger is author of America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History.

Welcome to the Education Issue. I cheated on my editor’s letter. This one that you are reading right now. I’m very sorry.  Look, I didn’t set out to do this, but the thing about magazines is that they have very hard deadlines, and if you miss them, you’re left with blank pages. So when I…

Atorrus Rainer, age 41, is standing in the center of a stuffy, ­fluorescent-lit room. A virtual-reality headset covers his eyes like oversize goggles. Every so often, he extends his arm, using the VR controller to pick up garbage bags, a toothbrush, and toilet paper during a simulated trip to the supermarket. The experience is limited—Rainer…

When the designer and typographer Marcin Wichary stumbled upon a tiny museum just outside Barcelona five years ago, the experience tipped his interest in the history of technology into an obsession with a very particular part of it: the keyboard.  “I have never seen so many typewriters under one roof. Not even close,” he shared…

In the late 1980s, NASA conducted a study to determine how well indoor plants like aloe vera, Chinese ivy, and potted chrysanthemums abate air pollution. The results were a boon to nursery owners everywhere: the research showed that houseplants can capably dispatch harmful pollutants including benzene and formaldehyde.  But NASA’s study was conducted in sealed…

About 35 million Americans suffer from digestive issues such as constipation, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and gastroparesis (partial stomach paralysis). These so-called motility disorders, in which food fails to move through the system properly, are often diagnosed using endoscopy, nuclear imaging studies, or x-rays.  But engineers at MIT and Caltech have come up with a less…

Lights, muscles, action Ritu Raman’s engineered muscle cells contract in response to light—and could lead to biologically based robots that adapt to their environment or repair themselves after a crash. Ritu Raman rubs her gloved hands with ethanol and reaches into an incubator the size of a mini-fridge to pull out a tray of petri…

No two hearts beat alike—and that can make it more complicated to treat heart disease. But a team of MIT engineers and others has developed a way to copy a patient’s unique heart in robotic form to help test different therapies more accurately. The procedure involves first converting medical images of a patient’s heart into…

If you think of Michelle Wu as the architect of Boston’s new city government, then Tiffany Chu ’10 might be the general contractor. As the chief of staff to Mayor Wu, Chu is in charge of figuring out how visions of urban transformation actually take shape. Take the Thursday afternoon in early February that found…

Among the Ojibwe of North America, an older person is referred to as a “great person” and young people are taught not to answer back when chastised by their elders, out of respect for their wisdom. But some of the Chukchi people living in Siberia adhered to a custom based on a very different view…