A new sensory glove developed by MIT researchers provides insight into how humans grasp and manipulate objects, reports The Economist. The glove will not only “be useful in programming robots to mimic people more closely when they pick objects up,” but also could “provide insights into how the different parts of the hand work together when grasping things.”
Writing for CNN about designing a spacesuit suitable for Mars, Jackie Wattles spotlights Prof. Dava Newman’s work developing the BioSuit. “Space flight for me is about raising up all of our potential, and it's also about answering the hardest problems I can think of," says Newman. "Designing a suit for an astronaut to go to Mars is about the biggest challenge I can think of.”
MIT researchers have developed a low-cost electronic glove equipped with sensors that can use tactical information to identify objects, reports Katherine Wu for NOVA Next. Wu writes that the glove is “easy and economical to manufacture, carrying a wallet-friendly price tag of only $10 per glove, and could someday inform the design of prosthetics, surgical tools, and more.”
New Scientist reporter Chelsea Whyte writes that MIT researchers have developed a smart glove that enables neural networks to identify objects by touch alone. “There’s been a lot of hope that we’ll be able to understand the human grasp someday and this will unlock our potential to create this dexterity in robots,” explains MIT alumnus Subramanian Sundaram.
A new glove embedded with sensors can enable AI systems to identify the shape and weight of different objects, writes HealthDay reporter Dennis Thompson. Using the glove, “researchers have been able to clearly unravel or quantify how the different regions of the hand come together to perform a grasping task,” explains MIT alumnus Subramanian Sundaram.
National Geographic reporter Michael Greshko writes about a new effort by researchers from a number of institutions, including MIT, to reassess the possibility of cold fusion. Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang explains that he hopes to be able to create a “‘reference experiment’ for other labs to also advance research into lower-energy nuclear physics.”
President Emerita Susan Hockfield discusses her new book, “The Age of Living Machines,” her work as a neuroscientist, and the future of science and technology during a curated lunch conversation with HUBweek and Boston.com. Hockfield explains that a revolution spurred by the convergence of biology with engineering will lead to new technologies built by biology.
The MIT Chorallaries, a co-ed a cappella group at MIT, compete in WGBH’s Sing That Thing! competition. “I have always been really interested in music, but also really enjoyed doing math and science in school,” explains third-year student Madeline Wong. “I feel like they are both integral parts of my life and I couldn’t have one without the other.”
In this Washington Post article, reporter Chris Berdik spotlights assessment tools developed by MIT’s Playful Journey Lab to help educators track skills development in playful learning activities. “We want to support teachers who are fighting for these types of activities and future-ready skills,” explains research scientist YJ Kim.
MIT alumnus Murray Gell-Mann, a pioneering physicist who “helped make sense of the very small,” died at the age of 89, reports George Dvorsky for Gizmodo. Dvorsky writes that Gell-Mann will be remembered for “bringing order to the chaotic field of particle physics, and for coining the term ‘quark.’”
The Associated Press memorializes the life and work of Murray Gell-Mann, an MIT alumnus who “transformed physics by devising a method for sorting subatomic particles into simple groups of eight.”
Yorai Shaoul, a second-year student at MIT, won the men’s triple jump at the NCAA Division 3 Outdoor Track & Field Championships, helping the Engineers secure a second-place finish, reports The Boston Globe.
Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes for Wired about the decision to grant Amazon the .amazon domain and how the International Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN) evaluates such decisions. “The job of ICANN is to govern the name space in an open and inclusive process and to steward this process in the best, but never perfect, way possible,” writes Ito.
MIT alumnus Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel laureate known for his work conceiving the idea of quarks, died on May 24, reports Martin Weil for The Washington Post. Gell-Mann, who earned a doctorate in physics at MIT, was a “pioneer in the development of what is called the ‘standard model’ of particle physics, a guide to the fundamental behavior of the constituents of the universe.”
Researchers from MIT and a number of other institutions have found that grammar-enriched deep learning models had a better understanding of key linguistic rules, reports Kyle Wiggers for VentureBeat. The researchers found that an AI system provided with knowledge of basic grammar, “consistently performed better than systems trained on little-to-no grammar using a fraction of the data, and that it could comprehend ‘fairly sophisticated’ rules.”