Boston.com reporter Sanjay Salomon writes that high school students participating in MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute spent four weeks learning about the development of self-driving cars. The program culminated with students racing their miniature self-driving cars inside Walker Memorial. Parth Parekh, a 16-year-old student, said the program was both “very challenging and at the same time very fun.”
In an article for Wired, Kevin Hartnett examines Prof. Scott Sheffield’s work studying geometric randomness. “You take the most natural objects—trees, paths, surfaces—and you show they’re all related to each other,” Sheffield explains. “And once you have these relationships, you can prove all sorts of new theorems you couldn’t prove before.”
During a Financial Times podcast, Prof. Heidi Williams speaks about her work studying the impact of patent policy and technology on medical research and health care. Williams explains that her work focuses on the role patents and policies play in developing "the medical technologies that are most beneficial to patients.”
MIT researchers have developed what they believe to be the toughest English-language tongue twister, writes Justin Kitch for The Huffington Post. The tongue twister “pad kid poured curd pulled cold” is difficult to say because “it’s an example of alternating repetition, where consonant sounds are repeated at the beginnings of every other word,” Kitch explains.
Grace Jun, education director of MIT’s Open Style Lab, speaks to Marisa Dellatto of The Boston Globe about the lab’s work developing clothes designed to empower individuals with unique needs and their fashion show at the MIT Museum. Jun says she was inspired to develop inclusive clothing designs when she saw the potential wearable tech had to help people.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes that MIT researchers have found that our musical tastes are culturally instilled. The researchers played consonant and dissonant chords from members of a remote Amazonian tribe and found that “they had no preference for one sound over the other—unlike the large majority of North Americans and Europeans, who prefer consonance.”
Olga Kharif from Bloomberg Businessweek provides an overview of the origami robot created by Prof. Daniela Rus and her team. “Squeezed into a pill, this robot unfolds like an origami after it’s swallowed. It can be guided with a tiny magnet to remove a foreign object from the stomach or treat a wound by administering medication,” explains Kharif.
CSAIL researchers have created an algorithm that makes videos interactive, writes Andrew Freedman for Fox News. Freedman explains how this technology could transform games like Pokémon Go, “With interactive dynamic video, the Spearow could interact with the leaves rather than simply sit on top of them.”Reach in and touch objects in videos with “Interactive Dynamic Video”
BBC News reports that CSAIL researchers have created an algorithm that can manipulate still objects in photographs and videos. The technique doesn’t require any special cameras, which makes it great for improving the realism in augmented reality games like Pokémon Go.
MIT researchers have outlined a new way of developing a lithium-oxygen battery that would increase the battery’s energy efficiency and longevity, according to The Economist. “In trials which discharged and recharged the battery 130 times, it lost less than 2% of its capacity,” The Economist notes.
Science reporter Adrian Cho profiles Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, exploring everything from his decades-long dedication to the search for gravitational waves to his reputation as a mentor. Prof. Emeritus Robert Birgeneau notes that Weiss was respected for “his passion and his courage in going after really important physics.”
MIT researchers have developed a portable system that could produce biotech drugs on demand, reports Lisa Rapaport for Reuters. “The table-top machine has the potential to one day produce proteins to treat any number of a wide range of conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, and hemophilia,” writes Rapaport.
Graduate student Max Opgenoord and MIT senior Sara Volz are featured in The Improper Bostonian’s list of 25 rising stars, age 25 and under. Opgenoord was honored for his work on the MIT Hyperloop team, and Volz was noted for her work experimenting with algae as a sustainable fuel source.
Washington Post reporter Emily Langer chronicles the life and work of Prof. Emeritus Seymour Papert, who died last week at age 88. Langer explains that Papert “led an early campaign to revolutionize education with the personal computer, a tool he championed not as a classroom gadget but as a key to unlocking a child’s excitement for learning.”
Prof. Susan Lindquist has been named a recipient of the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, according to the AP. Lindquist’s research has raised hopes that “treatments could prevent protein ‘misfolding’ that drives degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease.”