In a piece for CNBC about the future of electric vehicles, Phil LeBeau writes that MIT researchers estimate battery electric vehicles could account for only 3.7 percent of all vehicles sales in 2040 if the auto industry, state and federal governments, and the public do not increase their level of investment.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Professor John Deutch writes about the success of President Obama’s energy policy. “President Obama is having greater success in advancing his energy agenda in his second term than in his first. But it will take more than one successful term to secure the country's energy future,” Deutch writes.
In an interview with Robert Siegel of NPR’s All Things Considered, Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab apologizes for his role in creating the pop-up ad. Zuckerman expresses concern that the Internet’s reliance on advertising has made people far more accustomed to surveillance by advertisers.
Washington Post reporter Rachel Feltman writes that MIT engineers have developed a system that recycles batteries into solar cells. “We think it could be a competitor that’s easy to process, has rapidly increasing efficiency, and can be made in an environmentally friendly way,” says Prof. Angela Belcher.
In a piece for The Boston Globe, Kevin Lewis writes about how political scientists from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley found that, contrary to popular belief, Senator Joseph McCarthy did not influence the outcomes of the 1950 and 1952 Senate elections.
Kara Miller and Genevieve Gilson of WGBH’s Innovation Hub interview Professor Natasha Dow Schull about the engineering behind gambling and her book, “Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Vegas.” “There can be a net loss, but it feels like you’re constantly winning and you can play for much longer,” says Schull of slot machines.
Writing for Science, Meghna Sachdev reports on how researchers from MIT and Harvard have built a team of 1,024 robots, the largest swarm of robots ever created. The robots are each the size of a U.S. quarter and could be used for search-and-rescue and construction operations.
Clive Cookson of The Financial Times reports on the new vision-correcting display developed by researchers from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. The technology, which automatically corrects for vision problems, “puts the glasses on the display, rather than on your head,” explains Dr. Gordon Wetzstein.
In a segment about America’s renewed involvement in Iraq on NPR’s On Point, Professor Barry Posen speaks about his new book “Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy.” Posen argues that the United States should rethink its foreign policy and exercise a more conservative military approach in Iraq.
Tom Ashbrook of NPR’s On Point interviews Professor Kerri Cahoy as a part of a segment on the aging U.S. weather satellite fleet. Cahoy suggests that the U.S. could shift to a more widely distributed network of smaller, cheaper versions of the currently used satellites.
Drake Bennett of Bloomberg Businessweek reports on how a team of researchers from MIT and Harvard have created a robot that can self-assemble from a flat sheet of paper in four minutes. The robot is made of paper, and layered with a circuit board and prestretched polystyrene, the same material used to create Shrinky Dinks, Bennett explains.
Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab writes for The Atlantic about the consequences of designing an Internet funded almost exclusively by advertising. “The fallen state of our Internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services,” writes Zuckerman.
David Pogue of the PBS show NOVA examines Professor Paula Hammond’s work developing a new type of vaccine that delivers a DNA patch via tiny microscopic needles. Using DNA as the vaccine is a “very unique but also very powerful” approach, Hammond explains.
Bloomberg Businessweek spotlights the new self-folding, mobile robot developed by MIT and Harvard researchers. The design for the robot was inspired by origami and the team used inexpensive and easily accessible materials to build the robot, Bloomberg reports.
In a piece for Forbes about U.S. foreign policy, Stephen Harner highlights Professor Barry Posen’s new book “Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy.” Harner outlines Posen’s argument that current U.S. policy should be replaced with a more restrained military approach.