Graduate student Dheeraj Roy speaks with Rachel Paiste of WBUR about a new study that indicates that memories lost to amnesia may be recalled by activating brain cells with light. Roy explains that the findings show that “in certain models of amnesia, memories do persist.”
MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive way to detect liver cancer using probiotics, reports Vijee Venkatraman for BetaBoston. The researchers found that they could “use bacteria as tumor scouts…and engineer them to emit a signal once they reached the mass and multiply.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Zumbrun writes about a new study co-authored by MIT researchers that found that cell-phone records can indicate if a person has been laid off. The researchers found that “people’s social lives and mobility contracted following a layoff.”
Prof. Xavier Giroud writes for Fortune that corporate debt played a large role in the Great Recession. “While it’s true that high levels of consumer debt helped lay the groundwork for the long economic slump that followed the financial crisis, other factors—including high levels of corporate debt—also played an important role,” Giroud explains.
Melissa Lott writes for Scientific American about a study by researchers from MIT and Cambridge University that estimated the number of early deaths attributable to air pollution from U.K. airports. Lott explains that the “researchers found that an estimated 110 early deaths occur in the United Kingdom each year due to airport emissions.”
In an article for The Washington Post, MIT President L. Rafael Reif writes that the U.S. needs to develop a more effective way of bringing new innovations from the lab to the marketplace. “The United States needs a more systematic way to help its bottled-up new-science innovators deliver their ideas to the world,” Reif explains.
Researchers at MIT and North Carolina State University have designed a membrane that can effectively muffle low-frequency sounds, writes Daniel Akst for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers believe that the membrane could be used to make airplane cabins quieter, Akst explains.
According to The Economist, a new algorithm created by EECS graduate student YiChang Shih and his colleagues can remove the reflections that often appear in photos taken through glass. As the team describes in their paper, their software “can indeed separate the desired image from the reflected one.”
Wired reporter Emily Dreyfuss writes about the MIT team competing in the DARPA Robotics Challenge and their approach to the competition. The team, which is competing using the Atlas robot designed by Boston Dynamics, has built their software so that Atlas can operate autonomously, Dreyfuss explains.
Kenneth Chang of The New York Times writes about a paper by Professors Oliver Jagoutz and Leigh Royden that suggests the Indian Subcontinent collided with an island arc before reaching Asia: “In the Nature Geoscience paper, Dr. Royden and Dr. Jagoutz show that the island arc could explain the swiftness of India’s travels.”
Sarah Lewin writes for Wired about research by Professor Pedro Reis and a team of MIT mathematicians on the formation of wrinkles in materials. “What’s beautiful about this work is the collaboration between experimentalists and theorists,” says Reis. “We challenged them with results we didn’t understand, and they went somewhere new.”
“MIT scientists have cracked the science behind the dress that went viral on the Internet after some saw it as black and blue while others perceived it to be gold and white,” The Huffington Post reports. The researchers found that a person’s visual perception was influenced by light sources.
Tina Rosenberg writes for The New York Times about a study by J-PAL researchers examining the effectiveness of a poverty intervention program. Researchers found that participants in the program, “ate more, were more certain about access to food, held more assets, had more income and savings, spent more time working, and enjoyed better mental and physical health.”
Researchers from the MIT Media Lab are studying Twitter use in the small Spanish town of Jun, Fox News Latino reports. “It’s believed to be the first town to adopt the social network as the dominant method of communication.”
Eleanor Goldberg writes for The Huffington Post that a team of MIT researchers has developed a solar-powered desalination system that could help bring clean drinking water to rural areas. The researchers hope to eventually release a model that could provide clean drinking water for an entire village, Goldberg reports.