In the Media

"Sloppy signatures on mail-in ballots might prove to be the hanging chads of the 2012 election."

"An MIT team has developed an algorithm that can predict trending topics on Twitter an average of an hour and a half before they appear."

"Many places offer MOOCs, and many more will. But Coursera, Udacity and edX are the leading providers. Here’s how they differ."

"Marine microbes are harder workers than honeybees or human office drones."

"'I like to call this the year of disruption,' says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, 'and the year is not over yet.'"

"An artist from the MIT Media Lab has created an interactive painting of a dandelion field, where viewers can blow on the seeds and watch the glowing sparks fly, fall and give life to new flowers."

"An MIT student and an Army Ranger have come up with a way to provide first responders with the kind of technology elite SEAL teams have."

"Sure, there are colleges that are difficult to get into. But which colleges actually have the smartest students?"

"'It once was a small step... now it's six big wheels,' exclaimed Curiosity's Twitter account after the Nasa rover landed on Mars in early August."

"An MIT graduate student in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Yarden Katz, discusses artificial intelligence with Noam Chomsky."

LiquiGlide named one of the Best Inventions of the Year for 2012

"This past July, speaking in Boston at the Global Business Travel Association, Bill Clinton described the university as having the 'best technology-transfer program in the country,' tops at turning student ideas into blockbuster businesses."

"Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has created a new material for military uniforms that can automatically repel chemical and biological agents -- and shed contaminated layers like a snakeskin."

"Over the years, a multitude of programs have been proposed to tackle the problem of global poverty. Today, the effects of different approaches can be better evaluated, thanks to the powerful technologies now available for research and analytics."

"This week, researchers analyzing spectral color data returned by the Dawn spacecraft can confirm that Vesta has mysteriously escaped eons of the kind of 'space weathering' that has aged the surface of other asteroids."