According to the CBC, MIT graduate student Natasha Jaques co-created a computer application called Smile Tracker that “runs in the background of a person's computer and detects when a person smiles.” The app snaps and saves a screenshot of whatever image caused the grin.
The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) plans to test a system that allows people to hail electric, autonomous cars, reports Kelly O’Brien for Boston.com. These “cars would be an efficient way to get people from their homes to a T stop or commuter rail station,” O'Brien explains.
Jon Chesto writes for The Boston Globe about a new battery technology from Professor Don Sadoway’s company, Ambri, that allows for more efficient grid-level power storage: “The goal is to allow electric utilities or big industrial plants to store power so it can be released at times of high usage.”
S. I. Rosenbaum of Boston Magazine speaks with the new dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, Hashim Sarkis, about his desire to create a new vocabulary to describe existing habitats. “It is time to come up with a richer lexicon,” says Sarkis.
CBS Boston lists the MIT Museum gift shop among the top-five museum gift stores in the city: “Not only will visitors find a wealth of MIT memorabilia in the MIT Museum Store, they will also find lots of math presents and barware.”
Professor John Hansman reflects on the two Malaysian airliners lost in 2014 in this Boston Globe article. “It appears that in 2014 more people perished from terrorist acts in commercial aviation than all other aviation accident causes combined,” writes Hansman.
Christopher Capozzola, an associate professor of history at MIT, has written extensively about the relationship between military policies and civilian politics. In his latest article, published by The Diplomat, Capozzola writes about extended relations between the U.S. and Philippine militaries and the handling of an alleged murder by a U.S. service member.
According to The Economist, a battery design “being developed by Donald Sadoway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would use two sorts of liquid metal, separated by a liquid electrolyte.” Using metals of varying densities, Sadoway’s design would allow the substances to float as separate layers in a container.
William Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, speaks with Cheryl Conner of Forbes about what entrepreneurs can gain from taking online courses. “Entrepreneurship is not a gift,” Aulet explains. “It’s a skill. People should think of becoming an entrepreneur in the same way they think of becoming a teacher or lawyer.”
Visiting Scholar Michael Schrage speaks with Jared Bowen of WGBH about the hack on Sony pictures ahead of the release of “The Interview,” as well as subsequent widespread Internet outages in North Korea. “I think this is a very, very serious breach and it sets a very dangerous precedent,” says Schrage.
“A team of MIT researchers found that an existing computer vision system can achieve object recognition as well as humans and other primates,” writes Jamie Ducharme for Boston Magazine. Professor James DiCarlo’s team compared the visual recognition abilities of primates to those of the advanced computer system Super Vision.
Shana Lebowitz writes for Forbes about a study co-authored by Dr. Sara Ellison that determined that gender-diverse teams are more productive than their single-gender counterparts: “[R]esearchers estimated that transitioning from a single-gender office to an office evenly split between men and women would translate to a whopping 41% revenue gain.”
Dennis Overbye of The New York Times speaks with Brother Guy Consolmagno, an MIT alumnus and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory, about what the existence of extraterrestrial life would mean for Christianity. “Science is stuff we understand about truths we only partially grasp,” says Consolmagno. “Religion is trying to get closer to truths we don’t understand.”
Professor Jeremy England appears on WGBH television’s Greater Boston to discuss his work examining the origins of life. England explains his theory that, from the perspective of physics, energy played a role in the formation of life.
Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times about Professor JoAnne Yates' book “Control Through Communication.” In her book, Yates examines the history of the filing cabinet and the “coevolution of information technology and the business world before the digital age.”