Prof. Frank Wilczek writes for The Wall Street Journal about his experience participating in the Nobel Week Dialogue in Sweden from the comfort of his home in Cambridge, thanks to a robot that allowed conference attendees to interact with him remotely. “With more powerful sensors and actuators, out-of-body experiences will become even more compelling,” Wilczek writes.
In this Today Show segment, Prof. Earl Miller and Prof. Robert Desimone discuss how the brain reacts to the information overload that comes from using multiple digital tools at once. “The brain has a great deal of difficulty processing multiple bits of data at once,” explains Miller. "We are very, very single minded.”
Prof. Paul O’Gorman spoke at Columbia University regarding a study he conducted on how climate change might impact extreme snowfall, reports Andrea Thompson for Scientific American. O'Gorman found that while average annual snow amounts and extreme snowfalls would decline as temperatures rose, “extreme snowfalls would become a bigger proportion of all snow events.”
In this video, Prof. Edward Boyden speaks with The Huffington Post about how sleep and meditation impact people on a neurological level. Boyden says that traditions such as mediation can “help us be more attuned to what our mind really wants.”
Prof. Michael Yaffe speaks with Scott Kirsner of WBUR’s Radio Boston about Vice President Joe Biden’s new cancer initiative. Prof. Yaffe says that the announcement comes at a “golden era for cancer research. We’ve laid the groundwork and we’re poised with incredible technologies, knowledge and understanding of the disease.”
In a new study, Prof. Alan Guth shows how time might move backwards as well as forwards, reports Joshua Sokol for New Scientist. “We call it the two-headed arrow of time,” Guth says. “Because the laws of physics are invariant, we see exactly the same thing in the other direction.”
Popular Science reporter Mary Beth Griggs writes that MIT researchers are developing a more efficient incandescent light bulb. Griggs explains that the prototype “is already as energy efficient as some LEDs and fluorescent bulbs currently on the market.”
MIT researchers have developed a technique to increase the efficiency of incandescent light bulbs, reports Matt McGrath for BBC News. "We have this huge challenge that the world is facing right now, global warming and energy efficiency and this gives you one more tool," says Prof. Marin Soljačić.
Cade Metz writes for Wired that MIT researchers have developed a system that allows robots to predict how objects will move. Postdoc Ilker Yildirim explains that in order for a robot to be able to assist with household tasks like washing the dishes, it must “deeply understand its physical environments.”
Prof. David Kaiser speaks with WGBH Radio’s Edgar B. Herwick about what the addition of four new elements to the periodic table means for scientific research and discovery. "It’s kind of like saying you have a map of the wilderness and by exploring it you want to change the map at the same time," says Kaiser.
The Wall Street Journal’s Monika Auger reports that a team of astronomers, including researchers from MIT, have discovered the largest galaxy cluster formed in the early universe. “Astronomers believe that this galaxy cluster probably began forming only a few hundred-million years after the Big Bang,” explains Auger.
Chris Sweeney writes for Boston Magazine that MIT researchers were part of a team of astronomers that identified the largest galaxy cluster from the early universe. Sweeney writes that researchers “will continue scouring the data in search of additional galaxies while looking for clues to how the universe formed.”
Prof. Alan Guth speaks with Christina Couch of Science Friday about his career and the cosmos. Of what inspired him to pursue a career in science, Guth recalls conducting experiments with a friend and being “very excited about the idea that we can really calculate things, and they actually do reflect the way the real world works.”
MIT researchers have detected the largest galaxy cluster that amassed in the early universe, writes Laura Crimaldi for The Boston Globe. “It’s the most massive cluster to assemble in the first 4 billion years of the universe,” explains Prof. Michael McDonald. “It’s sort of like the first civilization to pop up.”
MIT computer scientists have developed a program that can predict how objects will move with the same accuracy as humans, reports Mary Beth Griggs for Popular Science. The researchers hope to eventually be able to program the system to “make predictions in the natural world even faster than we can.”