Tech
It took 40 years for technology to catch up to this zipper design
In 1985, the Innovative Design Fund placed an ad in Scientific American offering up to $10,000 to support clever prototypes for clothing, home decor, and textiles. William Freeman PhD ’92, then an electrical engineer at Polaroid and now an MIT professor, saw it and submitted a novel idea: a three-sided zipper. Instead of fastening pants, it’d be like a switch that seamlessly flips chairs, tents, and purses between soft and rigid states, making them easier to pack and put together.
Freeman’s blueprint was much like a regular zipper, except triangular. On each side, he nailed a belt to connect narrow wooden “teeth” together. A slider wrapping around the device could be moved up to fasten the three strips into place, straightening them into a triangular tube. His proposal was rejected, but Freeman patented his prototype and stored it in his garage in the hopes it might come in handy one day.
Nearly 40 years later, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers wanted to revive the project to create items with “tunable stiffness.” Prior attempts to adjust that weren’t easily reversible or required manual assembly, so CSAIL built an automated design tool and adaptable fastener called the “Y-zipper.” The scientists’ software program helps users customize three-sided zippers, which it then builds on its own in a 3D printer using plastics. These devices can be attached or embedded into camping equipment, medical gear, robots, and art installations for more convenient assembly.
“A regular zipper is great for closing up flat objects, like a jacket, but Freeman ideated something more dynamic. Using current fabrication technology, his mechanism can transform more complex items,” says MIT postdoc and CSAIL researcher Jiaji Li, who is a lead author on an open-access paper presenting the project. “We’ve developed a process that builds objects you can rapidly shift from flexible to rigid, and you can be confident they’ll work in the real world.”
Why zippers?
Users can customize how the fasteners look when they’re zipped up in CSAIL’s software program; they can select the length of each strip, as well as the direction and angle at which they’ll bend. They can also choose from one of four motion “primitives” to select how the zipper will appear when it’s zipped up: straight, bent (similar to an arch), coiled (resembling a spring), or twisted (looks like screws).
The Y-zipper that results will appear to “shape-shift” in the real world. When unzipped, it can look like a squid with three sprawling tentacles, and when you close it up, it becomes a more compact structure (like a rod, for instance). This flexibility could be useful when you’re traveling — take pitching a tent, for example. The process can take up to six minutes to do alone, but with the Y-zipper’s help, it can be done in one minute and 20 seconds. You simply attach each arm to a side of the tent, supporting the structure from the top so that the zipper seemingly pops the canopy into place.
This seamless transition could also unlock more flexible wearables, often useful in medical scenarios. The team wrapped the Y-zipper around a wrist cast, so that a user could loosen it during the day, and zip it up at night to prevent further injuries. In turn, a seemingly stiff device can be made more comfortable, adjusting to a patient’s needs.
The system can also aid users in crafting technology that moves at the push of a button. One can attach a motor to the Y-zipper after fabrication to automate the zipping process, which helps build things like an adaptive robotic quadruped. The robot could potentially change the size of its legs, tightening up into taller limbs and unzipping when it needs to be lower to the ground. Eventually, such rapid adjustments could help the robot explore the uneven terrain of places like canyons or forests. Actuated Y-zippers can also build dynamic art installations — for example, the team created a long, winding flower that “bloomed” thanks to a static motor zipping up the device.
Mastering the material
While Li and his colleagues saw the creative potential of the Y-zipper, it wasn’t yet clear how durable it would be. Could they sustain daily use?
The team ran a series of stress tests to find out. First, they evaluated the strength and flexibility of polylactic acid (PLA) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), two plastics commonly used in 3D printing. Using a machine that bent the Y-zippers down, they found that PLA could handle heavier loads, while TPU was more pliable.
In another experiment, CSAIL researchers used an actuator to continuously open and close the Y-zipper to see how long it’d take to snap. Some 18,000 cycles of zipping and unzipping later, they finally broke. Y-zipper’s secret to durability, according to 3D simulations: its elastic structure, which helps distribute the stress of heavy loads.
