At MIT, there’s a lot of R&D on wearable electronic devices (see our recent story about one such example) but they don’t go down so well at Logan airport. A 19-year-old MIT student was arrested today by police bearing machine guns, after she approached an airport worker inquiring about a flight while wearing a circuit board, wires and a battery on the front of her sweatshirt. Ah, brings back memories of that lightbright fiasco (where electronic signs hanging on bridges in Boston touched off a massive citywide bomb scare). Is this something that wearable computing researchers are thinking about: how their gadgets will be perceived in this age of fear and security?

A team of students from MIT and other local schools is just days away from shipping its “zero-energy house”:https://web.mit.edu/solardecathlon/ to Washington DC to compete in the US Department of Energy’s “Solar Decathlon”:https://www.solardecathlon.org/—a competition to build the most energy-efficient, self-sufficient off-grid house. I visited and “blogged”:https://network.nature.com/boston/news/blog/U66E7CD1A/2007/07/23/how-to-build-a-zero-energy-house-in-four-months-%E2%80%93-a-photo-tour about the MIT house a couple of months ago and recently went back to check out their progress.

The rooftop solar panels were up.

!https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1349/1409039155_2cb09acf0d.jpg!

The self-heating wall, made of basically plastic, water-filled blocks that absorb heat from the outside and release it into the house, was done as well.

!https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1341/1409897452_528051b30f.jpg!

The interior was on its way to being done. The flooring and ceiling surfaces are made of bamboo. The walls are made from wheat waste products and even the furniture was made of waste material from sorghum.

!https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1220/1409903884_0b82912102.jpg!

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With NIH funding on the decline, funding from industry, such as the drug companies, may become more important. Mass High Tech recently had an “article”:https://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/09/17/story1.html about how Merck, with its shiny new R&D facility a stone’s throw away from Harvard Medical School, is funding research in six HMS labs on cancer and neurological diseases. The article quotes a Harvard official saying that the funding is for basic research.

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The NIH funding downturn hasn’t been good for the Forsyth Institute, the Harvard-affiliated dental research center in the Fenway, right by the Museum of Fine Art. It recently sold its historic building to the MFA, and this “article”:https://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/09/24/story1.html talks about how it’s struggling to make ends meet and figure out its focus for the future during tough funding times. NNB “profiled”:https://network.nature.com/boston/news/articles/2006/07/27/beyond-research-on-the-mouth the 97-year-old institute last year and discussed how it wanted to expand into other areas of biomedical research.

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And finally, here’s a “story”:https://www.xconomy.com/2007/09/20/bioengine-one-step-closer-to-artificial-liver-device/ about a Boston startup, Bioengine, which is developing the first artificial liver. It hopes to start human trials within two years of a device that would bridge people until they get a real liver transplant.