Reporting for Scientific American’s “60-Second Science” podcast, Christopher Intagliata explores how MIT developed a device, called a rectenna, that can capture energy from Wi-Fi signals and convert them into electricity. The scientists “envision a smart city where buildings, bridges and highways are studded with tiny sensors to monitor their structural health, each sensor with its own rectenna,” Intagliata explains.
STAT reporter Casey Ross writes about how MIT researchers have developed a new ingestible Prof. Timothy Lu explains that he hopes that the sensor “opens up a really new window into how the gut and the rest of the body are connected, and hopefully provide new diagnostic strategies as well.”
MIT researchers are developing a new system that could be used to help prevent autonomous vehicles from making mistakes, reports Amit Chowdhry for Forbes. Chowdhry explains that the new “AI system compares a driver’s actions to what it would have done in the same situations. Then the AI will change its behavior to match the human responses.”
Scientific American reporter Jeff Hecht writes that MIT researchers developed a new flexible material that can harvest energy from wireless signals. “The future of electronics is bringing intelligence to every single object from our clothes to our desks and to our infrastructure,” explains Prof. Tomás Palacios.
WCVB-TV’s Mike Wankum visits the Edgerton Center’s Area 51 machine shop to see how MIT students are developing cutting-edge technologies such as solar-powered vehicles, electric racing cars and other innovative devices in a space that Wankum calls “classic MIT.” “It’s really cool,” says third-year student Serena Grown-Haeberl. “You get to see those math equations really come to life.”
Writing for The New York Times, graduate student Lucy Page examines how many people are still living in extreme poverty in middle-income countries such as China, India and Nigeria. “Governments are often slow to redistribute income to the poor for two main reasons: problems of capacity and problems of will,” Page and her co-author explain.
Vox reporter Nadra Nittle writes that Media Lab researchers have found that the Rekognition facial detection system has trouble identifying dark-skinned women. “The facial analysis technology mistook darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time,” Nittle explains. “Compare this to lighter-skinned women, misidentified just 7 percent of the time. And for men of any skin tone, there was virtually no misidentification.”
MIT researchers developed a super-thin, bendy material that converts WiFi signals into electricity, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “In the future, everything is going to be covered with electronic systems and sensors. The question is going to be how do we power them,” says Prof. Tomás Palacios. “This is the missing building block that we need.”
Prof. Polina Anikeeva speaks with Forbes contributor Poornima Peiris about her work developing materials that could be used to help explore and better understand the brain and nervous system. “I am not interested in just improving things, I want to work on innovative ideas,” says Anikeeva.
TIME reporter Jamie Ducharme highlights how Prof. Dina Katabi has developed a device that uses wireless signals to collect information about how well a person is sleeping. “If we can monitor health continuously but passively in a patient’s natural environment, that can help dramatically,” explains Katabi.
In an article for Axios, Prof. Carlo Rati writes about how developments in automated vehicles and smart infrastructure could be used to help make cities safer. “Developing technology for AVs to communicate with other vehicles as well as infrastructure like streets, traffic lights and road signs could both improve safety and decrease congestion,” writes Ratti.
Associated Press reporter Tali Arbel writes that MIT researchers have found that Amazon’s facial detection technology often misidentifies women and women with darker skin. Arbel writes that the study, “warns of the potential of abuse and threats to privacy and civil liberties from facial-detection technology.”
A new study by Media Lab researchers finds that Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition system performed more accurately when identifying lighter-skinned faces, reports Drew Harrell for The Washington Post. The system “performed flawlessly in predicting the gender of lighter-skinned men,” writes Harrell, “but misidentified the gender of darker-skinned women in roughly 30 percent of their tests.”
Verge reporter James Vincent writes that Media Lab researchers have found that the facial recognition system Rekognition performed worse at identifying an individual’s gender if they were female or dark-skinned. In experiments, the researchers found that the system “mistook women for men 19 percent of the time and mistook darker-skinned women for men 31 percent of the time,” Vincent explains.
WBUR reporter Erin Trahan spotlights a new course that brings together MIT students and inmates at the South Bay House of Correction to create a two-story mural. She speaks with MIT first-year student Sherry Xiao, who explains that she is learning how to collaborate with people, share ideas, and respect other people's ideas.