WGBH reporter Cristina Quinn reports on this year’s 2.007 robot competition, during which student-built robots faced off on a course inspired by the movie Back to the Future. “We really try to stress real life skills in this class and one of the biggest as a designer is realizing things don’t work as you thought they would,” says Prof. Amos Winter.
MIT researchers have measured how gigantic underwater waves move, form, and dissipate, reports Justin Wm. Moyer for The Washington Post. The researchers found that these underwater waves are “big enough that they affect large-scale celestial motions,” explains Prof. Thomas Peacock.
John Paradiso writes for BostInno about this year’s 2.007 robotics competition, which was based on the movie Back to the Future. "The game boards, where the students drive their robots, are a DeLorean with a backdrop of the clock tower. The robots drive all over the DeLoreans to give them fuel, and climb the clock tower,” says Prof. Amos Winter.
Eden Shulman reports for BetaBoston on this year’s 2.007 robot competition. Students participating in this year’s challenge competed on a course inspired by the movie Back to the Future and had to create robots capable of opening a replica DeLorean’s door, throwing bananas into a fusion energy reaction and climbing the famous clock tower from the movie.
Professor Thomas Peacock and his research group have examined the world’s strongest “internal waves,” some of which measure more than 500 meters high, writes Chris Sweeney for Boston Magazine. “Internal waves are the lumbering giants of the ocean,” says Peacock. “They move fairly slowly but they are very large in amplitude and carry a lot of energy.”
Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick writes that a team of MIT engineers has won the Desal Prize for a solar-powered desalination system they developed. “The system, when fully operational, can supply the basic water needs of a village of between 2,000 and 5,000 people,” Warrick explains.
Boston.com reporter Dialynn Dwyer writes about how graduate student Steven Keating “fought his cancer with curiosity.” Dwyer explains that Keating “gathered his health data in order to understand the science behind what his body was going through” and even filmed his brain surgery.
Jim Morelli reports for CNN on a wheelchair developed by Professor Amos Winter to help to meet the needs of people in the developing world. “We essentially had to reinvent the wheelchair,” says Winter of the wheelchair’s design, which is built to handle rough terrain and can be easily repaired.
A team of MIT researchers won the grand prize in a competition that challenged participants to develop sustainable desalination technologies, reports Jeff Daniels reports for NBC News. The MIT researchers designed a solar-powered "electrodialysis reversal system that desalinates water using electricity.”
In an article for Popular Science, Mary Beth Griggs reports that a team of MIT researchers won the Desal Prize, a competition judging the effectiveness of new desalination systems. The MIT team developed a system that uses solar panels to power “a system that removes salt from the water through electrodialysis.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes about how Prof. Amos Winter and graduate student Natasha Wright are testing their solar-powered desalination system in a competition aimed at finding cheaper and more efficient ways to provide clean water to the developing world. “It’s a two-billion-person problem,” says Winter. “That’s a pretty motivating problem.”
In an article for The Huffington Post about teaching kids computer programming, Joni Blecher highlights the robotic garden developed by researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and CSAIL. The garden has “over 100 flowers that can be controlled via a Bluetooth-enabled device.”
Steve Lohr of The New York Times writes about how allowing patients like brain cancer survivor and MIT graduate student Steven Keating greater access to their medical records can not only improve patient health, but also benefit medical research. The sharing of medical records could be a “huge crowdsourcing opportunity for research,” Keating explains.
In a New York Times article, Steve Lohr spotlights how graduate student Steven Keating’s active participation in his medical care led to early detection of a brain tumor. In describing patient access to medical records, Keating explains his belief that “data can heal.”
By combining two kinds of photovoltaic material, MIT researchers have developed a more effective solar cell, reports Umair Irfan for Scientific American. Irfan explains that combining the two materials, “generates a higher voltage than either of the layers could do by themselves.”