"Whether you slap on whatever's handy or put together a well-coordinated ensemble, your outfit makes some sort of fashion statement. But imagine wearing clothes that could, literally, speak for themselves. A lab at MIT has designed special fibers that can detect and emit sound. The team described exactly how they accomplished this in a paper in Nature Materials.
Besides having clothes that make noise, why might this be important? Dr. Yoel Fink, a professor with MIT's department of materials science and engineering, says that highly functional fibers can be used to listen for the things your body is trying to tell you but that your ears can't seem to hear. "Our body is about flow, the flow of blood, air and oxygen," Fink explained when I sat down with him in his office. "When flow is obstructed in any way it releases sound. It has a particular acoustic signature."
If you think about it, when doctors use a stethoscope to check your heartbeat and breathing patterns they are listening for these disruptions in flow."
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Written by Intern Rebecca Cheung is a graduate student at the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism.
Submitted by Sarah Sheber
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