Prof. Hari Balakrishnan has been selected as the recipient of the Marconi Prize for “fundamental discoveries in wired and wireless networking, mobile sensing, and distributed systems,” reports the Press Trust of India. “The Marconi Prize is awarded annually by The Marconi Society to innovators who have significantly contributed to increasing digital inclusivity through advanced information and communications technology.”
Boston.com reporter Ross Cristantiello writes that MIT researchers have developed a new augmented reality headset that combines computer vision and wireless perception to allow users to track and find objects hidden from view. “The system relies on radio frequency signals that can pass through everyday materials like cardboard, plastic, and wood,” Cristantiello explains.
Postdoc Zach Patterson speaks with Mashable about how he and his colleagues are developing a soft robot inspired by a sea turtle that could potentially "offer a closer look at ocean life and assist in further studying aquatic creatures.” Patterson explains that the robotic turtle is meant to be a “platform for exploring the interaction between soft and rigid materials incorporated into a robotic structure.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Jonathan Gruber finds “encouraging parents to care for young children at home is not necessarily the best policy,” writes Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. “Higher payments — and thus more mothers staying home — were associated with worse performance on cognitive tests at ages 4-5, lower likelihood of being in the higher-level track in high school, and more teenage crime,” Lewis notes. “The opposite effect was observed in families that benefited from a policy reform that lowered their day care fees.”
Prof. Josh McDermott co-authored a study that explores how music and podcasts can impact a person’s mood, reports Charlotte Hu for Popular Science. “There’s this big cultural shift in the way that we consume music and other audio that really happened over the last decade,” says McDermott. “It’s just changed the way that people live and probably has a lot of important effects.”
A new study conducted by Prof. Albert Saiz and his colleagues has found “for housing access to improve in Mexico, financial support such as mortgages or subsidies, along with greater buy-in from local governments and the private sector, is key,” writes Kylie Madry for Reuters.
MIT’s Sloan School of Management and University of Navarra’s IESE Business School are launching a Global CEO Program designed for senior executives, reports Syndey Lake for Fortune. “Students, through the seven-month program, will focus on topics including systems thinking, innovation mindset, communication, change management, emerging technologies, negotiation and influence, self-leadership, and building a legacy,” writes Lake.
MIT researchers have developed a new two-step electrochemical process to remove carbon dioxide out of seawater, reports John Fialka for E&E News. The new approach “cuts energy costs and expensive membranes used to collect CO2 to the point where merchant ships that run on diesel power could collect enough CO2 to offset their emissions,” Fialka writes.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel and First Street Foundation have found that based on warming climate conditions and patterns, future storms will increase in intensity and travel farther north up the East Coast, reports Leslie Kaufman and Eric Roston for Bloomberg.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporters Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon about future hurricane trends. “The bottom line is the models that are being used by the existing [catastrophe] modeling industry are based strictly on historical statistics,” says Emanuel. “The historical record isn’t very long, and it isn’t very good when you get back to before 1970.”
An augmented reality headset developed by MIT engineers, called X-AR, uses RFID technology to help users find hidden objects, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “X-AR’s creators were able to guide users with nearly 99 percent accuracy to items scattered throughout a warehouse testing environment,” writes Paul. “When those products were hidden within boxes, the X-AR still even boasted an almost 92 percent accuracy rate.”
MIT engineers have developed an augmented reality headset that uses RFID technology to allow wearers to find objects, reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The device is intended to assist workers in places like e-commerce warehouses and retail stores to quickly find and identify objects,” writes Tran. “It can also help technicians find tools and items they need to assemble products.”
Undergraduate student Sasha Horokh speaks with GBH reporters Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel about the ongoing war in Ukraine. “I think it's important that we do not get used to this, and to keep supporting Ukraine,” says Horokh.
Former U.S. Representative John Olver PhD '61, has died at age 86, reports Steve LeBlanc for the Associated Press. “[Olver’s] quiet demeanor and wry sense of humor concealed a razor-sharp understanding of the issues facing the American people and a deep faith in our ability to solve them together,” says Democratic U.S. Representative James McGovern.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explore how generative artificial intelligence “presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the beginning of the Enlightenment.” Huttenlocher, Kissinger and Schmidt make the case that “parameters for AI’s responsible use need to be established, with variation based on the type of technology and the context of deployment.”