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Social Studies
In MIT's Human Dynamics Lab, Sandy Pentland PhD '82 uses cell phones and wearable sensors to research nonverbal signals, information flow, and the value of face-to-face conversation.
Teaching real-world programming
In an innovative software-engineering class, students meet for regular “code reviews” with senior programmers from Boston-area companies.
Programming crowds
With the Web, people worldwide can work on distributed tasks. But getting reliable results requires algorithms that specify workflow between people, not transistors.
Robert Morris wins 2010 Mark Weiser Award
ACM SIGOPS award recognizes ‘creativity and innovation’ in operating-systems research.
Faster websites, more reliable data
Web servers that store data locally save time on database searches but sometimes serve up obsolete results. A new system solves that problem.
Why telecom regulation needs to change
Research suggests that the approach that worked with a few large companies with aligned interests needs revisiting in the Internet age.
In the World: Health care in the palm of a hand
MIT-led student team develops mobile-device software to help improve health-care accessibility in remote regions.
Shape-shifting robots
Self-folding sheets of a plastic-like material point the way to robots that can assume any conceivable 3-D structure.
A plane that lands like a bird
An innovative control system allows a foam glider to touch down on a perch or a wire like a pet parakeet.
Broadband picture may not be so bleak
A new study disputes the claim that Internet data rates in the U.S. are only half as high as advertised; study’s authors call for better data.
Computer automatically deciphers ancient language
A new system that took a couple hours to decipher much of the ancient language Ugaritic could help improve online translation software.
Toward the Semantic Web
A new standard from the World Wide Web Consortium brings the Web a step closer to realizing the vision of its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee.
How the brain recognizes objects
A new computational model sheds light on the workings of the human visual system and could help advance artificial-intelligence research, too.