WBUR’s Pamela Reynolds spotlights three new exhibits at the MIT List Center for Visual Arts – “Colored People Time: Mundane Futures, Quotidian Pasts, Banal Presents," “Christine Sum Kim: Off the Charts” and “List Projects 21: Rami George” – as part of a roundup of noteworthy new displays this winter.
Bloomberg reporter Christopher Condon notes that a paper by MIT researchers “may help economists get a better measure of the extent to which new, free technologies are reshaping the economy and our lives.”
Research engineer Bryan Reimer writes for Forbes about the introduction of new automated driving systems. “Working together to develop guardrails around the deployment and testing of automation on public roads might be the most important step to accelerate the adoption of potentially lifesaving automated vehicle technologies,” writes Reimer.
Wall Street Journal contributor and visiting lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger highlights a working paper by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and postdoctoral associate Daniel Rock that examines the lag that often impacts new technologies capable of broadly benefiting society. “Adjusting productive processes to take advantage of new types of capital requires the kind of investments the statistics miss,” the researchers note.
Wall Street Journal reporter Allison Duncan highlights MIT startup Embr Labs, which has developed a wearable device that acts as a personal thermostat. Duncan notes that the Wave Bracelet, provides targeted heat to the wearer’s wrist to “help a distractedly cold person perceive a room as up to five degrees warmer. In intolerably toasty situations, it cools for the equal, opposite effect.”
A team of MIT researchers has used color-changing fibers to capture a better understanding of knots, reports Caroline Delbert for Popular Mechanics. Using a computational model, “the MIT team could hypothetically use their research to create entirely new knots that are as secure as humanly possible,” Delbert explains.
Scientific American reporter Jeremy Hsu writes that MIT researchers used color-changing fibers to develop a new mathematical model for predicting knot stability. “The nice thing is that with these basic rules, you can get quick intuition about which knots are more stable or less stable,” Prof. Jörn Dunkel explains. “We can also use them as a starting point to explore more accurate models.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jo Craven McGinty writes that a study co-authored by MIT researchers finds the surge in new drug approvals typically seen every December leads to an increase in hospitalizations, life-threatening events and deaths. McGinty notes that the researchers concluded, “drugs approved during end-of-month or end-of-year surges should receive additional scrutiny.”
Newsweek reporter Hannah Osborne writes that a new study by MIT researchers provides evidence that the moon lost its magnetic field about one billion years ago, when its internal dynamo ceased. "A strong field on the moon may have shielded the surface from the solar wind, the supersonic plasma emitted from the sun," explains Prof. Benjamin Weiss.
Using color-changing fibers, MIT researchers have developed a new mathematical model that can determine a knot’s strength and stability, reports Nell Greenfieldboyce for NPR. "You should be able to look at a knot and how it's tied and guess how stable it's going to be," explains graduate student Vishal Patil.
Graduate student Benjamin Holmes speaks with Boston Magazine reporter Jacqueline Cain about his new effort, FAB Beer, a collection of beers he is creating “for the sake of art and activism.” Holmes explains that, “we’re on a mission to brew beers which are created for the central purpose of supporting the arts and encouraging activist change.”
New York Times reporter Kevin Rose highlights Biobot, an MIT startup that analyzes sewer samples to identify opioid use levels in specific neighborhoods. “Once this data is collected, public health officials can use it to set priorities for treatment programs, detect spikes in use in a neighborhood and monitor the effectiveness of prevention programs over time,” writes Rose.
Prof. Carlo Ratti speaks about the “Eyes of the City” exhibition he curated in Shenzhen, China, which offers “a rare public space for reflection on increasingly pervasive surveillance by tech companies and the government,” reports David Kirton for Reuters. “This is a global issue and the best way to deal with it is to open up these technologies and put them in the hands of the public," said Ratti.
MIT researchers have created a “new laser ultrasound technique [that] utilizes an eye and skin safe laser system to image the inside of a person remotely,” reports Jennifer Kite-Powell for Forbes.
Popular Science names “Advanced LIGO by MIT and CalTech (2016)” as one of the 20 best tech discoveries of the last decade. “LIGO has captivated people the world over, making them curious about esoteric subjects like the nature of space and origin of, well, everything.”