Researchers from MIT’s Senseable City Lab have found that taxi cabs equipped with sensors could be used to monitor the condition of cities, reports Jesus Diaz for Fast Company. “Gaining an accurate picture of urban conditions is crucial for city planners and administrators who must decide how to allocate scarce resources,” Diaz explains.
Writing for Fortune about the impacts of automation on the labor market, Geoff Colvin highlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s research analyzing the historical effects of technology on workers. Colvin explains that Acemoglu and his colleagues found that, “for the first time in modern history, automation isn’t necessarily good for workers overall.”
Graduate student Shekhar Chandra cites the work of Prof. Elfatih Eltahir in an article for CNN about the rising temperatures in India. “Experts at MIT say that even if the world succeeds in cutting carbon emissions, limiting the predicted rise in average global temperatures, parts of India will become so hot they will test the limits of human survivability,” writes Chandra.
The BBC’s Simon Calder speaks with Prof. Evelina Fedorenko about the brains of polyglots, or people who speak multiple languages. “People who already have proficiency in multiple languages, their language regions appear to be smaller,” says Fedorenko. “It becomes so that you don’t have to use as much brain tissue to do the task as well, so you become more efficient.”
Prof. M. Taylor Fravel co-authored an open letter in The Washington Post in which members of the academic, military and business communities express concern about the U.S. government’s interactions with China. “Although we are very troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.”
Penelope Green of The New York Times highlights the research of Prof. Neri Oxman in this article about air conditioning. “At MIT, Dr. Oxman’s team is experimenting with polymers and bacteria in the hopes they might ‘grow’ building facades, and ‘wearables’ — clothing, for example — complete with arteries to hold cooled liquids or gas,” writes Green.
Prof. Kripa Varanasi has developed a new hydrophobic surface that limits the spread of water droplets. The researchers etched a pattern of small rings onto the surface, which created a series of “water bowls” intended to “constrain the spread of droplets falling on them, thus encouraging the rapid ejection of those droplets back into the air,” reports The Economist.
BBC Future reporter Richard Hollingham examines how MIT researchers developed the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), which helped Apollo 11 astronauts navigate safely to and from the moon. “The AGC was filled with thousands of integrated circuits, or silicon chips,” Hollingham explains. “NASA’s order of this new technology led to the rapid expansion of Silicon Valley and accelerated the development of today’s computers.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Kate Brown examines the impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Brown notes that the consequences of the accident reached further than initially thought, writing that “the fallout map shows that Chernobyl radioactivity drifted widely across Europe, usually in areas with higher altitudes and precipitation.”
MIT researchers have created an ambulatory motor that can “walk” back and forth or make the gears of another machine move. “On its own, this little moving microbe is impressive enough,” writes Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch, “but its real potential lies in what could happen were it to be assembled with others of its ilk, and with other building-block robotics components made up of simple parts.”
The BBC’s Simon Calder speaks with Prof. Evelina Fedorenko about the brains of polyglots, or people who speak multiple languages. “People who already have proficiency in multiple languages, their language regions appear to be smaller,” says Fedorenko. “It becomes so that you don’t have to use as much brain tissue to do the task as well, so you become more efficient.”
John Steele Gordon writes for The Wall Street Journal about the history of census taking, which was aided by an electromechanical tabulating machine invented by MIT Prof. Herman Hollerith in 1899. “The Census Office immediately adopted the technology and was able to announce the total population in 1890 a mere six weeks after the count,” writes Gordon.
Arielle Pardes of Wired speaks with research specialist Kate Darling about the popularity of robotic companions and the concerns about humans becoming emotionally attached to them. “Darling, who studies ethics in robotics at MIT, says it's human nature to feel those bonds with machines that mimic emotion,” writes Pardes.
In an article for Forbes, research scientist Bryan Reimer argues for an increased focus on advances in collaborative driving. “With automation assisting drivers to a greater degree, enhancing safety while reducing the day-to-day stresses of driving could more easily be the first of many stepping-stones on the long path to self-driving and driverless vehicles,” writes Reimer.
In an article for Wired, Andrew McAfee, cofounder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, argues that the increased energy use and pollution associated with new technology is actually offset by the physical concept of dematerialization. “[W]e don’t need to worry that the iPhone and its digital kin are going to gobble up the planet, or even put a big dent in it,” writes McAfee. “In fact, they’re doing the opposite.”