Doctoral researcher Daniel Goodwin writes for Scientific American about the need for hackers to sort through the vast amount of neuroscience data. “Particularly in a field like neuroscience, helpers could be invaluable in exploring the daunting wilderness of newly revealed neural networks,” Goodwin explains.
Researchers at MIT and Harvard have developed a new device that can quickly detect Ebola, reports Robert Preidt for U.S. News & World Report. “The new paper-based test takes minutes and the device does not require electricity,” writes Preidt. “The test works in a similar manner to over-the-counter pregnancy tests.”
MIT researchers have developed a technique that can eliminate the washed-out spots found in overexposed images, reports Curt Woodward for BetaBoston. The technique could not only be used in photography, but could also be used for other applications like helping a “self-driving car stay on course despite quick light changes, such as entering a tunnel.”
MIT researchers have developed a new tool that could be used to predict dementia earlier than is currently possible and with greater accuracy, reports Liat Clark for Wired. The researchers hope the new technique could be used to cut down on the number of “hours spent diagnosing, or potentially misdiagnosing, a disorder.”
A new study co-authored by Prof. Andrew Lo shows that most hedge funds are not performing as well as people think they are, reports Michael P. Regan for Bloomberg News. The researchers found that “due to inherent biases in the way hedge-fund databases compile results, the industry's returns have been about half as strong as they appear.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Chad Autry and Beth Davis-Sramek highlight an MIT study examining corporate sustainability efforts. Autry and Davis-Sramek write that, “In a global survey of 2,500 executives, 90% of the respondents indicate that businesses need to collaborate to address sustainability challenges.”
Huffington Post contributor Derrick Crowe writes about a new MIT study that examines how increasing ocean acidification is impacting phytoplankton populations. The study showed how ocean acidification, “can throw off the balance of the plankton population, causing significant changes with profound implications for other species that depend on them.”
In an article for The New York Times, Phyllis Korkki writes about a new study co-authored by Prof. Christian Catalini that examines how free time impacts innovation. The researchers found innovation “requires time to carry out execution-oriented tasks that are not particularly creative but still necessary to transform an idea into a product.”
Writing for the Huffington Post, Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman highlights an MIT study that shows different mental processes peak at different ages. The study “examined a number of different brain processes that make up intelligence, rather than viewing intelligence as a single measure as has traditionally been done.”
MIT researchers have developed a program that allows a team of robots to work together to serve drinks, reports Lorenzo Ligato for the Huffington Post. The researchers, “programmed the robots with complex planning algorithms, which allowed the machines to engage in higher-level reasoning about their location, status and behavior -- similarly to they way humans perform tasks.”
MIT researchers have developed an algorithm that allows a team of three robots to serve drinks, writes Gordon Gottsegen for Wired: “While the real-world application of this research may seem like the beer fetching itself (to us at least), the method that allows robots to execute tasks despite uncertainty may have practical usages.”
Alexandra Ossola writes for Popular Science about a computer program created by MIT researchers that can aid in early detection of dementia by analyzing a patient’s drawings. The program “may enable doctors to diagnose patients much more quickly, and to intervene earlier to stave off the onset of cognitive degeneration.”
According to Matt Kaplan of The Economist, Professor Ju Li has devised a method of producing lithium-ion batteries using nanoparticles. “If the process of making the nanoparticles can be industrialized," writes Kaplan, "then the lifetimes of lithium-ion batteries might be considerably extended.”
Jordan Lebeau writes for Boston.com about a team of drink-serving robots created by MIT researchers: “The team consists of one large double-armed bot, the bartender, and two smaller ‘turtle bots,’ the servers.”
Brook Hays of UPI writes that researchers from MIT have developed a new program that allows teams of robots to work together to pour and deliver drinks. Hays explains that the robots are “programmed to anticipate what drinks are needed where, taking orders and delivering drinks with the greatest possible level of efficiency.”