MIT alumnus Jason Strauss’ startup creates and mails postcards based off your smartphone photos, writes Madeline Bilis for Boston Magazine. “Users text a photo to a phone number, include an address and a message, provide payment information for a $2 processing fee, and voilà, a postcard is printed and shipped,” explains Bilis.
A study conducted by researchers with the Singaore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology examines how coal use could cause water strain in parts of Asia, writes Audrey Tan for The Straits Times. The study’s findings suggest that higher coal use “could suppress rainfall in China, India and across South-east Asia,” explains Tan.
In a Wall Street Journal series examining the roots of America’s current economic disillusionment and how it is impacting the presidential election, Jon Hilsenrath and Bob Davis highlight Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s work examining how technology impacts jobs, and Prof. David Autor’s research on how trade with China has affected the U.S. labor market.
In a New York Times column, MITEI researcher Howard Herzog argues that carbon capture should be part of a portfolio of low-carbon energy options used to tackle climate change. “The magnitude of the climate challenge is so large, we need as many options as possible, including renewables, nuclear and carbon capture,” writes Herzog.
Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Creighton writes about a study co-authored by MIT researchers that found taxing wealth leads to a decrease in declared wealth. The authors found “a 0.1 percentage point increase in the rate of wealth tax prompts a 4% jump in the probability of a taxpayer’s reported net wealth dropping below the wealth tax-free threshold.”
Researchers from Prof. Timothy Swager’s group have created sensors that detect trace amounts of toxic gases, writes Janet Burns for Forbes. The sensor can benefit the U.S. military’s current initiative for the development of wearable equipment, which includes flexible armor and body sensors, writes Burns.
In a Wall Street Journal article about designing clothing for people with disabilities, Christina Binkley highlights the MIT Open Style Lab. The program brings together students to create apparel for varying needs, including “flat seams that don’t irritate the skin of children with sensory disorders and rain coats that cover wheelchair users’ laps more effectively.”
In an article for The Huffington Post, Prof. Georgia Perakis writes about her research on optimizing online retail bundle recommendations. Perakis explains that the model she developed with her colleagues uses optimization and machine learning to increase revenues and help customers "find more interesting and relevant items.”
George Johnson writes for The New York Times about a symposium on the human consciousness where Prof. Max Tegmark discussed the state of perceptronium. “It predicts, with dense mathematics, that devices as simple as a thermostat or a photoelectric diode might have glimmers of consciousness, a subjective self,” explains Johnson.
In this SINC article (published in Spanish), Federico Kukso spotlights Prof. Alberto Rodriguez’s work developing robotic hands in an effort to provide robots with a better way to interact with the world. Rodriguez says that he was inspired to pursue a career in robotics as he wanted to do “something that had a real impact on the world."
Prof. Eric Alm speaks with Christopher Booker of PBS NewsHour about Underworlds, a program studying human wastewater. “What can we learn about the human activities that are going on in a city by looking at these bacteria, viruses, chemicals, closer to the people that encounter them?” asks Prof. Alm.
New research from Prof. Susan Solomon has found that while banning the use of CFCs caused the ozone hole to shrink by 1.5 million square miles, carbon dioxide is still a major problem. “The chemicals responsible for the ozone problem break down in the atmosphere much more quickly than carbon dioxide connected to global warming does,” writes Faye Flam of Bloomberg View.
Graduate student Jamison Go, who was inspired to become an engineer by watching the show “BattleBots,” is now part of one of four MIT teams competing on the program, writes Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald. “It feels like I’m completing a cycle. To compete on a show which initially inspired me to become an engineer is amazing,” says Go.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Susan Solomon provides evidence that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to heal, reports Pilita Clark for the Financial Times. Clark explains that the findings suggest that “more than half the shrinkage in the ozone hole is due to the reduction in atmospheric chlorine coming from CFCs.”
A recent study shows that the ozone hole has shrunk by more than 4 million square kilometers since the Montreal Protocol banned the use of CFCs, writes David Abel for The Boston Globe. “This shows that international cooperation on environmental problems can work and be effective,” says lead author Prof. Susan Solomon.