Carl Franzen reports for Popular Science that the researchers behind MIT’s robotic cheetah have developed new algorithms that allow the robot to detect and jump over obstacles. “Now that the Cheetah 2 is capable of trotting, galloping, and jumping, it might be time to crown a new king of the concrete jungle,” writes Franzen.
Los Angeles Times reporter Melissa Healy writes that researchers from MIT and the University of California, San Diego have successfully modified bacteria to detect cancer. “Their work is a key component of broader efforts to make the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer increasingly precise and targeted," writes Healy.
A team of researchers from MIT, Northeastern, and Harvard has found links between cell phone usage and unemployment, reports Janelle Nanos for BetaBoston. The researchers found that “cellphone use and mobility dropped significantly in areas which eventually reported massive unemployment spikes,” Nanos explains.
Researchers from MIT and the University of California, San Diego have genetically modified bacteria so that it can detect cancer, BBC News reports. The researchers hope that one day, “the general approach could one day be used to develop relatively cheap and easy to use home-testing kits for a range of diseases.”
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.”