CzaHa9017's BLOG

Dozens of cars in the Boston area are testing the latest generation of an MIT mobile-sensor network for traffic analysis that could help drivers cut their commuting time, alert them to potential engine problems and more. 

In the CarTel project, Professor Hari Balakrishnan and Associate Professor Samuel Madden of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science use automobiles to monitor their environment by sending data from an onboard computer -- which is about the size of a cell phone -- to a web server where the data can be visualized and browsed. They do so via pre-existing WiFi networks passed during a trip.

The resulting data, accessible from the web or a cell phone, not only helps a driver track conditions specific to their own car, but when combined with everyone else's can indicate historical and real-time traffic conditions at different times of the day. "Everybody's data is contributing to collective views of what congestion looks like," Madden......

After spending years developing a computational model to help illuminate cell signaling pathways, a team of MIT researchers decided to see what would happen if they "broke" the model.

The results, reported in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Cell, reveal new ways in which cells process chemical information and could indicate how to maximize the effectiveness of disease treatments such as chemotherapy.

A couple of years ago, MIT faculty member Michael Yaffe and colleagues reported a data-driven computational model that allows them to simultaneously investigate the relationships between several cell signaling pathways, which control the cell's response to inflammation, growth factors, DNA damage and other events.

Such a model can help researchers figure out how cells will respond to growth factors and treatments like chemotherapy, allowing them to potentially tailor treatments to individual patients.

In the Cell paper, the team took a new approach to wring more information......