Set to launch on April 16th, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will be used to identify “planets that are close enough to Earth for astronomers to explore them in detail,” writes Alexandra Witze for Nature. “It’s not so much the numbers of planets that we care about, but the fact that they are orbiting nearby stars,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.
Steven Poole of The Wall Street Journal reviews The Biological Mind, a new book from Prof. Alan Jasanoff, which suggests that “a brain-centric view of who we are neglects the physiological, environmental and political determinants of our behavior.” Jasanoff “presents a lucid primer on current brain science that takes the form of a passionate warning about its limitations,” says Poole.
Graduate student Amy Zhang, has developed an application, known as Squadbox, that seeks to disarm internet harassers by enlisting the help of a user’s friends, who act as inbox “moderators.” “According to what the harassed person has specified beforehand, the moderator can delete any abusive messages, forward on clean messages, or send along messages with tags,” writes Katharine Schwab for Co.Design.
In a commentary for Nature, Ashley Nunes, Bryan Reimer and Joseph Coughlin of the MIT AgeLab discuss how current legislation does not sufficiently account for the risks associated with operating autonomous vehicles. “Policymakers need to work more closely with academics and manufacturers to design appropriate regulations,” they write. “This is extremely challenging because the research cuts across many disciplines.”
Kerry Hannon of The New York Times describes a national trend of workers with “white collar” desk jobs migrating into trades, like carpentry and manufacturing, which now require broader skillsets. “[T]oday many of these workers need to be skilled with computers and statistical quality control processes,” said Prof. Paul Osterman. “In some sense, manufacturing looks a lot more white-collar-ish than it used to.”
A new headset developed by graduate student Arnav Kapur reads the small muscle movements in the face that occur when the wearer thinks about speaking, and then uses “artificial intelligence algorithms to decipher their meaning,” writes Chelsea Whyte for New Scientist. Known as AlterEgo, the device “is directly linked to a program that can query Google and then speak the answers.”
Writing in The Atlantic, Amy Merrick describes Walmart's increasing reliance on the gig economy and automation, arguing that "the U.S. economy is tilting further toward jobs that give workers less market power." Merrick cites research by Prof. David Autor, who explains that “the concern should not be about the number of jobs, but whether those jobs are jobs that can support a reasonable standard of living.”
In a commentary for The Wall Street Journal, Prof. Alex "Sandy" Pentland and Thomas Hardjono write about digital identities and the risks associated with how they are authenticated. “The mistake that both governments and tech pioneers are making is failing to realize that trustworthy identity depends on jointly-issued credentials,” they explain.
Research affiliate Jimena Canales writes for NPR’s "Cosmos & Culture" blog about historical perceptions of the possibility of time travel, including the idea that a refrigerator could reverse time. Canales ultimately concludes that, “if you want to really travel in time, you might try the old fashion way of doing it: Turn to history and literature.”
Prof. Tod Machover debuts his latest symphony, “Philadelphia Voices,” this week, and the AP’s Natalie Pompilio writes that it “both captures and celebrates the distinctive sounds and sizzle of Philadelphia.” The piece interweaves live music with recordings that include a “cheesesteak interlude,” birds at the Philadelphia Zoo, and children visiting the Museum of the American Revolution.
In a forthcoming book excerpted in The Guardian, Alex Beard describes Prof. Deb Roy's project to record his infant son's learning behaviors. Beard explains that while Roy set out to create machines that learned like humans, he was ultimately blown away by "the incredible sophistication of what a language learner in the flesh actually looks like and does." "The learning process wasn’t decoding, as he had originally thought, but something infinitely more continuous, complex and social."
Hal Gregersen, a senior lecturer in MIT's Sloan School of Management, talks with Stephanie Vozza of Fast Company about his new book, Questions Are the Answer. “The best leaders in the world ask better questions, creating conditions and situations that cause them to be wrong or uncomfortable and quiet,” says Gregersen. “When that happens, they end up being almost forced to ask things other people wouldn’t ask.”
Synaps Labs, an adtech startup co-founded by Sloan graduate student Alex Pustov, uses analytics to cater digital billboard advertising to specific individuals depending on the make and model of their vehicle. This technology could also potentially “fund traffic analytics, improve road safety, and allow cities to adopt advances in digital infrastructure faster,” writes Frederick Daso for Forbes.
Research co-authored by Prof. Christopher Palmer in Sloan found that loan rates vary substantially, even when two borrowers are relatively similar, due primarily to the variations in the lender’s markup. “You would never get away with this if you were selling milk,” Palmer told Jo Craven McGinty of The Wall Street Journal. “It would be the same price for everyone.”
Media Lab spinout “Ori” has developed what its founder Hasier Larrea SM ’15 calls a “Swiss Army knife for studio apartments,” writes Andy Rosen for The Boston Globe. A “robotic furniture system,” the compact 8 by 5 foot design can equip even the smallest rooms with a bed, multiple desks, closet, and entertainment system.