In this news video, The Boston Globe reports on the MIT Open Style Laboratory, where teams of design, engineering and occupational therapy students combine forces to design accessible fashion.
MIT scientists have shown recycled lead can be used in solar cells, reports Popular Science’s Emily Gertz. “The group's work demonstrates that the perovskite created from the lead in just one old car battery could provide materials for 30 households-worth of solar energy cells,” writes Gertz.
In a piece for Scientific American about the advantages of dyslexia, Matthew H. Schneps highlights an MIT study that found that people with dyslexia “can distribute their attention far more broadly than do typical readers,” and often have heightened visual and auditory senses.
In a piece for The Financial Times about the Eurozone economies, John Plender writes about Professor Barry Posen’s argument in his new book “Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy” for cutting U.S. defense spending.
Mark Fischetti of Scientific American interviews Professor Sherry Turkle about how relying on technology to document everyday life could affect our lives and memories. “I’d be very interested in teaming up with psychologists who study how much you remember right after an event, if you’ve been wearing Google Glass versus if you’re just relying on your memory,” says Turkle.
Martin LaMonica writes for IEEE Spectrum about how MIT researchers have developed a system that uses car batteries to produce solar cells. “The beauty is that this new process is pretty interchangeable with the current production method,” says Prof. Angela Belcher.
In a piece for CNBC about the future of electric vehicles, Phil LeBeau writes that MIT researchers estimate battery electric vehicles could account for only 3.7 percent of all vehicles sales in 2040 if the auto industry, state and federal governments, and the public do not increase their level of investment.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Professor John Deutch writes about the success of President Obama’s energy policy. “President Obama is having greater success in advancing his energy agenda in his second term than in his first. But it will take more than one successful term to secure the country's energy future,” Deutch writes.
In an interview with Robert Siegel of NPR’s All Things Considered, Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab apologizes for his role in creating the pop-up ad. Zuckerman expresses concern that the Internet’s reliance on advertising has made people far more accustomed to surveillance by advertisers.
Washington Post reporter Rachel Feltman writes that MIT engineers have developed a system that recycles batteries into solar cells. “We think it could be a competitor that’s easy to process, has rapidly increasing efficiency, and can be made in an environmentally friendly way,” says Prof. Angela Belcher.
In a piece for The Boston Globe, Kevin Lewis writes about how political scientists from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley found that, contrary to popular belief, Senator Joseph McCarthy did not influence the outcomes of the 1950 and 1952 Senate elections.
Kara Miller and Genevieve Gilson of WGBH’s Innovation Hub interview Professor Natasha Dow Schull about the engineering behind gambling and her book, “Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Vegas.” “There can be a net loss, but it feels like you’re constantly winning and you can play for much longer,” says Schull of slot machines.
Writing for Science, Meghna Sachdev reports on how researchers from MIT and Harvard have built a team of 1,024 robots, the largest swarm of robots ever created. The robots are each the size of a U.S. quarter and could be used for search-and-rescue and construction operations.
Clive Cookson of The Financial Times reports on the new vision-correcting display developed by researchers from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley. The technology, which automatically corrects for vision problems, “puts the glasses on the display, rather than on your head,” explains Dr. Gordon Wetzstein.
In a segment about America’s renewed involvement in Iraq on NPR’s On Point, Professor Barry Posen speaks about his new book “Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy.” Posen argues that the United States should rethink its foreign policy and exercise a more conservative military approach in Iraq.