Science reporter Tania Rabesandratana examines how MIT researchers are gathering and identifying gut bacteria from people around the world. The effort is aimed at preserving the human gut’s microbial biodiversity and developing new treatments for diseases. “I'm 100% confident that there are relevant medical applications for hundreds of strains we've screened and characterized,” explains Prof. Eric Alm.
Motherboard reporter Daniel Oberhaus writes that MIT researchers have developed an AI system that can generate theories about the physical laws of imaginary universes. Oberhaus writes that in the future the system could be used to help understand “massively complex datasets, such as those used in climate modeling or economics.”
Speaking with Reuters reporters Guy Faulconbridge and Paul Sandle, Prof. Tim Berners-Lee calls for disrupting the power held by giant companies over how the internet is operated. “What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up,” Berners-Lee explains. “There is a danger of concentration.”
Writing for the American History Magazine, Sarah Richardson highlights the trailblazing path of Ellen Swallow Richards. Richardson notes that Swallow Richards was a “one-woman parade of firsts: first female student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first female fellow of the American Association of Mining and Metallurgy, first female professor at MIT.”
Rachel Crowell highlights the 2018 gala of the National Museum of Mathematics. The fundraiser featured a keynote speech from MIT graduate student and former NFL player John Urschel.
Katharine Schwab of Fast Company writes about the Media Lab’s Moral Machine project, which surveyed people about their feelings on the ethical dilemmas posed by driverless vehicles. Because the results vary based on region and economic inequality, the researchers believe “self-driving car makers and politicians will need to take all of these variations into account when formulating decision-making systems and building regulations,” Schwab notes.
Technology developed by researchers from MIT Lincoln Lab could be used to help detect public shooters before they fire, writes Elizabeth MacBride for Forbes. “The technology uses radar energy to detect weapons and explosives through clothing, backpacks and hand baggage in real time,” MacBride explains.
Prof. Anant Agarwal, president of edX, writes for Forbes about the rise of nonlinear career paths and how professionals can adapt to a changing workforce thanks to new online learning options. “Affordable and accessible education opens the doors to develop the latest in-demand skills,” Agarwal writes, “as well as transferable skills that are valuable and applicable in every job situation.”
MIT researchers have developed a language translation model that operates without human annotations and guidance, reports Liangyu for Xinhua news agency. The system, which may enable computer-based translations of the thousands of languages spoken worldwide, is “a step toward one of the major goals of machine translation, which is fully unsupervised word alignment,” Liangyu explains.
Graduate students Ziv Epstein and Matt Groh have developed an AI system that adds spooky figures to photos, reports Mark Wilson for Fast Company. Wilson writes that the system “works so well because it places ghostly figures exactly where your brain naturally thinks they could be–on a path in the middle of a forest, rather than, say, floating randomly through the air.”
Motherboard reporter Kaleigh Rogers writes that MIT researchers have developed an AI system that can generate scary-sounding music. Rogers explains that the researchers used a “huge number of midi files and a handful of horror movies soundtracks as ‘primer melodies’ to give the AI a starting point to make up the rest of the soundtrack.”
An MIT AgeLab survey finds that many Americans have unrealistic expectations for retirement, writes Richard Eisenberg for Forbes. Research scientist Chaiwoo Lee suggests that financial advisers use the survey results to “create messages and images and materials for potential clients and provide clients with a better education about life after career.”
In an article for The Washington Post, graduate students Elizabeth Dekeyser and Michael Freedman write about their research examining the impact of anti-immigration rhetoric on voters in Europe. They found that “elections with high levels of nationalist and anti-immigrant rhetoric affect individual attitudes much more strongly than those with low levels of such rhetoric.”
BBC News highlights how Media Lab researchers have built a software program that allows web users to suggest actions for a hired actor to perform. Researchers are “keen to see whether internet users can work together to issue a consistent series of commands to the actor that help complete the game, or whether the commands will be discordant.”
In an article for The Guardian, Michael Weir remembers Sylvia Weir and spotlights her work at MIT helping to introduce computers into children’s education, in particular educational programs for children with autism and those with disabilities. Weir, who was known for her work in the field of AI, died at the age of 93.