“Scientists and engineers gathered on a suburban hillside to celebrate the history and future of a large and little-known radio telescope housed in a dome that looks a lot like Epcot Center,” writes Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Johnson of the 50th anniversary of MIT’s Haystack Observatory.
Jonathan Amos of BBC News reports that MIT researchers have identified a large rectangular feature on the moon. “The 2,500km-wide structure is believed to be the remains of old rift valleys that later became filled with lava,” writes Amos.
Cari Romm of The Atlantic writes about a new draft paper co-authored by MIT Professor Heidi Williams examining infant mortality rates in the U.S. Researchers found that part of the reason for the higher infant mortality rate in the U.S. is that “American babies are mostly fine while they’re in the hospital and during their first days at home—but over time, that changes.”
“Twitter Inc on Wednesday gave $10 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research that would explore how people use and achieve shared goals using social networks,” writes Christina Farr for Reuters. The committment will fund a new laboratory where researchers will develop tools to analyze social media patterns.
Thanks to a $10 million committment from Twitter, researchers at MIT plan to establish a Laboratory for Social Machines to analyze Twitter messages in real time, writes Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe. “With this data, the lab plans to develop new communication tools to help address social problems,” Bray explains.
“With a $10 million investment from Twitter, data scientists at MIT’s Media Lab are creating a new research group that will get access to Twitter’s entire feed of real-time and archived public tweets,” writes Yoree Koh for The Wall Street Journal.
Steve Annear of Boston Magazine writes about Twitter’s $10 million committment to the MIT Media Lab to study the social network’s data. The research “will focus on developing new technologies so that researchers can better digest the logic and ‘social patterns’ in mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content,” writes Annear.
Washington Post reporter Rachel Feltman writes that researchers have found evidence that the moon’s basin was formed by magma flows. "For anyone who's ever looked up at the moon and wondered why it has this pattern on its surface — now we have an answer,” says MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber.
Rodrique Ngowi writes for the Associated Press about ScratchJr, an app co-developed by MIT researchers to help young children think creatively and develop skills in math and science. “Children as young as 5 can use the app to craft their own interactive stories and games,” writes Ngowi.
Thomas Burton of The Wall Street Journal writes that MIT researchers were among those awarded the first research grants under President Obama’s new BRAIN Initiative. Burton writes that one of the MIT grants will go toward “determining which exact brain circuits are involved in generating short-term memories that influence decisions.”
Christopher Gearon of U.S. News & World Report profiles freshman Emily Young. “An ACL injury led Emily Young to become ‘fascinated’ with biomedical engineering and biomechanics," writes Gearon.
Boston Globe reporter Deborah Kotz writes that MIT researchers have been awarded new grants from the National Institutes of Health to further brain research. “Biophysicist Alan Jasanoff received a grant to develop imaging agents for functional MRI imaging that would target the flow of calcium into and out of brain cells,” writes Kotz of one of the MIT grants.
In a piece for Forbes, John C. Goodman writes about a new study co-authored by MIT Professor Heidi Williams that examines why the U.S. infant mortality rate is about twice that of other developed countries. The researchers found that “the US postneonatal disadvantage is driven almost entirely by excess mortality among individuals of lower socioeconomic status.”
MIT researcher Moshe Alamaro writes for Nature about the need for governments to adjust their water conservation policies in the face of climate change. “The reality is that there is simply not enough fresh water for everybody to use as much as they want, whenever they want,” writes Alamaro.
MIT neuroscientists were among the recipients of new grants for brain research from the National Institutes of Health, reports Jon Hamilton for NPR. Hamilton explains that as part of one grant, “Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will try to adapt functional MRI so that it can show the activity of individual brain cells.”