Despite these findings, Li envisions an even more durable three-sided zipper using stronger materials, like metal. They may also make the zippers bigger for larger-scale projects, but that’s not yet possible with their current 3D printing platform.
Jiaji also notes that some applications remain unexplored, like space exploration, wherein Y-zipper’s tentacles could be built into a spacecraft to grab nearby rock samples. Likewise, the zippers could be embedded into structures that can be assembled rapidly, helping relief workers quickly set up shelters or medical tents during natural disasters and rescues.
“Reimagining an everyday zipper to tackle 3D morphological transitions is a brilliant approach to dynamic assembly,” says Zhejiang University assistant professor Guanyun Wang, who wasn’t involved in the paper. “More importantly, it effectively bridges the gap between soft and rigid states, offering a highly scalable and innovative fabrication approach that will greatly benefit the future design of embodied intelligence.”
Li and Freeman wrote the paper with Tianjin University PhD student Xiang Chang and MIT CSAIL colleagues: PhD student Maxine Perroni-Scharf; undergraduate Dingning Cao; recent visiting researchers Mingming Li (Zhejiang University), Jeremy Mrzyglocki (Technical University of Munich), and Takumi Yamamoto (Keio University); and MIT Associate Professor Stefanie Mueller, who is a CSAIL principal investigator and senior author on the work. Their research was supported, in part, by a postdoctoral research fellowship from Zhejiang University and the MIT-GIST Program.
The researchers’ work was presented at the ACM’s Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in April.
Tech
‘I Actually Thought He Was Going to Hit Me,’ OpenAI’s Greg Brockman Says of Elon Musk
In August 2017, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever gathered at Elon Musk’s self-described “haunted mansion,” a 47-acre, $23 million estate in Hillsborough, south of San Francisco, to discuss the future of OpenAI. Actor Amber Heard, Musk’s then-girlfriend, had served the group whiskey and then dashed off with a friend, Brockman, OpenAI’s cofounder and president, testified in federal court during the trial for Musk v. Altman on Tuesday.
Ahead of the meeting, Musk gifted Brockman and Sutskever, OpenAI’s cofounder and former chief scientist, new Tesla Model 3 cars. “It felt like he was buttering us up,” Brockman said on the stand. “He wanted us to feel indebted to him in some way.” Sutskever tried to reciprocate for the occasion. The amateur artist presented Musk with a painting of a Tesla. Musk and the other cofounders wanted to establish a for-profit arm to entice investors to give them billions of dollars to pay for compute. But Musk also wanted control of the company, and Sutskever and Brockman objected to granting the Tesla CEO what they believed would be a “dictatorship” over the future of AI development. They proposed having shared control.
After several minutes of deliberation, Musk rejected their offer. “He stood up and stormed around the table,” Brockman recalled. “I actually thought he was going to hit me, physically attack me.” Musk grabbed the painting, said he would cut off his funding of the nonprofit until Brockman and Sutskever quit, and left the room, according to Brockman’s testimony. But that night, Musk’s so-called chief of staff Shivon Zilis called Brockman and Sutskever “to say it’s not over,” Brockman testified. “There were discussions of futures that included us.”
The story of the heated negotiations emerged as Brockman wrapped up his testimony on Tuesday. To OpenAI, the events at the mansion are representative of repeated instances of erratic behavior by Musk that they believe undermine his arguments about the company. Musk contends his roughly $38 million in donations to OpenAI were abused by Brockman and others on the path to creating the $852 billion for-profit venture now known for services such as ChatGPT and Codex. Brockman, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and OpenAI deny any wrongdoing, and the jury in Musk v. Altman could begin deliberating on an advisory ruling as soon as next week.
After Tuesday’s testimony, William Savitt, an attorney for OpenAI, told reporters that what Brockman had learned in 2017 was how tough it can be to meet one’s heroes. Brockman admired and respected Musk’s business acumen, but his desire for control was absolute and concerning, Savitt said. Marc Toberoff, an attorney for Musk, told reporters that the true concern was Brockman’s motivations for sharing control, with his desire for wealth having faced scrutiny in court a day earlier.
