Helen Shen writes for Nature that MIT researchers have developed a technique for assembling and operating an automated system for “whole-cell patch-clamping”, a method of monitoring the activity of brain cells. “Our hope is that we can help as many people as possible to answer questions about how neurons compute,” explains Prof. Edward Boyden.
MIT researchers are creating a GIF genome that will allow computers to identify the emotions or meaning behind a GIF, writes Kevin Maney for Newsweek. “We realized that they’re becoming more and more serious of a medium,” explains graduate student Kevin Hu. “And we realized that we could quantify this usage.”
In this Huffington Post interview with Andrew McAfee, co-founder of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Prof. Neri Oxman speaks about the complex relationship between humans and nature. “We think about new ways of making things... using new technologies that are inspired or informed by nature,” says Oxman of her group’s work.
Wired reporter Liz Stinson writes that researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a drone that can mimic what a person is drawing on a piece of paper. Stinson explains that, “as a human draws with a pen, a camera captures the motion and a computer communicates it to the drone, which mimics what the pen is drawing.”
In an article for The Washington Post, Tamar Haspel highlights a new collaboration between researchers from the MIT Media Lab, Target and IDEO aimed at helping people better understand what is in their food. Haspel explains that researchers are developing a scanner so shoppers can gain information about their food.
Terri Rupar reports for The Washington Post that researchers from MIT’s Laboratory for Social Machines have analyzed Twitter conversation surrounding the Supreme Court vacany and found that “people are definitely seeing the vacancy and Obama's nomination as issues for the 2016 election.”
Washington Post reporter Scott Clement compares the results of an analysis performed by MIT researchers of key issues on Twitter in the 2016 presidential race to a national survey. The researchers found that foreign policy and race are key issues on Twitter, while the national survey found that the economy and jobs were top priorities for voters.
In an article for Wired, Liz Stinson writes about the new academic publication launched by the Media Lab and MIT Press, the Journal of Design and Science. According to Stinson, Media Lab Director Joi Ito explained that the goal of the journal was to encourage “ideas presented in the journal to morph and evolve and become interconnected over time.”
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a new material, called bioLogic, that alters its shape with changes in humidity and opens ventilation ducts when the wearer starts sweating, writes Olga Kharif for Bloomberg Business.
In an article for Forbes about urban gardening, Laurie Winkless highlights the MIT CityFARM project, through which researchers analyze and share data on the ideal growing environment of various crops. Winkless writes that the goal of CityFARM is to allow people “to download the settings needed to reproduce the growing conditions exactly.”
Prof. Neri Oxman’s “Wanderers” project is featured as part of the “Beauty — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. New York Times reporter Daniel McDermon writes that in her project, Oxman “imagines wearable objects to augment the human body’s capabilities, possibly enabling survival on distant planets.”
Prof. Edward Boyden speaks with STAT about winning the Breakthrough Prize and his research at MIT. Boyden explains that the technique he developed to examine brain samples is being applied to “bacteria, cancer, biopsies, virology questions. There’s a huge pent-up demand for ways of seeing large objects with nanoscale precision.”
In an article for The Huffington Post, research scientist Matthew Carroll shares his experience working on the Boston Globe team that uncovered decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, as recounted in the film Spotlight. “Our original stories in 2002 were a catalyst for helping many survivors get the help they needed,” says Carroll.
MIT researchers have found that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the leading online influencers of the 2016 presidential election, reports Natalie Andrew for The Wall Street Journal. Research scientist William Powers explained that the findings show, “how influential social media and earned media is in the election.”
The Tangible Media Group created HydroMorph to examine water manipulation on smooth surfaces, writes Liz Stinson for Wired. The researchers say they “envision a world filled with living water that conveys information, supports daily life, and captivates us.”