A revolutionary new cheap, easy and effective method uses shockwaves for desalinating water, separating salt out by applying electric current in a process dubbed electrodialysis, thanks to Martin Bazant, engineering and mathematics professor at MIT, and his team.

Unlike straining and boiling, the process is not prone to clogs or energy-intensive. Salt-enriched and salt-depleted water separates when electrodes are attached to porous ‘frit’ made of small glass particles. The resulting flows are separated so the freshwater can be collected for use. Effectively, when the current is increased to a certain point, it generates a shockwave between these two zones, sharply dividing the streams and allowing the fresh and salty regions to be separated by a simple physical barrier at the center of the flow.

The current can kill problematic bacteria as well, helping filter as well as desalinate if needed in areas with contaminated water. This approach is “a fundamentally new and different separation system,” Bazant says. And unlike most other approaches to desalination or water purification, he adds, this one performs a “membraneless separation” of ions and particles (via Fastco and Inhabitat).

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A team of MIT students and research staff have successfully developed a photovoltaic powered reverse osmosis (PVRO) for use in communities in need, now deployed and working in a small Mexican village. The community in question lacked dependable drinking water but receives plenty of sunshine to drive a solar-powered system like this one. Neighbors pitched in to build and run the apparatus.

The result is a system that supplies water for about 1/10th the price of what can be found in the area, and with much greater reliability. The community stands to make thousands of dollars per year on the process, some of which will be invested back into the technology to keep it running and the rest going to voted-on projects. Eventually, they hope to turn it into a business and sell clean water to tourists visiting nearby Mayan ruins.

“When you live in a very rural area, you have to do everything yourself,” the team said of the locals. “Farming, if there’s something wrong with your well, you’re the one stuck fixing it, because no one’s going to drive into the jungle to help you. So they were very handy, which made it easy for us to train them.”

“The entire time, you’re just hoping nothing gets lost in translation. The nice thing about technology is, it kind of speaks for itself. You can show with very easy diagrams and hands-on training, right next to them, that turning a valve doesn’t have to be said in so many words — you can just show them.”

The team’s next mission is to put systems in other needy communities, from jungle towns to crowded cities. The system’s design can adapt to different water qualities (utilizing a variety of different water purification processes, including reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, or electrodialysis) and its affordability makes it perfect for widespread use as well.

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With a few notable exceptions, just about all 3D printing up to this point has been done with plastic as a base material. A collaboration between MIT’s Mediated Matter Group, MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and MIT’s Glass Lab has led to a pretty exciting advancement: 3D printing with molten glass.

The group calls their process G3DP. It involves an upper cartridge acting as a kiln at up to 1900 degrees Fahrenheit. The lower chamber anneals the molten glass, allowing it to cool slowly, letting the newly-printed structure harden. The team figured out that by precisely adjusting the orientation and thickness of the optically transparent glass, they can closely control the light transmission, reflection, and refraction qualities of the finished objects.

That may sound a little like mumbo-jumbo, and the video only seems to focus on the (admittedly very impressive) artistic value of the G3DP method. But in simpler terms, it means that this method might help us make higher-quality, less-expensive fiber optics in the near future. It could even be used as a simpler method of making eyeglass lenses – and the decorative possibilities are still a pretty big part of the G3DP method’s appeal, of course. Just imagine these gorgeous bespoke light fixtures all throughout your house!

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The past two decades have brought about some incredible – and very expensive – advances in prosthetic limb technology. A prosthetic leg can now contain microprocessors, gyroscopes, and hydraulics to give the amputee a completely natural gait. In India and other developing nations, having a leg amputated usually means a lifetime with a stiff, unmoving prosthetic. MIT associate professor of mechanical engineering Amos Winter wants to bring a low-tech solution to people in developing countries who don’t have $50,000 to spend on a top-of-the-line leg.

Winter and his associates published a paper detailing their research on the ideal torque that a prosthetic leg should produce in order to replicate the gait of a natural knee. Working off of that research, the team was able to build a prototype of a working prosthetic leg that uses simple elements like springs and dampers instead of high-tech electronic components.

Their low-tech prototype uses a spring to slightly bend the “knee” as the leg moves; two dampers stop the leg from swinging backward and slow it down during its forward movement just before the heel hits the ground. Using this simple system, the prosthetic leg allows for a much more natural gait than the typical non-dynamic prosthetic leg. The researchers have begun testing their invention with above-the-knee amputees in India and hope that, once refined, their prosthesis will cost only a few hundred dollars.

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On social networks many of us already wear our proverbial hearts on our digital sleeves, but what if that translated back into a physical representation – something that augmented our interactions, notified us of nearby friends and activities or helped break the ice between secondary connections in real life?

A joint project of the MIT Fluid Interface Group and Tangible Media Group, this project attempts to bridge the gap between clothing and devices, utilizing our mobile machines in our pockets or hands to do the heavy computational and network lifting but displaying the results on shirts or other items of apparel.

Beyond that, though, there are elements of physical interaction – touching the activated cloth not only changes patterns but can also change relationships, letting you add ‘friends’ to your network just by making contact (or showing who your mutual friends may be via light-up text displays).

“If you think about it, our Facebook and Twitter profiles reach and even impact thousands of people every day, but it doesn’t feel like it,” Kan, representing the group, tells me. “But while the way we represent ourselves in social media is intangible, what we wear isn’t. We wanted to see if we could merge the two to create social catalysts.”

From FastCo: “For many, fashion is already something of a way of communicating to others that you’re part of a secret club. Social Textiles could take that concept to the next level, buzzing and flashing on the club floor when a like-minded club kid bumps into you. But the Social Textiles team also sees their invention being useful at more structured events like freshman meet-and-greets, company picnics, industry conferences, and so on. After all, meeting new people is hard enough. Why not let your clothes do some of the work for you?

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