Researchers from the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) at MIT; the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI Galway); and AMBER, the SFI Research Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, recently announced a significant breakthrough in soft robotics that could help patients requiring in-situ (implanted) medical devices such as breast implants, pacemakers, neural probes, glucose biosensors, and drug and cell delivery devices. The implantable medical devices market is currently estimated at approximately $100 billion, with significant growth potential into the future as new technologies for drug delivery and health monitoring are developed. These devices are not without problems, caused in part by the body's own protection responses. These complex and unpredictable foreign-body responses impair device function and drastically limit the long-term performance and therapeutic efficacy of these devices. One such foreign body response is fibrosis, a process whereby a dense fibrous capsule surrounds the implanted device, which can cause device failure or impede its function.

Young people have stopped picking up the phone to complain. Instead, they're increasingly likely to do business over webchat, messenger or Twitter. As artificial intelligence advances, it's likely we'll all be chatting with even more automated and intelligent bots - even if they appear on the surface like a human customer service agent. In February, the chief executive of Citigroup, Mike Corbat, suggested that "tens of thousands" of people who are currently working in their American bank centres are likely to be replaced by machines. A few days later, a report from two economists at University College Cork suggested that two in five Irish jobs might be supplanted by AI, with administration and customer service roles at particular risk, although another economist later suggested that their report was "overstated" and "fear-inducing."