New York Times reporter Carol Vogel writes that Professor Emerita Joan Jonas has been selected to represent the United States at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Paul C. Ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, nominated Jonas and will serve as commissioner of the exhibit.
Liz Stinson of Wired reports on Transform, a piece of shape-shifting furniture built by the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab that metamorphoses based on the motion and emotion of the people around it. Transform is comprised of 1,152 plastic pins controlled by microprocessors that sit underneath.
Writing for Forbes, Leo King reports that an autonomous robotic submarine developed by MIT startup Bluefin Robotics is being deployed in the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
MIT researchers have developed a technique that allows nanocrystals to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit goods, reports Wired reporter Liat Clark. The research could have applications in the sale of luxury goods and electronics, as well as vaccine quality control.
Boston.com reporter Matt Rocheleau reports on how Professor Jeffrey Grossman and postdoctoral associate Timothy Kucharski have developed a new material that can produce solar power for times when the sun is not shining.
Dennis Keohane of The Boston Globe writes about the recipients of this year’s Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize Competition.
The PBS NewsHour reports on how experts from MIT, Harvard and Columbia have determined that a fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” is a relic from ancient times and not a forgery.
Professor M. Taylor Fravel co-authors this Washington Post article looking at the frequency of Chinese Coast Guard patrols in the territorial waters off the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Fravel and his co-author suggest that the decrease in patrols may signal a willingness by China to avoid escalation in a standoff with Japan over the islands.
Professor Max Tegmark writes for The New York Times about recent research that appears to support the theory of cosmic inflation, and the implications of this discovery for the study of physics and the origins of the universe.
“Swager used infrared spectroscopy, which analyzes the low-frequency light from an object, to see if the ink showed any inconsistencies or variations that would suggest it was a recent forgery,” reports Scientific American’s Marc Lallanilla about new research from MIT, Harvard and Columbia showing the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” is authentic.
Reporting for Scientific American, Seth Fletcher writes about a new effort, led by MIT’s Shep Doeleman, to coordinate radio telescopes around the world to create a telescope powerful enough to get a picture of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
Guardian reporter Meeri Kim highlights new MIT research that shows that in order to manage the world’s visual chaos, the human brain performs automatic visual smoothing over time and our visual perception is influenced by what we saw up to 15 seconds ago.
Boston Globe reporter Eryn Carlson writes about the recipients of the 2014 Guggenheim Fellowships, highlighting lecturer Elena Ruehr’s plans to use the award to help her write an opera.
Professor Scott Aaronson discusses what might lie beyond quantum computing in a piece he wrote for PBS’ The Nature of Reality .
Writing in The New York Times, Laurie Goodstein reports that researchers from MIT, Columbia and Harvard have determined that a fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” is likely a relic from an ancient manuscript and not a modern forgery.