Chris Neiger of BBC News reports on software being developed by Professor Brian Williams aimed at helping drivers arrive at their destinations on time. “The lab’s planning algorithms would give motorists an initial travel plan, which would adapt to externalities along the way,” writes Neiger.
David Hoag, an MIT alumnus and aeronautical engineer for the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory (now the Draper Laboratory) who led the development of the guidance, navigation and control systems for several Apollo systems, died on Jan. 19, reports Jasper Craven for The Boston Globe. “Technically, he was about as gifted a person as I have ever encountered,” said former colleague Norman Sears.
Tom Zeller reports for Forbes on the Climate Feedback project developed by post-doctoral researcher Emmanuel W. Vincent that allows users to select and critique portions of articles on climate change. “If a newspaper claims that something is based on science,” Vincent said, “we want to examine whether they are making their case on solid scientific ground.”
“A promising new diagnostic test from MIT looks like it could be a game changer for rapidly diagnosing several important infectious diseases within minutes,” writes Judy Stone for Forbes. The paper test developed by MIT researchers can diagnose Ebola, yellow fever and dengue fever.
Sarah Hedgecock writes for Forbes about how researchers have made major advances in mapping the human epigenome. Prof. Manolis Kellis explains that the new findings allow researchers to “ go from a static picture of the genome, which is effectively the book of life, to a dynamic picture of a genome.”
Professor Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, speaks with Timothy Aeppel of The Wall Street Journal about why robots cannot perform tasks humans regularly perform, like folding laundry. While Rus explains that it would be difficult to predict when robots will be able to match the skill set of humans, “compared to now, what we had just two years ago was nothing, so I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel spoke with faculty members across the Institute about how advances in automation could impact the labor market. Aeppel notes that MIT economists and roboticists meet regularly to gain a better interdisciplinary view of the current state of automation.
Michael Andor Brodeur writes for The Boston Globe about how researchers in the MIT Self-Assembly Lab are working on developing products that can assemble themselves. “The lab’s work takes cues from nano-scale biological and chemical systems of self-assembly, but the fruit of its labors can be grown to serve any scale,” Brodeur writes.
Graduate student Greg Borenstein speaks with BBC News about his efforts to make chess more appealing as a spectator sport. “There’s really something magical about the ability to use computation and statistics to take that drama and that excitement and those brilliant moments and make them visible,” Borenstein explains.
A team of researchers has published a map of the human epigenome, which could be useful in better understanding how to treat disease, writes Amanda Schupak for CBS News. Prof. Manolis Kellis explains that the findings provide “a reference for studying the molecular basis of human disease, by revealing the control regions that harbor genetic variants associated with different disorders."
Professor Carlo Ratti writes for the Financial Times about how data analysis can help architects design better buildings for the future. “If implemented correctly, analysis of occupancy and movement promises to revolutionise our built environment,” Ratti writes.
Professor Susan Silbey sheds light on the political ideologies that influence the debate surrounding parking-space savers in Boston in this article by Luke O’Neil of Boston.com. “In the act of placing a chair or other object in a shoveled out spot, a person is referencing Locke’s labor theory of property,” wrote Silbey in a paper on property law.
Research by Professor Zeynep Ton might explain why it is in the interest of businesses such as Wal-Mart to boost employee wages, writes Chris Matthews for Fortune. Higher pay “encourages workers to give better customer service and makes them less likely to leave,” writes Matthews.
MIT researchers have developed a garden filled with origami robots, LED flowers that can bloom on command and mechanical insects, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The garden was developed in an effort to make programming more accessible to children.
Marcus Woo writes for Wired about how researchers have published a number of articles providing new information on the human epigenome, which controls which genes get switched on or off. “It is giving us a view of the living, breathing genome in motion, as opposed to a static picture of DNA,” explains Prof. Manolis Kellis.