Research

Steven Rosenbaum highlights PhD student Abe Davis’ TED talk in a piece for Forbes. Rosenbaum writes that Davis “has co-created the world’s most improbable audio instrument.”

Adam Rutherford of BBC Radio 4 speaks with Prof. Nicholas Makris about his work examining the evolution of violin design during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Makris explains that, “if you go over that roughly 200 years you see that the F-hole length was increasing over that time period,” an adjustment that increased the violin’s acoustic power. 

Washington Post reporter Annie Gowen writes about how MIT researchers have found that India’s latest swine flu outbreak may have mutated into a more dangerous strain. The researchers found “new mutations in the protein known to make the virus more virulent.”

Professor Ram Sasisekharan and research scientist Kannan Tharakaraman have found that a strain of H1N1 influenza in India is more virulent than health authorities have indicated, writes Rishi Lyengar of Time. “They found mutations in the Indian strains in a protein called hemagglutinin, which binds with receptors on the human body’s respiratory cells,” Lyengar writes. 

Laura Santhanam writes for the PBS NewsHour that MIT researchers have found that a strain of swine flu in India is more dangerous than originally thought. The researchers found that “a mutation in the new H1N1 strain allows this form of swine flu to attack an infected person’s respiratory cells more virulently.”

Dr. Judah Cohen examines whether climate change could be leading to more extreme snowfall in a piece for The Washington Post. “The influence of climate change may be that the warming brings the atmosphere closer to the 'optimal' profile to generate heavy snowfalls, more so in the present than in the past,” Cohen writes. 

Carey Goldberg reports for WBUR on a new study coauthored by MIT researchers that examines how cognitive abilities change with age. Goldberg explains that the researchers found that “various pieces of our intelligence or cognitive ability peak at various times in our lives.” 

Professor Jeremy England speaks about how his research group is investigating how physics can help explain the origins of life on The Academic Minute. England explains that his group models “what happens when you take a clump of matter that no one would call alive and then start zapping it with a source of energy (like sunlight).”

Scientists from MIT and MGH have found that while certain brain functions decline with age, others, like vocabulary skills, peak later in life, reports Kay Lazar for The Boston Globe. The researchers found that "the ability to reason, learn, and recall information ebbs and flows over our lifespan.”

MIT researchers have found that the high temperature of intracluster gas, which condenses to form stars, may be hindering the development of new stars, reports Jonathan O’Callaghan for the Daily Mail. The researchers hope to use the new findings to better understand how stars form in surrounding galaxies. 

Prof. Stephen Ross has won the 2015 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, reports Jack Newsham for The Boston Globe. Jan Pieter Krahnen, director of the Center for Financial Studies, which presents the prize, explains that Ross’ work “has shaped today's thinking in financial innovation, practice, and policy.”

Coco Liu writes for Scientific American about a new study co-authored by MIT researchers that indicates that Chinese government efforts to improve air quality may actually increase carbon emissions. With the focus on air quality, Chinese plants will focus on “scrubbing pollutants from the exhaust stream of coal power plants—rather than switching to use more renewable energy.”

GIFGIF, a project by graduate students Kevin Hu and Travis Rich, maps human emotions by asking people to select which GIFS best represent a specific feeling, reports Jon Christian for Wired. Hu and Rich hope that all of the data collected through GIFGIF “will make it easier to write programs that deal with emotional content.”

Jeffrey Mervis writes for Science that Prof. Marc Kastner will serve as president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a group aimed at boosting support for basic scientific research. Kastner’s new position will allow him to make the case for the importance of basic research on a “national scale.”  

Researchers from MIT and Harvard have identified the optical features within a limpet’s shell that allow the mollusk to display blue stripes, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The findings could inspire developments in augmented reality screens.