Groundbreaking work and published results in peer reviewed journals across disciplines.
In “Aligned PLLA electrospun fibres based biodegradable triboelectric nanogenerator,” the authors present a new construction method for potential components in energy harvesters. These energy harvesters—like solar cells—”are not always developed using sustainable materials.” Creating components that are biodegradable could make these devices more environmentally friendly. “The presented approach,” the authors argue, “can provide attractive green energy harvesting machine to power portable devices at a large scale—without having to worry about the end-of-life electronic waste management.”
Read “Aligned PLLA electrospun fibres based biodegradable triboelectric nanogenerator” and see the full list of authors below.
Visit the Site
In an article with Data & Society: Points, professor Laura Forlano writes how an AI system in her insulin pump system, which promised to “dynamically adjust blood sugar when compared to the previous linear system,” has actually required such frequent human-computer interactions as to make it medically detrimental.
“Human labor,” Forlano writes of her frequent interactions with the device, “is a necessary component that is often pushed out of view or, in my case, into the middle of the night.”
“Rather than dismiss this particular system as bad engineering,” she argues, “unlucky consumer choice or unethical technology, it’s more useful to think of it as a bellwether for a world in which autonomous systems are likely to be increasingly embedded in everyday life. How might we characterize different kinds of algorithmic harm?”
Read “When Things Go Beep in the Night: The AI system that is keeping me alive is ruining my life” below.
Read “The paradox of adaptive trait clines with nonclinal patterns in the underlying genes” and see the full list of authors below.
From the College of Engineering:
Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Aatmesh Shrivastava was awarded a patent for “Self-powered analog computing architecture with energy monitoring to enable machine-learning vision at the edge.”
Read more about the patent below.
Read “Autonomous electrochemical system for ammonia oxidation reaction measurements at the International Space Station” and see the full list of authors below.
Read “Initial recommendations for performing, benchmarking and reporting single-cell proteomics experiments” and see the full list of authors below.
Professor of public policy and urban affairs Joan Fitzgerald, in collaboration with policy advisor Julie Wormser and Tufts University professor Jonathan Lamontagne, has written an opinion piece in the Boston Globe on the need for a statewide “coastal adaptation agency.”
“If Boston were to build infrastructure to safeguard its shore,” independent of surrounding communities, they write, “it could well increase vulnerability in adjoining towns.”
“Failing to take a regional approach not only exposes important equity gaps between poor and wealthy communities but also leaves wealthier communities more vulnerable,” they argue.
Read “Massachusetts needs a coastal adaptation agency” at the Boston Globe below.
Bioengineering associate professor Qianqian Fang was awarded a patent for “Optically monitoring brain activities using 3D-aware head-probe.”
Read more about Fang’s research and the patent below.
In the effort to create “multimaterial 3D printers,” the printers often only “allow printing of one material at a time, with limited ability of mixing multiple materials.” In this paper, researchers describe a “new 3D printer which eliminates the above shortcoming by merging the Fused Filament Fabrication and Direct Ink Write in one compact system.”
Read “Closed-loop direct ink extruder system with multi-part materials mixing” and see the full list of authors below.
In this op-ed for The Boston Globe, Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, director of africana studies, dean’s professor of culture and social justice, and professor of africana studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, writes about a threat to The Calculus Project, a program designed to “increase the representation and success of low-income students and students of color in high-level high school math courses,” she says. Jean-Charles argues that the threat, coming from a group euphemistically called Parents Defending Education, “deploy[s] accusations of reverse discrimination to hoard opportunities. Their message is clear — the pie is not big enough for everyone to share, so whatever small slice others receive infringes upon their consumption of the entire pie.”
Read “Opponents of my kids’ math program have their calculus all wrong” at The Boston Globe, below.
In a POV piece for Fast Company, researchers developing “Robotic boots providing superhuman reflexes” detail their discovery that, in order for robotic aids to successfully assist humans attempting to balance, those aids must act faster than typical human response times.
You can read the article at Fast Company here, and read the original research, “Exoskeletons need to react faster than physiological responses to improve standing balance,” and see the full list of authors, below.
Professor of electrical and computer engineering Ravinder Dahiya, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Glasgow, has published research that advances electronic printing. Printing “high-performance and stable transistors… remains a major challenge. This is because of the difficulties to print high-mobility semiconducting materials and the lack of high-resolution printing techniques,” they write.
