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Sensor100
April 2017
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Agriculture
MIT is Now Offering an Innovation andTechnology in
Agriculture and Environment Course
The Earth’s population will likely exceed 10 billion people in just a few decades,
requiring an 80% increase in agricultural production.This presents an urgent need
for innovative technologies to make agriculture more efficient, as well as to opti-
mize and adapt existing processes to changing conditions.This course focuses on
three fundamental areas that underpin agricultural innovation:
1. Nano/micro/global aspects of environmental impacts including climate, weath-
er, and microbiological
2. The application of advanced technologies, such as new materials and machines,
in agricultural processes
3. The use of data and modeling to improve yield by enhanced precision and
predictive power using large-scale data analytics and simulation
MIT Professional Education19 April
Miniature Liver on a Chip Could Boost US Food Safety
The US Food and Drug Adminis-
tration (FDA) has started testing
whether livers-on-a-chip — min-
iature models of human organs
engineered to mimic biological
functions — can reliably model
human reactions to food and
food-borne illnesses.
The chips are made by Emulate, a
biotechnology company in Boston,
Massachusetts.The miniature organs contain multiple types of human liver cells
grown on a scaffold, and continuously pump a blood-like fluid through the system
to deliver nutrients and remove waste.
Nature News12 April