Seth Borenstein of The Associated Press reports on the National Climate Assessment released Tuesday. Henry Jacoby, co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a co-author of the report, tells Borenstein, "we're still on the pathway to more damage and danger of the type that are described in great detail in the rest of this report.”
Tech reporter Austin Hess writes about the new Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab. Prof. John Lienhard, tapped to direct the lab, tells Hess that, “interest in water and food sustainability is strong.”
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney reports on “Daguerre’s American Legacy: Photographic Portraits (1840-1900) From the Wm. B. Becker Collection,” which is on display at the MIT Museum through January 4.
Joao Medeiros writes about Professor Dava Newman’s work developing spacesuits that aid astronauts with exploration without encumbering movement. Newman’s BioSuit, “uses nickel titanium shape-memory alloys and applies the correct pressure to the human body (equivalent to 30 per cent of Earth's atmosphere) -- but it's flexible enough to put on and take off in minutes,” Medeiros reports.
In a piece for Forbes, MIT Career Development Specialist Lily Zhang advises job seekers on how to improve performance on phone interviews. Zhang suggests treating phone interviews like in-person interviews.
NPR’s Joe Palca reports on EyeWire, a computer game developed by MIT researchers to help map nerve connections in the eye. Palca reports that over “120,000 citizen neuroscientists from 140 countries” played the game, helping to produce a map that shows that the eye’s retina detects motion.
Graduate student John Lewandowski has developed a battery-powered machine that uses magnets and lasers to detect malaria, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. Bray writes that the device is portable, cheap, quick and easy to use in the field.
“With the help of volunteers who played an online brain-mapping game, researchers showed that pairs of neurons positioned along a given direction together cause a third neuron to fire in response to images moving in the same direction,” writes Mo Costandi in an article for Nature about how MIT researchers have mapped neuron connections in the brain.
In a piece for The Guardian, Mo Costandi reports on how MIT researchers have mapped neural connections in the retina. “A large group of gamers, working with computational neuroscientists, has produced a wiring diagram of the nerve cell connections at the back of the eye, which may have solved the long-standing question of how cells in the retina detect motion,” Costandi writes.
Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Johnson writes about how MIT researchers have mapped a neural circuit in the eye that helps detect movement. The researchers developed the map through EyeWire, a citizen science game developed at MIT that has users trace the path of neurons in the brain.
New York Times reporter Colin Nickerson writes about Professor Linn Hobbs’ research into whether the ancient Egyptians used a synthetic material to build the Great Pyramids. "It could be they used less sweat and more smarts," Hobbs told The New York Times.
Neil Swidey profiles Professor Alan Guth and his work developing the theory of cosmic inflation in a piece for The Boston Globe Magazine. “Perhaps you went to school with someone like Alan Guth, a child so preternaturally gifted that the teachers didn’t know what to do with him,” Swidey writes.
ArchDaily reporter Karissa Rosenfield reports on plans to construct a new facility on the MIT campus for nanoscience and nanotechnology research. “Centrally located at the heart of MIT, the new glass-encased, four-story structure will house two floors of high-performance cleanrooms, as well as imaging and prototyping facilities that are all designed to foster innovation through cross-discipline collaboration,” writes Rosenfield.
NPR’s Chris Arnold reports on Quanttus, an MIT startup that is developing wearable devices aimed at quantifying human health.
Kath Xu writes about plans for the new MIT nanotechnology facility in an article for The Tech. “For a long time, [nanotechnology] was just science and we were playing in the lab and doing measurements and it was really fun,” Professor Polina Anikeeva told The Tech. “But now it’s exploding and it’s really becoming its own field… Nanotechnology has entered every part of engineering.”