Boston Globe reporter Amy Sutherland speaks with Prof. Sherry Turkle about her love of books and the importance of reading. “If you don’t read you lose the capacity for sustained concentration,” says Turkle. “We need to read long, complicated books so we can make the kind of arguments that take place in those books.”
Chris Sweeney reports for Boston Magazine that Prof. Cynthia Breazeal’s lab is participating in a new National Institutes of Health program aimed at examining how social robots can improve health and wellness. “The NIH wants to see if Breazeal’s creations can help ‘inspire curiosity’ and teach ‘the importance of hard work and determination’ to school-aged children,” writes Sweeney.
Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT’s Age Lab, writes for The Wall Street Journal about some innovations that could revolutionize retirement. “The next-generation retiree will have an unprecedented array of technologies and tech-enabled services to invent a new future for working part time, remaining social, having fun, living at home, staying healthy and arranging care,” Coughlin explains.
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour about her book, which explores how technology is impacting relationships. Turkle argues that people need to put down their phones and talk to each other “because it’s in conversation…that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.”
In an article for New Scientist, Anna Nowogrodzki writes that MIT researchers have developed a device that allows users to answer the phone with a kick of their foot. “The system’s algorithm analyses the foot’s motion and transmits the information via Bluetooth to your phone,” writes Nowogrodzki.
In this AP TV video, Prof. Tod Machover discusses the development of his latest work, “Symphony in D,” a piece about the city of Detroit. “I really wanted it to be a portrait of the city so I invited everybody in the city, anybody who wanted to, to collaborate,” says Machover.
AP reporter Mike Householder writes about Prof. Tod Machover’s “Symphony in D,” which features the sounds of everyday Detroit. "It somehow sounds like something that could only have been done here. And that makes me really happy," says Machover.
Graduate student Daniel McDuff is developing a computer system that can read human emotions by monitoring facial movements, reports Jane Wakefield for BBC News. “It translates that into seven of the most commonly recognized emotional states - sadness, amusement, surprise, fear, joy, disgust and contempt,” McDuff explains.
Karen Weintraub writes for The New York Times about Professor Rosalind Picard’s work developing wearable, stress-measuring devices. “If you want to learn about human variability, measure stress,” says Picard.
The New York Times’ Zachary Woolfe writes about Prof. Tod Machover’s work “Symphony in D,” the latest in his series of city symphonies. Woolfe writes that the piece is “an explosion of energy, found sounds, live-music snippets and reminiscences featuring spoken and played interpolations from a range of Detroit artists.”
Juan Enriquez writes for Wired that the intersection of Vassar and Main Streets is one of the most innovative areas in the world, highlighting how MIT plays a leading role in sparking innovation. Enriquez writes that this area “may generate one per cent to two per cent of the future global economy.”
In this video, FOX News reporter Douglas Kennedy speaks with MIT researchers about the robot they developed, called HERMES, that is controlled by a human operator and could aid rescuers in disaster situations. “We wanted to send a robot into a disaster situation so we don’t risk human life,” explains graduate student Albert Wang.
Wired reporter Sarah Zhang reports on how MIT researchers developed a new computer model that they used to examine the public health impacts of Volkswagen cheating on emissions standards tests. Zhang explains that the researchers’ model “allows scientists to estimate the impact of extra NOx in any 50 km by 50 km square of the world.”
A new study by researchers from MIT and Harvard shows that pollution from Volkswagen vehicles could lead to premature deaths in the U.S., reports Tom Randall for Bloomberg News. “Volkswagen's deception allowed some 482,000 U.S. diesel cars to pass emissions tests even as they polluted as much as 40 times the legal limit,” writes Randall.
Justin Worland of TIME reports on a new MIT study examining the public health impacts of Volkswagen’s software designed to evade emissions standards. “The emissions problem will also add nearly half a billion dollars in social costs,” writes Worland.