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Scientific American reporter Sophie Bushwick writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that can interpret shadows that are invisible to the human eye. “The system can automatically analyze footage of a blank wall in any room in real time, determining the number of people and their actions,” writes Bushwick.
Axios reporter Marisa Fernandez writes that researchers from MIT and Wilson Labs will be analyzing data from seven organ procurement organizations as part of an effort to better understand the American organ procurement system. "Working with this data is a first step towards making better decisions about how to save more lives through organ procurement and transplantation,” says Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi. “We have an opportunity to use machine learning to understand potential issues and lead improvements in transparency and equity.”
Bloomberg reporter Lynn Thomasson writes that a new study by MIT researchers explores the demographics of people who panic sell during stock market dips. “Financial advisors have long advised their clients to stay calm and weather any passing financial storm in their portfolios,” the researchers explain. “Despite this, a percentage of investors tend to freak out and sell off a large portion of their risky assets.”
Mashable reporter Emmett Smith spotlights how MIT researchers have created a new toolkit for designing wearable devices that can be 3D printed. “The researchers used the kit to create sample devices, like a personal muscle monitor that uses augmented reality,” explains Smith, “plus a device for recognizing hand gestures and a bracelet for identifying distracted driving.”
A new study by graduate student Chi Heem Wong examines panic selling during periods of stock market volatility dips, reports Kate Dore for CNBC. “Panic selling is predictable,” explains Wong. “It’s pretty consistent over time that people with certain attributes tend to panic sell more often than others.”
New York Times reporter Steve Lohr spotlights the origin and history of MIT startup Gingko Bioworks, a synthetic biology company founded with a “shared belief that biology could be made more like computing with reusable code and standard tools instead of the bespoke experiments of traditional biology." Jason Kelly ’03, PhD ’08, one of the founders of MIT startup Ginkgo Bioworks and the company’s chief executive, explains that “the ultimate goal for Ginkgo is to make it as easy to program a cell as it is to program a computer.”
Boston Magazine reporter Tom McGrath spotlights Prof. Tim Berners-Lee’s crusade to rethink the Web and build a new platform that can help users control the digital data they share. Berners-Lee’s platform, Solid, is aimed at ensuring that for the “first time ever, we users—not big tech companies—will be in control of our data, which means that websites and apps will be built to benefit us and not them,” writes McGrath. “That, in turn, could mean revolutions in things that really are consequential, from healthcare and education to finance and the World Wide Web itself.”
R. David Edelman of MIT’s Internet Policy Research Initiative speaks with John Thornhill of the Financial Times’ TechTonic podcast about AI and the military.
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater writes about Inkbit, a CSAIL spinout, which is developing self-correcting 3D printing technology. “Its primary differentiator from the slew of existing 3D printers is a vision and AI system designed to identify and correct mistakes during the printing process,” writes Heater.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights Venti Technologies, an MIT startup developing self-driving cargo trucks for seaports. “The trucks can automatically transport containers to dockside, where cranes can load them onto ships,” writes Bray. “Or they can pick up containers as they’re unloaded, and move them to staging areas where they can be transferred to other ships.”
Wall Street Journal reporters Angus Loten and Kevin Hand spotlight how MIT researchers are developing robots with humanlike senses that will be able to assist with a range of tasks. GelSight, a technology developed by CSAIL researchers, outfits robot arms with a small gel pad that can be pressed into objects to sense their size and texture, while another team of researchers is “working to bridge the gap between touch and sight by training an AI system to predict what a seen object feels like and what a felt object looks like.”
Graduate student Shashank Srikant speaks with The Economist about his work developing a new model that can detect computer bugs and vulnerabilities that have been maliciously inserted into computer code.
Institute Prof. Barbara Liskov, Prof. Dina Katabi, Prof. Dava Newman, Prof. Daniela Rus and a number of MIT alumnae and MIT Corporation members have been named to the Academic Influence list of the most influential women engineers in the world, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
New York Times reporter Siobhan Roberts spotlights how Prof. Erik Demaine and his father Martin Demaine, a robotics engineer at CSAIL and an artist-in-resident at EECS, are designing “‘algorithmic puzzle fonts,’ a suite of mathematically inspired typefaces that are also puzzles.” The Demaines explained that: “Scientists use fonts every day to express their research through the written word. But what if the font itself communicated (the spirit of) the research? What if the way text is written, and not just the text itself, engages the reader in the science?”
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson writes that MIT researchers have created a carpet embedded with sensors to help track your workout. Dubbed the Intelligent Carpet, it “can distinguish 15 different actions with 97.8% accuracy, including squats, push-ups, bends, and rolls.”