MIT researchers have found that electric cars can currently provide enough range for 87 percent of American drivers’ needs on just an overnight charge, writes Robert Ferris for CNBC. “One key finding is that electric vehicle replacement seems to be almost equally feasible in any American city, regardless of climate, topography, or size,” explains Ferris.
In an article for The Conservation, Prof. Jessika Trancik elaborates on her recent research showing that electric vehicles can meet the majority of U.S. driving needs. “Improved access to shared, long-range transport, alongside further-advanced batteries and cars and decarbonized electricity, provide a pathway to reaching a largely decarbonized personal vehicle fleet,” Trancik concludes.
Matt McFarland reports for CNN that MIT researchers have developed temporary, gold-leaf tattoos that serve as wearable devices “that add a personal touch of style.” The tattoos can interface with smartphones, store data like movie or bus tickets, or display moods by changing colors, McFarland explains.
MIT researchers have created temporary wearable gold leaf tattoos that can project a user’s mood and allow them to control nearby devices, writes Haniya Rae for Popular Science. “We wanted to build an output display that allowed for a more aesthetically pleasing look,” says graduate student Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao, of the motivation behind the tattoos.
Temporary tattoos created by MIT researchers that allow users to control their electronic devices could one day make remote controls obsolete, writes Thomas Tamblyn for The Huffington Post. Tamblyn explains that the tattoos are made “using gold metal leaf, which means that it’s cheap, skin-friendly and can support a range of different input options.”
MIT researchers have developed a new system for protecting patient privacy in genomic databases, reports Anna Nowogrodzki for Nature. The system “masks the donor's identity by adding a small amount of noise, or random variation, to the results it returns on a user’s query,” Nowogrodzki explains.
MIT researchers have found that almost 90 percent of cars on the road could be replaced with electric vehicles, reports Amrith Ramkumar for Bloomberg. The researchers found switching to electric vehicles could lead to a “60 percent reduction in total U.S. gasoline consumption and a 30 percent decrease” in emissions from transportation.
A study by MIT researchers finds that electric cars could replace most of the cars on the road, reports Chris Mooney for The Washington Post. “87 percent of vehicles on the road could be replaced by a low cost electric vehicle…even if there’s no possibility to recharge during the day,” explains Prof. Jessika Trancik.
Sam Thielman writes for The Guardian that MIT researchers have found that electric vehicles would meet the needs of most American drivers. Prof. Jessika Trancik says her vision is that people would own electric vehicles, “but then being able to very conveniently get an internal combustion engine vehicle to take that long road trip.”
Fortune reporter David Morris writes that MIT researchers have developed a technique for producing temporary tattoos that can serve as computer interfaces. The researchers “used gold leaf to construct a range of sensing surfaces for capacitive touch input, conductors for heat-sensitive displays, and antennae for short-range wireless communications.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Kevin Hartnett explores a study co-authored by Prof. Danny Fox that examines why children confuse the words “and” and “or.” The researchers found that “children may conduct exactly the same logical process as adults, but arrive at different conclusions because they run that process over a narrower set of alternative sentences.”
Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland speaks with Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, about his study examining friendship. “If you’re trying to lose weight…50 percent of the time you are likely to reach out to people who really actually aren’t going to help that much,” Pentland explains, adding that people should be looking to mutual friendships for support.
In an article for The Huffington Post about why virtual assistants have trouble understanding accents, Philip Ellis highlights how researchers from MIT have compiled a database of written English composed by non-native speakers. Ellis explains that the aim is "to create a richer context for machine learning” systems.
Gabrielle DiBenedetto writes for Boston Magazine that researchers from MIT CSAIL have developed a robot that can help nurses schedule tasks. DiBenedetto writes that the robot “learns how to perform the scheduling job similarly to how a human would: through observation.”
CNBC reporter Robert Ferris writes that MIT researchers have developed new technology that could allow windows to shift from transparent to opaque. “Solutions such as these could greatly reduce the demand for air conditioning, which is currently booming around the world,” writes Ferris.