Mashable highlights the robotic system, developed by researchers at MIT and Princeton, that can pick up, recognize, and place assorted objects. The researchers created an algorithm that allows the crane to “grab and sort objects (such as medicine bottles) into bins making it a potential timesaver for medical experts.”
Deborah Cramer, a visiting scholar at the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, writes for The New York Times about “the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.” “We must act boldly and swiftly,” writes Cramer. “With only about 100 breeding female right whales left, we haven’t much time.”
MIT startup Ministry of Supply has developed a jacket that utilizes AI to keep its wearer warm. “The jacket…can also be voice-controlled through devices like the Amazon Echo or manually with an app,” writes Erin Black for CNBC.
The Koch Institute has chosen 10 new scientific images from MIT researchers to display in a public gallery in its lobby. The images “span a range of subject matters and approaches, capturing both fundamental biology and how that biology is upended by disease processes,” writes Lisa Raffensperger of STAT.
Jeff Tollefson at Nature reports on a new MIT collaboration to develop fusion energy with an approach based on high-temperature superconductors. MIT's Martin Greenwald, deputy director of PSFC, tells Tollefson: “We feel very confident in what [SPARC's] performance would be if we can build the magnets at that scale."
Writing for The Boston Globe, Hiawatha Bray reports that MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems believe they can turn nuclear fusion into a practical energy source. "MIT scientists believe their SPARC design points the way to much smaller and cheaper fusion reactors," explains Bray.
Scientists at MIT and a private company are looking to "transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source," reports Hannah Devlin for The Guardian. Devlin quotes Prof. Maria Zuber, MIT's Vice President for Research: "At the heart of today’s news is a big idea - a credible, viable plan to achieve net positive energy for fusion.”
A study led by Prof. John Hansman suggests that slower planes would significantly reduce noise on the ground. “It turns out engines aren’t the major culprit anymore,” writes Scott McCartney for The Wall Street Journal. “It’s the “whoosh” that big airplanes make racing through the air.”
WBUR's Bruce Gellerman discusses the latest fusion news out of MIT with Morning Edition host Bob Oakes. "They really do believe that they've got the technology. They've got the science. They've got the engineering. They've got the money. And they're ready to roll," says Gellerman.
The Associated Press reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Harvard and MIT, to help improve literacy skills in elementary school students. “[S]truggling to read can be a crushing blow with lifelong consequences,” said President Rafael Reif.
This year, MIT’s Global Startup Workshop (GSW), a student-run “conference on innovation and technology,” will take place in Bangkok, writes Jon Russell of TechCrunch. “We’ve been focusing more on emerging markets because it’s such an exciting space to be in and it’s a space where GSW can have the most impact,” said graduate student and organizer Juan Ruiz Ruiz.
Clive Thompson of Wired speaks with Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, creator of the “fab lab” concept, about what those labs may look like in 30 years. “Gershenfeld is an optimist,” Thompson writes. “He thinks fab labs can create a future that is better for all people and the planet.”
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Reach Every Reader, an MIT and Harvard initiative that aims to tackle low elementary school literacy rates. Students younger than third grade will be the focus as “early intervention can have the most profound effect on turning students into proficient readers,” writes James Vaznis for The Boston Globe.
MIT researchers have discovered that arranging two stacked layers of graphene at a slight angle makes the material a superconductor, writes Elizabeth Gibney for Nature. After discovering that the graphene had the ability to conduct electrons, researchers applied “a small electric field to feed just a few extra charge carriers into the system, and it became a superconductor.”
Prof. Michael Strano has developed a new device that generates electricity by harnessing energy from temperature changes. Elements that usually hinder the effectiveness of solar panels, like clouds or sand, “wouldn’t affect [this device's] ability to harness power from the ever-changing temperatures,” explains Sydney Pereira of Newsweek.