In the Media

"Despite the cancellation of the Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope, astrobiologists are modeling possible chemical biomarkers that could be used to detect indicators of life on newfound worlds."

"The thick, hazy atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest natural satellite, hides a complex moon with a perplexing geological past, a new study finds."

"In a study released last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), based in Cambridge, engineers show through computer modeling how major international US airports might contribute to the spread of contagious disease during the early days of an epidemic."

"Viewed from outside the ivory tower, a dispute among economists over ethanol’s impact on gasoline prices might be expected to proceed in a genteel manner. Instead, the debate has bubbled over."

"A folding electric microcar with “robot” wheels—largely developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology —has moved a step closer to reality, as a Spanish consortium has announced it will be building 20 prototypes, with minor variations, by the end of the year."

"At the Aspen Ideas festival, I listened to fascinating presentations from Joi Ito, head of the MIT Media Lab: this initiative, which grew out of the architecture department, aims to force different types of researchers and entrepreneurs to collide with each other."

"With the Great Chinese Growth Machine apparently on the verge of downshifting, it's a good time to revisit an old argument: Can China continue to expand at near double-digit pace if the Communist Party doesn't loosen its the iron grip?"

"Jewitt, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jane Luu, an astronomer with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, always thought it unlikely that the outer solar system would be bare “when the inner solar system was so full of objects,” Jewitt says."

"'It is a very complicated disease and these patients are in very tough shape,' said Michael Cima, the David H. Koch professor of engineering at MIT. 'There’s a real medical need.'"

"There are autonomous cars, and there are drivers’ cars. Now we have something in the middle. Sterling Anderson and Karl Iagnemma of MIT have created a semi-autonomous driving system that gives drivers full control of the vehicle, but kicks when the car gets too close to another object."

"The renewable ethanol fuel blended into the United States' gasoline supply does not lower prices at the pump as advocates have claimed, according to a study released this week by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

"Using a little-known copyright rule and a trove of baseball-related trivia, an MIT economist figured out how current copyright laws specifically affect one online community."

"In a soon to be published book, (MIT's Michael) Schrage asks a question he hopes will challenge the way businesses traditionally think: 'What do you want your customer to become?'"

"When a person decides to donate a kidney, expecting nothing in return, clearly one person’s life could be saved. But this single act of altruism actually can save dozens of lives."

"The idea of wearable computing has been around for a few decades; but it's only recently that phones have acquired enough computing power, data connectivity has become pervasive, Bluetooth connections low-powered enough and screens cheap enough, for us to start thinking of adopting it."