In an article for The Huffington Post, research scientist Matthew Carroll shares his experience working on the Boston Globe team that uncovered decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, as recounted in the film Spotlight. “Our original stories in 2002 were a catalyst for helping many survivors get the help they needed,” says Carroll.
MIT researchers have found that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the leading online influencers of the 2016 presidential election, reports Natalie Andrew for The Wall Street Journal. Research scientist William Powers explained that the findings show, “how influential social media and earned media is in the election.”
The Tangible Media Group created HydroMorph to examine water manipulation on smooth surfaces, writes Liz Stinson for Wired. The researchers say they “envision a world filled with living water that conveys information, supports daily life, and captivates us.”
Prof. Neri Oxman’s work will be featured at the Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial exhibit. Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Battaglia writes that Oxman’s work, “materialized through 3-D printing, the theoretical body aid is part of a project that calls on ideas culled from robotics.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Sue Shellenbarger speaks with Prof. Mitchel Resnick about the benefits of teaching children how to code. Shellenbarger writes that Resnick explained that “coding games and puzzles helps children go beyond a passive role with technology…to seeing it as a tool for creating things, expressing their ideas and sharing them with others.”
Prof. Edward Boyden speaks with Boston Globe reporter Murray Carpenter about how scientists need more powerful computers to help gain a better understanding of brain function. “The cool part of neuroengineering is that we have all these unmet needs,” Boyden says. “I think there is an enormous amount of hope generated by bringing new tools into neuroscience.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Alexandra Wolfe profiles Prof. Cynthia Breazeal and examines her latest work developing a robot, dubbed Jibo, that can assist humans with daily tasks and serve as a companion. “I’m really thinking about social robots as an extender of our human capacity,” Breazeal explains.
Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach writes about the life and work of Prof. emeritus Marvin Minsky, who died on Sunday. Achebach writes that Minsky’s colleagues knew him “as a man who was strikingly clever in conversation, with an ability to anticipate what others are thinking -- and then conjure up an even more intriguing variation on those thoughts.”
Prof. emeritus Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, died Sunday at age 88, reports Glenn Rifkin for The New York Times. Rifkin writes that Minsky “combined a scientist’s thirst for knowledge with a philosopher’s quest for truth as a pioneering explorer of artificial intelligence.”
BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about Koko, an app developed by MIT researchers that allows users to crowdsource advice. “It’s really teaching people to think more flexibly about stressful situations,” said MIT alumnus and co-founder Robert Morris.
Boston Magazine reporter Madeline Bilis writes about the Reality Editor, an application developed by researchers from the MIT Media Lab. “Users can ‘edit reality’ by drawing virtual lines to and from objects with their smartphone’s camera to alter their uses and capabilities,” Bilis explains.
Jonathan Webb reports for BBC News that MIT researchers have developed a “molten glass sewing machine.” "It does exactly what a sewing machine does," explains applied mathematics instructor Pierre-Thomas Brun. "You go from a thread, to patterns which are tied to each other like stitching patterns - but this time they're made out of glass."
Lindsay Holmes writes for The Huffington Post about Koko, an application developed by MIT researchers to help users fight stress by crowdsourcing their questions and worries. “We want to take the same principles that keep our eyes glued to Facebook and Instagram 24 hours a day and redirect them to promote well-being,” explains founder Robert Morris.
In an article for The Boston Globe, Michael Andor Brodeur writes about the Reality Editor app, which was designed by researchers at the MIT Media Lab to allow users to connect and control physical objects. The app “could turn your smart home into a well-oiled machine (just with no oil or machines).”
Researchers from the Laboratory for Social Machines have partnered with The Washington Post to examine how people are discussing the current presidential election on Twitter. The researchers use a program that detects and categorizes tweets “to see which issues or candidates have had the biggest share of the conversation.”