Researchers from MIT and Transportation Alternatives have developed an online tool using census information, city health data, and other public information to help understand the correlation between racial and health care disparities in New York City, reports Stephen Nessen for Gothamist. The researchers have found that “the New York City neighborhoods with the worst health and poverty outcomes, also tend to have more injuries from traffic,” writes Nessen.
Researchers from MIT and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions have been developing an electric autonomous trash boat, reports Sarah Holder for Bloomberg. The boats “could reduce noise, pollution, and congestion, thus improving the quality of Amsterdam’s historic cityscape.”
Researchers from MIT and the University of Southern California are “using large-scale mobility data to follow people's eating behaviors throughout the day, to understand how food choice is influenced by what’s accessible, available, and affordable,” reports Mike Branom for Daily Beast.
At MIT’s AI Policy Forum Summit, which was focused on exploring the challenges facing the implementation of AI technologies across a variety of sectors, SEC Chair Gary Gensler and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discussed the impact of AI on the world of finance. “If someone is relying on open-AI, that's a concentrated risk and a lot of fintech companies can build on top of it,” Gensler said. “Then you have a node that's every bit as systemically relevant as maybe a stock exchange."
MIT researchers have developed a new in-home device that can help monitor Parkinson’s patients by tracking their gait, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “We know very little about the brain and its diseases,” says Professor Dina Katabi. “My goal is to develop non-invasive tools that provide new insights about the functioning of the brain and its diseases.”
Popular Science reporter Philip Kiefer writes that MIT researchers have developed an in-home device that could be used to track the progression of symptoms in Parkinson’s patients. “We can’t really ask patients to come to the clinic every day or every week,” explains graduate student Yingcheng Liu. “This technology gives us the possibility to continuously monitor patients, and provide more objective assessments.”
Prof. Hari Balakrishnan speaks with Forbes contributor Stuart Anderson about his decision to leave India to pursue a PhD in computer science in the U.S., his love for teaching students as a professor at MIT and his work co-founding Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a software company that utilizes technology to make roads safer. “Immigration and immigrants make the United States stronger,” said Balakrishnan. “Immigration is the biggest strength that we have. We need to be able to attract and retain talent, no matter where people come from.”
Sharing automated vehicle data with the public can fundamentally change the way regulators, police departments, insurance companies and other organization understand the risks of drive-assistance systems, report Cade Metz and Ella Koeze for The New York Times. “This can help separate crashes related to technology from crashes related to driver error,” says research engineer Bryan Reimer.
Butlr, spinout founded by researchers from the MIT Media Lab, is developing sensors that utilize body heat to estimate office occupancy, reports Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch. The new technology “uses thermal sensing AI to provide data on space occupancy and historical activity,” writes Wiggers.
A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that algorithms based on clinical medical notes can predict the self-identified race of a patient, reports Katie Palmer for STAT. “We’re not ready for AI — no sector really is ready for AI — until they’ve figured out that the computers are learning things that they’re not supposed to learn,” says Principal Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi.
CSAIL graduate student Yunzhu Li and his colleagues have trained a robot to use two metal grippers to mold letters out of play dough, reports Jeremy Hsu for New Scientist. "Li and his colleagues trained a robot to use two metal grippers to mould the approximate shapes of the letters B, R, T, X and A out of Play-Doh," explains Hsu. "The training involved just 10 minutes of randomly manipulating a block of the modelling clay beforehand, without requiring any human demonstrations."
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights multiple MIT research projects, including MIT Space Exploration Initiative’s TESSERAE, CSAIL’s Robocraft and the recent development of miniature flying robotic drones.
Tom Davenport, a visiting scholar at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, writes for Forbes about Telstra Ventures, a venture capitalist firm that invests in tech firms and its incorporation of data science into its investing criteria. “It seems inevitable that other venture capitalist firms will begin to make more data and analytics-driven decisions in the future,” writes Davenport.
Based on data from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers have found that mortality rates are improving faster in Democratic counties than Republican ones, reports Adrianna Rodriguez for USA Today. “Democratic counties also saw greater reductions in deaths from chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease,” writes Rodriguez.
Information from MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used in a new study that found mortality rates in Democratic and Republican counties are growing further apart, reports WCVB. The study found “that mortality rates decreased more in Democratic counties than in Republican counties,” writes WCVB.