Research

“Researchers at MIT have created a robotic hand device that, rather than simply replacing one's grip, enhances its reach with two extra fingers,” reports NBC on a new device developed by Professor Harry Asada’s team.

The BBC reports on a new technology from Professor Harry Asada’s team that provides a robotic extension to the human hand responsive to movement. The extension—essentially two extra fingers—can be used to grasp, leaving the hand free for other tasks. 

Jena McGregor reports for The Washington Post on a paper coauthored by MIT graduate student Jason Sheltzer that indicates that women are under represented in life sciences laboratories run by elite male scientists. The numbers were significantly less than those in labs headed by females. 

Penelope Green writes for The New York Times about “Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things” by David Rose of the MIT Media Lab. Rose proposes that new technologies in the home actually mimic the qualities found in magical tools in fantasy and folklore. 

Dennis Overbye of The New York Times writes about Illustris, a calculation by Professor Mark Vogelsberger’s team that mathematically models how dark matter evolved from its initial, uniform cloud. They found “the closest match yet between dark matter models and the distribution and types of galaxies in the visible universe,” writes Overbye.

“Labor economist Paul Osterman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a recent study he conducted that manufacturers' spending on training has essentially been flat for the last five years,” writes Lauren Weber for The Wall Street Journal.

NBC News reports on the new phase-changing material developed by MIT researchers. The material could be used to develop shape-shifting robots to be used in surgery and search and rescue operations. 

"We wanted produce something that would produce significant volume change, but something that could still be useful, support payloads and enforce payloads on the environment," says Nadia Cheng of the phase-changing material developed by MIT researchers in an interview with Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff.  

Wired reporter Katie Collins writes that MIT researchers have developed a phase-changing material that could allow robots to shift from solid to squishy. Transformable robots, “would allow surgeons to carry out operations less invasively,” Collins writes. 

Ben Coxworth of Gizmag writes about the new system developed by MIT researchers that allows photographers to achieve rim lighting during photo shoots. “Their system not only does away with light stands, but the light-equipped aircraft automatically moves to compensate for movements of the model or photographer,” writes Coxworth.

In a piece for National Geographic, Ed Yong writes about how a team of scientists from MIT has found a corresponding rhythm of behavior amongst marine bacteria. “The study reveals the power of sophisticated sampling devices for studying ocean features that were heretofore inaccessible,” says MIT Prof. Penny Chisholm. 

In a piece for Fortune, Benjamin Snyder writes about how MIT researchers have developed a new system to help achieve the perfect lighting for photo shoots. Flying robots are programmed to produce rim lighting, which illuminates the edge of the subject in a photograph. 

Lauren Hitchings of New Scientist reports on findings showing that marine microbes exhibit daily patterns of behavior. “The researchers think this might be a result of the low nutrient levels in the open ocean, and the need for organisms to rely on one another for metabolic functions,” writes Hitchings. 

Katie Collins writes for Wired that MIT researchers have developed a system that allows people to choose exactly what information they share online. “The primary benefit of this is that you as an individual would not be able to be identified from an anonymised dataset,” writes Collins.

R. Colin Johnson of EE Times reports that MIT researchers are, “aiming for a multicore architecture that can scale to any number of cores, with cache coherency. So far, they've prototyped a 36-core version.”