A storytelling robot developed by MIT researchers could be used to help boost language skills in young children and could help prepare children for learning in school, report Donna Lu for New Scientist. “If a child doesn’t start kindergarten ready to learn, it is very difficult and very expensive for them to catch up,” explains Prof. Cynthia Breazeal.
Newsweek reporter Hannah Osborne writes that MIT researchers have found that a lobster’s membrane, which protects its underbelly, is made of one of the toughest hydrogels in the world. “Its strength and flexibility,” Osborne explains, could “make it an ideal material to use as a blueprint for body armor.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Alicia Wallace spotlights MIT’s AI executive education course, which “aims to make a technologically complicated topic accessible by the pacing of the course and by providing examples of practical applications.”
Wired reporter Emma Bryce highlights Prof. Dina Katabi’s work developing a wireless system that can help track a person’s health and could be used to monitor Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients. Katabi explains that the system “can be used to detect and understand higher level information, not just monitoring the signs and the measurements, but really being able to understand the meaning of those measurements.”
Prof. Rosalind Picard speaks with NBC Mach reporter Jessica Wapner about how wearable devices could be used to help detect and predict episodes of depression. “We’d love to get to you before you get depressed,” explains Picard, “and help you put things back in your life before you get in trouble.”
Washington Post reporter Peter Holley writes that MIT researchers have found that the soft membrane covering a lobster’s joints and abdomen is as tough as industrial rubber. The researchers discovered, “lobsters could offer a solution to the problem plaguing most modern body armors: the more mobility an armor offers, the less it protects the wearer’s body.”
Bloomberg News reporter Eric Roston writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that climate change is making summer thunderstorms more powerful and urban pollution more potent. “Summertime weather isn’t ventilating American cities at the rate that it did in the past,” explains graduate student Charles Gertler.
NIH Director Francis Collins highlights how MIT researchers have developed a new ingestible device, shaped like the shell of an African leopard tortoise, that can inject insulin directly into the stomach wall. Collins writes that, “this fascinating work serves as a reminder that when it comes to biomedical science, inspiration sometimes can come from the most unexpected places.”
Prof. Theodore Postol writes for The New York Times about the potential consequences of the United States of America withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. “It is the unimaginable capabilities of these weapons that must take center stage when considering the giant and still unknown terrors and threats they pose to global stability and humanity’s future,” argues Postol.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes that MIT startup Altaeros has developed a helium-filled airship called a SuperTower that can be used to carry cellular antennas and can be tethered 800 feet above ground. Bray explains that radio signals from the SuperTower “have a range of more than 35 miles over flat terrain, taking the place of 15 land-based cell towers.”
MIT researchers have found that climate change could cause more thunderstorms and stagnant air in the summer, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. “With temperatures rising globally, and particularly in the Arctic, the energy in the atmosphere is being redistributed,” writes Finucane. “The result is that more energy will be available to fuel thunderstorms.”
Prof. John Deutch proposes a demonstration project to show how renewable energy could provide 95 percent of electricity generation, reports Jeff McMahon for Forbes. Deutch suggests “setting up a competition between energy developers, allowing them to bid on a 20-year contract to provide a system that meets 95 percent of demand in an area using solar, wind and storage alone.”
New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye writes about the years of effort that go into ensuring that large-scale, Nobel-prize winning scientific endeavors like LIGO – which is jointly operated by MIT and Caltech – are funded and successful. Overbye writes that LIGO’s success “was a saga of persistence, ingenuity and just plain bravery in the face of nature and professional skepticism.”
Forbes contributor Gil Press writes about MIT cybersecurity startup Duality Technologies, which is working on guaranteeing privacy and utility. Press explains that the company is using a cybersecurity technique called Homomorphic Encryption, which “allows for processing and analysis of the encrypted data without having the secret key.”
Prof. Tim Berners-Lee speaks with Wired reporter K.G. Orphanides about his startup Inrupt, which is aimed at transforming how we share personal data on the web. Orphanides explains that Berners-Lee’s idea is that, “instead of a company storing all your personal data on their servers, you would keep it on your own personal data ‘pod.’”