For his part, Brockman offered another story on Tuesday to underscore why he thought Musk was not up to the task of controlling an AI company. Brockman recalled then-OpenAI researcher Alec Radford showing Musk an early version of an AI chatbot that didn’t generate responses that he liked. Musk “kept saying this system is so stupid, that a kid on the internet could do better,” Brockman said. Radford “was absolutely crushed” and “demoralized” to the point that he almost quit the AI research field altogether, Brockman said. Brockman and Sutskever “spent a lot of time” rebuilding his confidence. Musk’s inability to see the potential in the early technology—which eventually became the basis for ChatGPT—made him unfit to control OpenAI, in Brockman’s view. “You needed to dream a little bit,” Brockman said. And Musk hadn’t shown that he could.
Boardroom Fights
Brockman said Tuesday that he, Sutskever, and Altman considered voting Musk off the OpenAI nonprofit board as negotiations with him about a for-profit sibling company dragged on for months. They would meet again over whiskey at Musk’s mansion to discuss alternative funding options. There was agreement over what not to do, but little on what to do instead. But Brockman and Sutskever decided removing Musk felt “wrong,” Brockman testified. Eventually, Musk left on his own after deeming OpenAI was on a path of “certain failure,” according to an email he wrote in early 2018.
Zilis, then an adviser to both OpenAI and Musk, kept him informed about developments at the AI venture in the years to come. “She was proxy Elon in some ways,” Brockman said, referring to her as “a friend” who he had first met in 2012 or 2013.
Tech
Telehealth Abortion Is Still Possible Without Mifepristone
Abortion provider Carafem’s phones were ringing nonstop over the weekend after a US federal appeals court reinstated a nationwide requirement that the drug mifepristone, one of two pills used for a medication abortion, must be obtained in person. The decision, handed down on Friday, left patients unsure if they could gain access to their treatment through telehealth. “People are afraid, and they’re angry,” says Carafem’s chief operations officer, Melissa Grant. “I had people contact us saying, This can’t be true. Do you still have the medication available? Can’t you just give it to me? They were bargaining.”
With the restriction in place, Carafem quickly pivoted to a backup approach. Instead of prescribing the two-drug protocol typical for a medication abortion—mifepristone, which blocks progesterone and prevents the pregnancy from progressing, and then misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract—the organization began prescribing misoprostol on its own. While slightly less effective than the dual-pill option, it’s been widely used in the past. “We feel comfortable prescribing it,” says Grant.
Some Planned Parenthood clinics also pivoted to the misoprostol-only regimen this weekend. “Planned Parenthood providers are doing everything they can to make sure patients know that medication abortion is still safe, legal, and available,” says Danika Severino, vice president of care and access at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
On Monday, the Supreme Court offered a temporary reprieve, pausing the appeals court ruling for a week. The measure allows patients to once again get mifepristone through virtual clinics at least until May 11, when SCOTUS will take another look at the case. Carafem and Planned Parenthood say they are prepared to shift back to misoprostol-only if necessary. Other providers, including the digital abortion clinic HeyJane, have confirmed that they will also take that approach if necessary.
Mifepristone was developed in the 1980s in France and has been extensively studied for safety and efficacy. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000. Under President Joseph Biden, the FDA first allowed the drug to be obtained by mail instead of in person in April 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The agency permanently lifted the in-person dispensing requirement in 2023.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the constitutional right to an abortion, medication abortion via telehealth became a more sought-after option, especially for patients in states that adopted abortion restrictions. Approximately one in three abortions that took place in the first half of 2025 used abortion pills obtained through telehealth, according to public health nonprofit Plan C.
Access to mifepristone has become the next major battleground in reproductive health, with anti-abortion politicians and lobbyists seeking to reinstate in-person dispensing requirements on the drug and, by doing so, make medication abortion harder to obtain.
