“Soofas are the creation of Changing Environments, an MIT Media Lab spin-out co-founded by three women in their early thirties—a designer, an electrical engineer, and a marketing expert,” writes Caroline Winter of Bloomberg Businessweek about new smart, solar-powered benches in Cambridge and Boston.
ABC News reports on the new smart benches created by Changing Environments, a spinoff from the MIT Media Lab. The ‘Soofas’ will be placed in various locations throughout Boston and Cambridge and allow users to charge phones and download environmental data.
Professor Zeynep Tone writes for Forbes about his research that indicates companies that pay their employees higher wages tend to outperform their competitors. “[T]hese companies consider their workforce not as a cost to be minimized but as a strategic asset,” writes Tone.
Dan Vergano of National Geographic profiles Professor Alan Guth’s career in physics. "What always fascinated me about science was the desire to understand what underlies it all, and I think physics is basically the study of that," Guth explains.
Just how much fuel could an airline save by shaving excess weight from a flight? MIT's Luke Jensen and Brian Yutko of Aero Astro decided to find out, using an aircraft performance model developed at MIT. In this article for FiveThirtyEight, they describe the fuel and cost savings if airlines were to cut back on things like olives or water bottles, and encourage passengers to go to the bathroom before boarding.
Boston Globe reporter Kevin Hartnett writes about a new algorithm developed by a team of MIT researchers that can camouflage eyesores. The algorithm, “analyzes pictures of incongruous objects and creates custom camouflage that makes them fade into their surroundings,” Hartnett explains.
In a piece for New Scientist about teaching robots to communicate like humans, Aviva Rutkin highlights how researchers from MIT developed a new approach to communicating with a robot called inverse semantics. Using this approach, “the robot tries to choose the right words by looking at its environment,” Rutkin writes.
“The high-tech benches were invented by MIT Media Lab spinoff Changing Environments,” writes Meghan Irons of The Boston Globe about new solar-powered “smart benches” coming to Boston. “Your cellphone doesn't just make phone calls, why should our benches just be seats?” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh says of the project.
Steve Lohr writes for The New York Times about Luminoso, a text analysis and artificial intelligence startup out of the MIT Media Lab. Luminoso analyzed social media communications before, during, and after the U.S.-Germany World Cup soccer match to create a minute-by-minute picture of peoples’ emotions.
“Researchers dug into the sediment and ground the samples to a powder for analysis at a sophisticated Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lab,” reports the AFP on new research that indicates that the diet of the Neanderthals included plants, as well as animals. The findings contradict the prior belief that Neanderthals were almost exclusively carnivorous.
Kathy Simons, director of MIT’s Work-Life Center, joins the editor of Working Mother magazine and the CEO of Clockwork Media to talk about the issues facing working families on Minnesota Public Radio.
“Chemical analysis of poop samples discovered at an archaeological site in Alicante, Spain, suggests Neanderthals may have enjoyed significant servings of plants too,” writes Washington Post reporter Gail Sullivan of new findings from MIT researchers concerning the diets of Neanderthals.
In a piece for Salon, Sarah Gray reports that a team of researchers, “discovered 50,000-year-old human poop while excavating the ancient Neanderthal site El Salt, located in Spain near the port of Alicante on the Mediterranean.” Analysis of the fecal matter showed that the Neanderthals may have eaten more vegetables than previously thought.
Nicholas St. Fleur of NPR examines new findings from MIT researchers concerning the Neanderthal diet. "This opens a new window into Neanderthal diet because it's the first time we actually know what they digested and consumed," Ainara Sistiaga says.
Carolyn Johnson writes for The Boston Globe about MIT’s findings that the diets of Neanderthals included plants in addition to animals. The results, obtained by analyzing fecal samples, undermine previous beliefs that Neanderthals were carnivorous.