In this video, PBS explores a new technique MIT researchers developed to enlarge brain samples, making them easier to image at high resolutions. Prof. Ed Boyden explains that he hopes the technique could be used to “hunt down very rare things in a tissue.”
Dominic Basulto writes for The Washington Post about the implications of a new method for 3-D printing glass created by MIT’s Mediated Matter Group. Basulto writes that the technology could eventually give us “the ability to create objects and applications that do not exist today.”
Wired reporter James Temperton writes that researchers at MIT have developed a new method for 3-D printing glass. Temperton writes that the process is “better understood as additive manufacturing, with layers of molten glass being slowly drizzled into shape through a nozzle.”
Kate Darling of the MIT Media Lab speaks with Wired reporter Katie Collins about what the destruction of a hitchhiking robot says about how people relate to robots. "Can we change people's empathy with robots,” says Darling. This is "at the core of what I view as ethics. I don't think robot ethics is about robots, it is about humans."
According to The Economist, MIT researchers are using 3-D printing to modernize the coiling method of glass production. The researchers have “already used their device to print a range of objects, including optical prisms and decorative vessels.”
“MIT's Mediated Matter Group has figured out a way to put molten glass through a 3D printer, creating beautiful sculptures,” writes Mary Beth Griggs for Popular Science. The printer lays down individual layers of melted glass, bringing it up to a finished sculpture.
MIT researchers have developed a new algorithm that can prevent overexposed photos, reports Devin Coldewey for NBC News. The algorithm reconstructs the “parts of the image that would have been too bright, recovering a blue sky or reflection on a shiny object.”
MIT researchers have developed a technique that can eliminate the washed-out spots found in overexposed images, reports Curt Woodward for BetaBoston. The technique could not only be used in photography, but could also be used for other applications like helping a “self-driving car stay on course despite quick light changes, such as entering a tunnel.”
Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic about work being done at the MIT Media Lab to create “smart” office furniture that would transform to meet the needs of workers at different times during the day. “Maybe our two desks should get together and create a room for us,” hypothesizes research affiliate Hasier Larrea.
Catherine Pearson writes for The Huffington Post about the Gala Pump, a compression breast pump designed by Kohana Inc. at MIT’s “make the breast pump not suck” hackathon: “Kohana has run a small clinical trial with 30 moms and says the majority of those women preferred The Gala to their vacuum pumps.”
The Economist highlights Prof. César Hidalgo’s new book, which examines how economies grow. “His aim is nothing less than to lay out a universal theory of information—one that applies to everything, from the lifeless to the living, and to all scales, from atoms to economies.”
This Scientific American editorial revisits an op-ed by Professor César Hidalgo in which he argued against those who are critical of big data. Critics “ignore areas where big data has made substantial progress, such as data-rich Web sites, information visualization and machine learning,” wrote Hidalgo.
Liat Clark writes for Wired about Brian Forde, the Media Lab’s director for digital currency, and his speech at WIRED Money 2015 about the potential of digital currency for developing countries. "Today, in 2015, I still can't use Paypal to send money to friends in Nicaragua," said Forde. "But I can send them Bitcoin instantly."
Wired reporter Liat Clark writes that researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a 3-D printed biological wearable that “could theoretically generate drugs, fuel and food when exposed to sunlight.”
Professor César Hidalgo discusses his new book “Why Information Grows” with James Ball of The Guardian. “Most people think of information as messages that communicate the state of a system,” says Hidalgo. “Information actually is physical and it is not only involved in messages but is also involved in objects.”