button batteries

Every year, more than 3,500 people in the United States swallow button batteries. Between 2005 and 2014, doctors reported 11,940 cases of children under the age of 6 who ingested a battery. Swallowed batteries don’t cause harm if they are digested normally. But if they become lodged in the tissue of the stomach or esophagus, they can cause an electric current that produces hydroxide, a chemical that burns and damages tissue. But now researchers at MIT have developed a tiny origami robot that can unfold itself from a swallowed capsule...

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