Tim Bowler reports for the BBC News that a new study by MIT researchers finds that workplace chatter can increase productivity. The researchers found that “those who interacted most with their co-workers had the highest productivity - whether or not they were talking about work or sport.”
Inside Higher Ed reporter Colleen Flaherty reports on a study by MIT researchers on a data-driven model aimed at providing predictions of faculty research success. The study suggests that “operations research scholars recommended for tenure by the new model had better future research records, on average, than those granted tenure by the tenure committees at top institutions.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal about creating the perfect cup of coffee, Robert Lee Hotz highlights postdoc Christopher Hendon’s research on the chemistry and physics of coffee making.
Guardian reporter Mark Harris writes about research scientist Caleb Harper’s work developing sensor-controlled systems that could allow farmers to grow food in varying conditions around the world. Harper has also developed a system to share data on optimal growing conditions in the hopes of providing “access to biology in the same way that HTML gave us access to the internet.”
Kevin Murnane of Forbes spotlights five innovations developed by CSAIL researchers in 2016. Murnane highlights an ingestible origami robot, a 3-D printed robot with solid and liquid components, a robot that can assist with scheduling decisions, an artificial neural network that can explain its decisions, and an algorithm that can predict human interactions.
Research engineer Michael Sacarny joined forces with the Charles River Alliance of Boaters to develop a map charting the Charles River basin, reports Daniel Adams for The Boston Globe. The chart “promises to become a foundational tool of multiple efforts to study, navigate, and manage the increasingly crowded Charles.”
MIT researchers have developed a technique to make big data more manageable, writes Kevin Murnane for Forbes. The technique creates "coresets" that can be used by data analysis tools “often applied in computer vision, natural language processing, neuroscience, weather prediction, recommendation systems and more.”
In their round up of the top science stories of 2016, Science News highlighted several MIT research breakthroughs. The top story of the year was the successful detection of gravitational waves by researchers from MIT, Caltech and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Another highlight was the discovery by Prof. Susan Solomon that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is shrinking.
Prof. James Collins has been named one of The Boston Globe’s “2016 Bostonians of the Year” for his work developing a paper-based test that can detect the Zika virus in just a few hours. Neil Swidey notes that Collins also developed a “workflow for how this new platform could be adapted to meet future crises.”
Richard Florida writes for The Atlantic’s CityLab site about Prof. Emeritus Peter Temin’s research examining how growing class and racial divisions in America are creating a dual economy. In the new, highly-segmented economy, “education, which was once a force for the homogenization of the labor force,” Temin argues, “has become a barrier reinforcing the dual economy.”
BBC News reporter Soutik Biswas writes that research affiliate Moshe Alamaro will use a jet engine to create updrafts that send emissions to higher altitudes in an effort to make the toxic air in Delhi safer. "This could lead to a successful implementation of a new technology for smog mitigation all over the world," says Alamaro.
Wall Street Journal reporter Sara Castellanos speaks with research affiliate Matthias Winkenbach about plans to develop a new lab at MIT that would allow researchers to experiment with computer-generated hologram-like images and interactive touch-screen walls. “AR can be a game changer in data and analytics because it’s so much more immersive,” explains Winkenbach.
A new system developed by MIT researchers can predict how a scene will unfold, similar to how humans can visually imagine the future, reports Ed Gent for Scientific American. Graduate student Carl Vondrick explains that the system is “an encouraging development in suggesting that computer scientists can imbue machines with much more advanced situational understanding."
Prof. Janet Conrad discusses what inspired her to study neutrinos, her hunt for the elusive “sterile” neutrino, and her work on the Ghostbusters reboot in this article published by Wired. Conrad notes that “serious research can be a lot of fun. Being fun doesn’t make it less important—those are not mutually exclusive.”
Prof. Amy Finkelstein writes for the Health Affairs Blog about the need for relying on evidence to set health care policy, citing her own randomized, controlled study of Oregon’s health care system. “We need to rely on evidence from rigorous research—rather than compelling anecdotes—to get an accurate assessment of a policy’s effects,” Finkelstein explains.