A new study by MIT scientists provides evidence that climate-driven changes in phytoplankton will cause more than half of the world’s oceans to shift in color by 2100, reports Barbara Moran for WBUR. Principal research scientist Stephanie Dutkiewicz explains that the color changes are important “because they tell us a lot about what's changing in the ocean.”
In this video, graduate student Nima Fazeli speaks with the BBC News about his work developing a robot that uses sensors and cameras to learn how to play Jenga. “It’s using these techniques from AI and machine learning to be able to predict the future of its actions and decide what is the next best move,” explains Fazeli.
CBS This Morning spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new robot that can successfully play Jenga. “It is an automated system that has had a learning period first,” explains Prof. Alberto Rodriguez. “It uses the information from the camera and the force sensor to interpret its interactions with the Jenga tower.”
MIT researchers have developed a robot that can play Jenga by combining interactive perception and manipulations, reports Mattha Busby for The Guardian. “In what marks significant progress for robotic manipulation of real-world objects, a Jenga-playing machine can learn the complex physics involved in withdrawing wooden blocks from a tower through physical trial and error,” Busby explains.
MIT researchers have developed a new ingestible pill that expands once it reaches the stomach and could be used to monitor a patient’s health, reports the BBC News. “The dream is to have a smart pill, that once swallowed stays in the stomach and monitors the patient's health for a long time, such as a month,” explains Prof. Xuanhe Zhao.
Quartz reporter Jenny Anderson highlights Prof. Mitchel Resnick’s ideas for how to apply the kindergarten approach to learning to our entire educational system, in an effort to inspire lifelong learning. Anderson explains that Mitchel believes, “Kids should actively work on projects, which intersect with something they are passionate about, while working with peers in a playful environment.”
President Reif speaks with Gerry Baker of WSJ at Large about the impact of AI on the future of education and work. “Part of the goal of the [MIT Schwarzman] college is, as we educate people to use these [AI] tools, to educate them in a way that empowers human beings, not replaces human beings,” says Reif.
Reporting for Scientific American’s “60-Second Science” podcast, Christopher Intagliata explores how MIT developed a device, called a rectenna, that can capture energy from Wi-Fi signals and convert them into electricity. The scientists “envision a smart city where buildings, bridges and highways are studded with tiny sensors to monitor their structural health, each sensor with its own rectenna,” Intagliata explains.
STAT reporter Casey Ross writes about how MIT researchers have developed a new ingestible Prof. Timothy Lu explains that he hopes that the sensor “opens up a really new window into how the gut and the rest of the body are connected, and hopefully provide new diagnostic strategies as well.”
Scientific American reporter Jeff Hecht writes that MIT researchers developed a new flexible material that can harvest energy from wireless signals. “The future of electronics is bringing intelligence to every single object from our clothes to our desks and to our infrastructure,” explains Prof. Tomás Palacios.
MIT researchers developed a super-thin, bendy material that converts WiFi signals into electricity, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “In the future, everything is going to be covered with electronic systems and sensors. The question is going to be how do we power them,” says Prof. Tomás Palacios. “This is the missing building block that we need.”
Prof. Polina Anikeeva speaks with Forbes contributor Poornima Peiris about her work developing materials that could be used to help explore and better understand the brain and nervous system. “I am not interested in just improving things, I want to work on innovative ideas,” says Anikeeva.
TIME reporter Jamie Ducharme highlights how Prof. Dina Katabi has developed a device that uses wireless signals to collect information about how well a person is sleeping. “If we can monitor health continuously but passively in a patient’s natural environment, that can help dramatically,” explains Katabi.
Associated Press reporter Tali Arbel writes that MIT researchers have found that Amazon’s facial detection technology often misidentifies women and women with darker skin. Arbel writes that the study, “warns of the potential of abuse and threats to privacy and civil liberties from facial-detection technology.”
A new study by Media Lab researchers finds that Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition system performed more accurately when identifying lighter-skinned faces, reports Drew Harrell for The Washington Post. The system “performed flawlessly in predicting the gender of lighter-skinned men,” writes Harrell, “but misidentified the gender of darker-skinned women in roughly 30 percent of their tests.”