John Hamilton reports for NPR on a new study by Prof. John Gabrieli that suggests information gathered from brain scans can help predict aspects of a person's future. Certain brain measures provide results that are often "better than currently available tests or clinical measures," Gabrieli explains.
Patrick J. Egan writes for The Washington Post about the racial diversity of police forces. In examining how politics may influence the makeup of a police force, Egan highlights a study co-authored by Prof. Chris Warshaw that found that municipal governments tend to adapt to voters’ views.
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye about the search for Earth-like planets. “We can count as many as we like,” Seager explains, “but until we can observe the atmospheres and assess their greenhouse gas power, we don’t really know what the surface temperatures are like."
Fusion reporter Ted Hesson writes about a new study, co-authored by MIT Professor Emilio Castilla, examining labor certifications for U.S. immigrants. The researchers found that “Asian and Canadian immigrants have a much better chance of being approved for a work visa than immigrants from Latin America.”
Forbes has released its annual “30 Under 30” section, which highlights game changers under the age of 30 from a wide variety of disciplines. This year’s list features a number of MIT students, alumni and research staff, as well as Professor Nikhil Agarwal.
Professors Joel Schindall and John Kassakian are developing technology designed to replace the traditional battery with a new device that relies on ultracapacitors, reports Erik Sherman for CBS News. Ultracapacitors “can store large amounts of electricity and release them in single bursts,” Sherman explains.
HubSpot founders and MIT alumni Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah speak with the Financial Times' Rebecca Knight about how their time at MIT helped lay the foundation for HubSpot’s success. “A lot of people ‘diss’ MBA programmes but HubSpot wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for MIT Sloan,” says Halligan.
In a piece for Salon, Paul Rosenberg writes about Prof. Jeremy England’s theory about the origins of life. England’s theory, based on the principals of thermodynamics, shows that under certain conditions “where life is possible…it is also quite probable, if not, ultimately, inevitable,” Rosenberg explains.
Julie Hirschfeld writes for The New York Times about MIT alumna and U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Megan Smith. Smith has “a tinkerer’s enthusiasm for finding problems and looking for ways to solve them," says former CTO Aneesh Chopra.
Professor John Leonard speaks with Cory Johnson of Bloomberg Television about the potential for new developments in the field of robotics in 2015. “This year I think we’ll see some really exciting developments,” says Leonard. “I think it might take a little more than a year to see the real explosion.”
Robert Lane Greene writes for The Economist about a new paper by MIT researchers, which examines the importance of specific languages by studying how languages are connected to one another. The researchers found that for many languages “their connectivity has little to do with their home country’s modern power.”
According to the CBC, MIT graduate student Natasha Jaques co-created a computer application called Smile Tracker that “runs in the background of a person's computer and detects when a person smiles.” The app snaps and saves a screenshot of whatever image caused the grin.
The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) plans to test a system that allows people to hail electric, autonomous cars, reports Kelly O’Brien for Boston.com. These “cars would be an efficient way to get people from their homes to a T stop or commuter rail station,” O'Brien explains.
Jon Chesto writes for The Boston Globe about a new battery technology from Professor Don Sadoway’s company, Ambri, that allows for more efficient grid-level power storage: “The goal is to allow electric utilities or big industrial plants to store power so it can be released at times of high usage.”
S. I. Rosenbaum of Boston Magazine speaks with the new dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, Hashim Sarkis, about his desire to create a new vocabulary to describe existing habitats. “It is time to come up with a richer lexicon,” says Sarkis.