Carey Goldberg reports for WBUR on a new study coauthored by MIT researchers that examines how cognitive abilities change with age. Goldberg explains that the researchers found that “various pieces of our intelligence or cognitive ability peak at various times in our lives.”
Professor Jeremy England speaks about how his research group is investigating how physics can help explain the origins of life on The Academic Minute. England explains that his group models “what happens when you take a clump of matter that no one would call alive and then start zapping it with a source of energy (like sunlight).”
Scientists from MIT and MGH have found that while certain brain functions decline with age, others, like vocabulary skills, peak later in life, reports Kay Lazar for The Boston Globe. The researchers found that "the ability to reason, learn, and recall information ebbs and flows over our lifespan.”
MIT researchers have found that the high temperature of intracluster gas, which condenses to form stars, may be hindering the development of new stars, reports Jonathan O’Callaghan for the Daily Mail. The researchers hope to use the new findings to better understand how stars form in surrounding galaxies.
Prof. Stephen Ross has won the 2015 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, reports Jack Newsham for The Boston Globe. Jan Pieter Krahnen, director of the Center for Financial Studies, which presents the prize, explains that Ross’ work “has shaped today's thinking in financial innovation, practice, and policy.”
Coco Liu writes for Scientific American about a new study co-authored by MIT researchers that indicates that Chinese government efforts to improve air quality may actually increase carbon emissions. With the focus on air quality, Chinese plants will focus on “scrubbing pollutants from the exhaust stream of coal power plants—rather than switching to use more renewable energy.”
GIFGIF, a project by graduate students Kevin Hu and Travis Rich, maps human emotions by asking people to select which GIFS best represent a specific feeling, reports Jon Christian for Wired. Hu and Rich hope that all of the data collected through GIFGIF “will make it easier to write programs that deal with emotional content.”
Jeffrey Mervis writes for Science that Prof. Marc Kastner will serve as president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a group aimed at boosting support for basic scientific research. Kastner’s new position will allow him to make the case for the importance of basic research on a “national scale.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard have identified the optical features within a limpet’s shell that allow the mollusk to display blue stripes, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. The findings could inspire developments in augmented reality screens.
Molly Reynolds writes for The Huffington Post about an MIT study that found the most successful teams contain a higher percentage of women. “Extremely interesting was the successful teams' ability to detect the emotion of their teammates' written words when they worked online.”
MIT researchers have developed a test for Ebola and other fevers using gold nanoparticle sensors that quickly identify the pathegon, writes Andrea Timpano for Boston Magazine. “It is important to recognize that the United States needs to have strategies for surveillance that will identify dangerous viruses,” says Professor Lee Gehrke.
Prof. David Autor discusses his research showing that while automation is impacting middle-skill jobs, there has been an increase in high and low-skill jobs. While machines are entering the workplace, Autor believes that often they are serving “as tools to make humans more productive, not replace them,” explains Wall Street Journal reporter Timothy Aeppel.
Chris Neiger of BBC News reports on software being developed by Professor Brian Williams aimed at helping drivers arrive at their destinations on time. “The lab’s planning algorithms would give motorists an initial travel plan, which would adapt to externalities along the way,” writes Neiger.
“A promising new diagnostic test from MIT looks like it could be a game changer for rapidly diagnosing several important infectious diseases within minutes,” writes Judy Stone for Forbes. The paper test developed by MIT researchers can diagnose Ebola, yellow fever and dengue fever.
Sarah Hedgecock writes for Forbes about how researchers have made major advances in mapping the human epigenome. Prof. Manolis Kellis explains that the new findings allow researchers to “ go from a static picture of the genome, which is effectively the book of life, to a dynamic picture of a genome.”