Writing for Wired, Issie Lapowsky reports that MIT graduate Megan Smith has been named the White House Chief Technology Officer. “In addition to being a gifted programmer and technologist, Smith has been one of the country’s leading advocates in the movement to get more women into tech jobs,” writes Lapowsky.
BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about the new MIT Connect website, the Institute’s social media hub. “It’s trying to give you a feeling like you’re right there on campus,” says Stephanie Leishman.
Madhumita Venkataramanan of Wired writes that MIT researchers have found that Google Glass can be used to detect pulse and respiration rates in real time. "The data from Google Glass is so much richer than a dedicated heart-rate sensor, because people use it in their regular lives," says PhD student Javier Hernandez.
New Scientist reporter Hal Hodson writes about how MIT Media Lab researchers have programmed Google Glass to measure vital signs in an effort to give users a look at their emotional state. "It's always been a challenge to have a computer understand something about your stress but not make it worse in the moment," says Prof. Rosalind Picard.
New Scientist reporter Paul Marks writes about how MIT researchers are developing self-guided robots to help assess the danger posed by space debris. "Aboard the ISS we are now working on cooperative debris inspection, where more than one of the robots has cameras," says Alvar Saenz-Otero.
In a piece for PBS, Jennifer Ouellette writes about Professor John Bush’s work with quantum mechanics, in particular his replication of a quantum corral. “Time will tell whether the quantum-like behavior of the walking [droplets] is mere coincidence,” says Bush.
In a piece published by The Huffington Post about a new time travel simulation, Lee Billings highlights Professor Seth Lloyd’s work developing a new model for a “closed timelike curve,” or a loop that could be traveled back into time.
Amanda Schaffer of The Atlantic writes about OpenBiome, a non-profit stool bank founded by MIT students Mark Smith and James Burgess. “When OpenBiome was established, my quality of life went through the roof,” says Amy Barto, a gastroenterologist at the Lahey Clinic.
Shawn Donnan of the Financial Times writes about a new MIT study examining gossip. Prof. Abhijit Banerjee explains that the study shows, “your sense of who is the office gossip is generally very good and that if you want to spread information you should do it by that person.”
Lina Zeldovich of The Atlantic writes about how Prof. Eric Alm and one of his graduate students tracked their bacterial fluctuations for a year to better understand how daily activities influenced their microbiome. “We just don’t know much about the functional role of any of these bugs,” says Alm.
Professor Thomas Kochan writes about the recent Market Basket protests for WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog. “The recent Market Basket dispute did more to demonstrate how outmoded and inadequate America’s labor law is than any scholarly paper or government study commission could ever do,” writes Kochan.
The BBC’s Science Hour highlights new MIT research exploring how emotions are linked to memories. Researchers found that the emotional associations of specific memories could be reversed in mice.
MIT Professor Carlo Ratti and Cornell University Professor Steven Strogatz write for The Huffington Post about their research examining the benefits of taxi sharing. They write that their analysis shows by sharing taxis, “the total number of taxi trips in New York City could be reduced by 40 percent, fleet operation costs and pollution could be reduced by 30 percent.”
Arnie Cooper of Newsweek writes about the new MIT study that found taxi sharing could have significant impacts on New York City’s transportation system. Researchers in the MIT Senseable City Lab envision a future application that would facilitate ride sharing.
Writing for CNBC, Hazma Ali reports on new MIT research showing that humans prefer to receive orders from robots rather than humans. "Our findings showed that our subjects strongly preferred when the robot scheduled the work of the team,” explains graduate student Matthew Gombolay.