Crucially, the researchers now propose “silicon based printed n- and p-channel transistors to demonstrate the possibility of developing high-performance complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor… computing architecture.”
Read “Printed n- and p-Channel Transistors using Silicon Nanoribbons Enduring Electrical, Thermal, and Mechanical Stress” and see the full list of authors below.
Professor of religion Elizabeth Bucar, with co-author Emma Cieslik, explains the recent trends behind wearing Catholic rosaries, or prayer beads, as fashion items, and also what prayer beads mean to the Catholic faith. “Given its use in expressing identity and as an instrument of prayer,” they write, “many of the college students we spoke to were uncomfortable with non-Catholics wearing rosaries as a fashion statement.”
Read “Rosaries As Fashion: Why Not to Wear Prayer Beads As an Accessory” below.
The authors of “Endogenous Driving Behavior in Tests of Racial Profiling” have identified that “In daylight, when race is more easily observable, African-American motorists are less likely to have fatal motor vehicle accidents,” because they are often driving more carefully out of caution around racially motivated traffic stops. The researchers used a “‘Veil of Darkness’ strategy to examine traffic fatalities and speeding infractions to detect such behavioral responses.”
Read “Endogenous Driving Behavior in Tests of Racial Profiling” and see the full list of authors below.
Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Francesco Restuccia, research assistant professor Emrecan Demirors and professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for “Underwater ultrasonic communication system and method.”
Read more about the patent and their research below.
Read “An optimized acidic digestion for the isolation of microplastics from biota-rich samples and cellulose acetate matrices” below. Co-written between professor Aron Stubbins and graduate teaching assistant Erin Tuttle.
Read “Dissociation Between Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Statistical Learning in Children with Autism” and see the full list of authors below.
Researchers have identified a new “cross-modal retrieval” method to operate between “language and vision domains.” From their abstract: “To address this issue, we introduce an intuitive and interpretable model to learn a common embedding space for alignments between images and text descriptions. Specifically, our model first incorporates the semantic relationship information into visual and textual features by performing region or word relationship reasoning.”
Read “Image-Text Embedding Learning via Visual and Textual Semantic Reasoning” and see the full list of authors below.
Read “A Closed-Form Solution of the Smoke Filling Time and Descent History in Enclosure Growing Fires with Floor Leaks” and see the full list of authors below.
Professor of English Elmaz Abinader has a new short story appearing in the Winter 2023 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review titled “Hanging Fire.” You can find the full table of contents and purchase this issue below.
Read “Effects of inhaled cannabis high in Δ9-THC or CBD on the aging brain: A translational MRI and behavioral study” and see the full list of authors below.
In this article from The American Prospect, professor of public policy and urban affairs, describes the problems surrounding heat pumps, which aid electrification of homes and are more climate efficient, but which face “a complex policy environment surround[ing] a simple technology.”
Some of the problems Fitzgerald cites include regulatory obstacles, confusing rebate programs, and supply chain delays.
Find the whole article at The American Prospect, below.
Learn more about the research paper
Read “Greater than pH 8: The pH dependence of EDTA as a preservative of high molecular weight DNA in biological samples” and see the full list of authors below.
Read “Greater than pH 8: The pH dependence of EDTA as a preservative of high molecular weight DNA in biological samples” below.
Read “Decadal Application of WRF/Chem under Future Climate and Emission Scenarios: Impacts of Technology-Driven Climate and Emission Changes on Regional Meteorology and Air Quality” and see the full list of authors below.
In “Interphase chromosomes of the Aedes aegypti mosquito are liquid crystalline and can sense mechanical cues,” the authors observe “the three-dimensional architecture of the Aedes aegypti genome,” a species of mosquito. Their observations “[provide] a possible physical mechanism linking mechanical cues to gene regulation.”
The authors of “Phonetic categorization relies on motor simulation, but combinatorial phonological computations are abstract” note that there are two fundamental elements requisite to human language, categorization (identifying individual words as “distinct units”) and combination (the ability to distinguish between them). The authors explore these mechanisms “using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). [They] show that speech categorization engages the motor system…. In contrast, the combinatorial computation of syllable structure engages Broca’s area,” a region within the frontal lobe of the brain.
They “conclude that the two ingredients of language—categorization and combination—are distinct functions in human brains.”
Read “Phonetic categorization relies on motor simulation, but combinatorial phonological computations are abstract” and see the full list of authors below.