In a piece for Salon, Paul Rosenberg writes about Prof. Jeremy England’s theory about the origins of life. England’s theory, based on the principals of thermodynamics, shows that under certain conditions “where life is possible…it is also quite probable, if not, ultimately, inevitable,” Rosenberg explains.
Julie Hirschfeld writes for The New York Times about MIT alumna and U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Megan Smith. Smith has “a tinkerer’s enthusiasm for finding problems and looking for ways to solve them," says former CTO Aneesh Chopra.
Professor John Leonard speaks with Cory Johnson of Bloomberg Television about the potential for new developments in the field of robotics in 2015. “This year I think we’ll see some really exciting developments,” says Leonard. “I think it might take a little more than a year to see the real explosion.”
Robert Lane Greene writes for The Economist about a new paper by MIT researchers, which examines the importance of specific languages by studying how languages are connected to one another. The researchers found that for many languages “their connectivity has little to do with their home country’s modern power.”
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.