A study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott dispels the theory that musical preference is rooted in biology, writes Jacqueline Howard for CNN. "We need to accept and document the differences in how other cultures hear the world. The opportunities to do so are rapidly diminishing with the diffusion of Western music around the world,” says McDermott.
A team of MIT researchers has received an EPA grant to install a network of air quality sensors to study Hawaii’s volcanic smog, reports Greenwire’s Sean Reilly. The sensors will provide residents with real-time information as well as “a data set that can be used to explore pollutant variability and other topics,” explains Reilly.
Prof. Charles Stewart III writes for The Washington Post that the latest Pew Charitable Trust Elections Performance Index shows there has been improvement in U.S. election administration. Stewart explains that the index gauges “performance across several dimensions of election administration, including the quality of voter registration, ballot casting, and vote counting.”
Prof. Elfatih Eltahir speaks with the BBC’s Ed Butler about whether desalination could be an effective remedy for water shortages in the Middle East. Eltahir notes that current desalination methods use “a lot of energy to basically distill water…and could have very high costs and could contribute to the potential for global warming.”
A new imaging technique developed by MIT researchers creates video simulations that people can interact with, writes Charles Choi for Scientific American. “In addition to fueling game development, these advances could help simulate how real bridges and buildings might respond to potentially disastrous situations,” Choi explains.
The EPA has awarded a team of MIT researchers a grant to create a network of low-cost, air pollution sensors, according to the Associated Press. The network will test and track emissions from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, which emits high levels of sulfur dioxide, reducing air quality and negatively impacting human health and crops.
Boston Magazine reporter Dana Guth writes that MIT researchers are programming harmless strains of E. coli bacteria to destroy tumor cells. Guth explains that the programmed bacteria could be ingested or injected and “could offer a new way to stave off liver cancer.”
A team of scientists, including MIT researchers, has analyzed the measurements made by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and found no evidence of the sterile neutrino, a new type of neutrino, reports Brendan Cole for Wired.
Joe Toohey of NBC’s Meet the Press visits MIT to learn about the CityScope project’s augmented reality platform for urban planning. Kent Larson, director of the City Science Initiative, explains that the platform allows non-experts to “explore different alternatives, experiment with them, in effect play, and get immediate feedback.”
In an article for Wired, Kevin Hartnett examines Prof. Scott Sheffield’s work studying geometric randomness. “You take the most natural objects—trees, paths, surfaces—and you show they’re all related to each other,” Sheffield explains. “And once you have these relationships, you can prove all sorts of new theorems you couldn’t prove before.”
In an article for The New York Times, Kate Murphy highlights Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland’s study that analyzes whether perceived friendships are mutual. The study found that feelings of friendship “were mutual 53 percent of the time while the expectation of reciprocity was pegged at 94 percent.”
During a Financial Times podcast, Prof. Heidi Williams speaks about her work studying the impact of patent policy and technology on medical research and health care. Williams explains that her work focuses on the role patents and policies play in developing "the medical technologies that are most beneficial to patients.”
MIT researchers have developed what they believe to be the toughest English-language tongue twister, writes Justin Kitch for The Huffington Post. The tongue twister “pad kid poured curd pulled cold” is difficult to say because “it’s an example of alternating repetition, where consonant sounds are repeated at the beginnings of every other word,” Kitch explains.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes that MIT researchers have found that our musical tastes are culturally instilled. The researchers played consonant and dissonant chords from members of a remote Amazonian tribe and found that “they had no preference for one sound over the other—unlike the large majority of North Americans and Europeans, who prefer consonance.”
MIT researchers have outlined a new way of developing a lithium-oxygen battery that would increase the battery’s energy efficiency and longevity, according to The Economist. “In trials which discharged and recharged the battery 130 times, it lost less than 2% of its capacity,” The Economist notes.