After conflicting legal rulings in 2023 sparked confusion over whether mifepristone would be available from virtual clinics, some of them planned to temporarily shift to offering misoprostol-only medication abortions. Some virtual clinics have offered single-pill options even before that. Carafem offered misoprostol-only medication abortions beginning in 2020, in an effort to provide patients with options for virtual care during the early days of Covid.
Originally developed to treat gastric ulcers, misoprostol has been used for medication abortion since the late 1980s. It remains the primary method of medication abortion in many parts of the world where access to mifepristone is limited.
“Mifepristone and misoprostol are both very safe medications, and in general, having mifepristone increases the efficacy and decreases complication rates of medication abortion,” says Rachel Jensen, a fellow with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which endorses the misoprostol-only protocol when mifepristone isn’t available. The single-drug regimen is also endorsed by the World Health Organization, the Society of Family Planning, and the National Abortion Federation.
Tech
The Italian Dubbing of ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Has Stirred Up a Surprising Controversy
One thing is certain about The Devil Wears Prada 2: The ambitious undertaking of making a sequel of a cult status film after 20 years has succeeded, at least as far as box office figures are concerned. The numbers speak for themselves, with $77 million generated in US theaters and another $157 million in the rest of the world since its April 29 release.
In the face of such a box office smash, this installment has inspired heated debates for days about its quality and comparisons to the original. In Italy, those arguments even extend to the dubbing of the film.
The controversy stems from the choice of voice actors in the Italian version of The Devil Wears Prada 2, who are themselves a nod to continuity; it’s the same cast as the original. Connie Bismuto is back to voice Anne Hathaway as Andy, Francesca Manicone dubs Emily Blunt as Emily, Gabriele Lavia is once again Stanley Tucci’s Nigel, and above all, Maria Pia Di Meo, the actress who has been the familiar and expressive voice of Meryl Streep in practically all the Italian adaptations of recent years—including the fearsome Miranda Priestly—returned for the sequel.
While many fans were happy to revisit these familiar voices, other viewers noticed some idiosyncrasies, largely due to the advanced age of the voice actors themselves, especially Di Meo and Lavia.
Di Meo, born in 1939, is undoubtedly a master of Italian dubbing, and her performances, linked to such great Hollywood actresses as Jane Fonda, Julie Andrews, Mia Farrow, Barbra Streisand, and Streep, have made her one of the most recognizable and expressive voices of cinema in that country’s theaters.
Yet some say her performance now reveals too much of the passage of time and that there’s a disconnect between her 87-year-old voice and that of a character as energetic and sharp as Miranda (played, in the original, by a 76-year-old Streep). Could this nine-year gap be too great to bridge? The same has been said of Lavia, who dubs Stanley Tucci with a result that often sounds a bit forced.
But more than a question of age, perhaps there’s a broader discussion to be had about dubbing in general and its effectiveness in an era in which downloads first and then streaming platforms have accustomed us to seeing more and more content in the original language.
Even just listening to the trailers released online for The Devil Wears Prada 2, a native Italian speaker will notice not only that the voices that have aged into varying degrees of mismatch but also that the speed of the lines makes them hard to follow. And what about the adaptation of the dialog? “I’m a features editor at Runway,” Anne Hathaway’s Andy says proudly, but how many of those who live outside newsrooms know what a features editor is? And again, when Miranda’s second assistant says, “I have to pee, I drank a venti,” how many people outside of the US understand on the fly that she’s referring to a Starbucks drink?
Perhaps, then, what hasn’t aged so well is not so much the voices of individual dubbers but a dubbing system that no longer keeps pace—in most cases—with the speed and specificity with which the content itself is produced. In the face of this consideration, however, one cannot ignore that, at least in a market like Italy, especially at the cinema, people overwhelmingly go to see dubbed versions of movies.
So these same online debates perhaps serve to keep attention focused on how many countries outside of the US experience these films. And one that deserves not only greater respect but also a quality that isn’t fully guaranteed with today’s frenetic pace.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.
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