Kelsey Atherton of Popular Science reports on a system created by MIT researchers that allows robots to work in tandem to serve drinks. “This has uses beyond bartending,” writes Atherton. “MIT sees it as a potential system for hospitals or rescue work.”
A. T. Oxford of the Economist reviews “Why Information Grows” by Prof. César Hidalgo, in which he argues that economic growth is tied to the growth of information. “In his research, Mr Hidalgo’s used nifty techniques in statistical physics and network theory to shine a light on the diversity of production across countries,” Oxford explains.
MIT researchers have developed a new algorithm that allows robots to work together to efficiently serve drinks, Nidhi Subbaraman writes for BetaBoston. Subbaraman explains that the technique provides a “smarter approach to collaboration, preparing for possible missteps like dropping a bottle, or picking up the wrong one.”
In a Boston Globe article about the high level of patent activity in Massachusetts, Emeralde Jensen-Roberts highlights MIT postdoctoral fellow Keith Hearon’s work developing a new type of biodegradable styrofoam, which he is patenting. “Now in the development phase, Hearon believes the citrus plastic with styrofoam has vast potential for larger-scale applications, thanks to its strength.”
“Google And Massachusetts Institute of Technology have figured out a way to remove those annoying reflections and other image obstructions, including fences and rain drops, from photos,” writes Nitya Rajan for The Huffington Post. The algorithm uses a short video to separate the foreground and background of an image.
MIT students collaborated with residents of the Boston Home, a facility for adults with neurological diseases, to create InstaAid, an app that acts as a call button for nurses on the campus, writes Virgie Hoban for The Boston Globe. “The app preserves the independence of people contending with debilitating diseases," Hoban explains.
Professor Thomas Kochan writes for Fortune about the latest job’s report from The Bureau of Labor Statistics and argues that the Federal Reserve should set an explicit wage growth target: “Without significant and steady progress on the pay front, the American dream is in peril.”
Catherine Pearson writes for The Huffington Post about the Gala Pump, a compression breast pump designed by Kohana Inc. at MIT’s “make the breast pump not suck” hackathon: “Kohana has run a small clinical trial with 30 moms and says the majority of those women preferred The Gala to their vacuum pumps.”
Kim Yi Dionne writes for The Washington Post about Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga’s book ‘Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe’: In it, Mavhunga “paints a vivid picture of hunting in Zimbabwe from the pre-colonial period to the present as he demonstrates how innovation is driven by ordinary people.”
Kelsey Atherton writes for Popular Science about HERMES, a humanoid robot created by MIT researchers that is controlled by a human pilot strapped into a remote exoskeleton. PhD candidate Joao Ramos describes it as “trying to put the human’s brain inside the robot.”
Professor Edward Gibson speaks on Huffington Post Live about his research, which indicates that all human languages share a common link. “It turns out that across all languages people tend to put the words that go together to make the bigger phrases close together linearly in the sentences,” said Gibson.
Charlotte Lytton writes for The Daily Beast about SenseGlass, a mirror created by graduate student Javier Hernandez that uses Google Glass technology to register physiological and emotional changes in the viewer. “I believe mirrors are a great platform for health monitoring as we use them [everyday],” says Hernandez.
LJ Rich reports for The BBC on an algorithm created by MIT and Google researchers that can remove reflections and obstructions from images. “The technique separates the foreground from the background using frames from a short video,” explains Rich.
Professor Yasheng Huang writes for The New York Times about the role of the government in the recent downturn in Chinese markets. “The current mess is entirely due to the active encouragement by the authorities to invest in the markets and to lax regulations," Huang writes.
“MIT PhD student Abe Davis has developed video technology that reveals an object’s hidden properties,” writes Joanna Goodman for The Guardian. “Davis uses high-speed silent video to capture and reproduce sound, including music and intelligible speech, from the vibrations it makes on inanimate objects.”