In an article for The Boston Globe, Meredith Goldstein writes that MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology’s will receive a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The funding “will pay for concerts, artist residencies, courses, and other programs that bring together the arts, science, and technology,” Goldstein explains.
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, an MIT alumna, is featured in Wired’s list of people transforming the business world. Jessi Hempel writes that Smith, this year’s commencement speaker, brings a "startup mentality to Washington, D.C."
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have designed a miniature wireless track pad that fits on a thumbnail and allows users to control their devices while their hands are busy, reports Liz Stinson for Wired. “The value of NailO lies in pondering more discreet interaction with our gadgets,” Stinson writes.
To help give her students a better understanding of the brain, Prof. Nancy Kanwisher shaved her head and had a student draw the different regions of the brain on her head, reports Melissa Malamut for Boston Magazine. Kanwisher explains that she saw her technique as a way to “discover basic components of the human mind.”
Boston Globe reporter Jeremy Eichler reviews the final concert performed this year as part of Sounding, a new annual concert series at MIT, which featured a celebration of American experimental music. The annual series concluded on Saturday night with a “roiling and joyful 80th birthday tribute to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley,” Eichler writes.
MIT researchers have developed a new device that turns your thumb into a miniature wireless track pad, reports Tessa Verenson for TIME Magazine. The device could allow users to “answer the phone while cooking, control their cell phones even when they hands are full or discreetly send a text.”
Michael Blanding writes for Forbes about Professor Michael Cusumano’s new book “Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. Cusumano and his co-author examine and draw lessons from the careers of the three tech pioneers.
Rachel Fobar writes for Popular Science about a sensor developed by Prof. Timothy Swager’s team that can predict when food will spoil. The sensor could be used in "'smart packaging' that could help provide more accurate information than an expiration date,” writes Fobar.
In this video, MIT researcher Chris Green speaks with BBC Click about the swarm of autonomous drones developed by the MIT SENSEable City Lab that can communicate with one another and could be used to test water quality. Green explains that the drones can be outfitted to “include all sorts of sensors… from water quality to air quality.”
Richard Waters writes for The Los Angeles Times about Professor Michael Cusumano’s new book “Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons From Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. “The authors attribute the outsized success of the three pioneers of the personal computing age, as well as their sometimes damaging inflexibility, to the driving passions that shaped them.”
Natasha Singer writes for The New York Times about Professor Natasha Dow Schüll’s research examining how people have begun to use technology to alter their behavior. “It is not really about self-knowledge anymore,” says Schüll. “It’s the nurselike application of technology.”
Curt Woodward writes for BetaBoston about how MIT graduate student Ben Letham developed a formula for measuring the misery and difficulty of a particular winter. Woodward explains that Letham’s formula, which gave more weight to snowfall concentrated in short periods of time, showed that “this winter’s snow was more relentless, and more miserable to live through, than any other.”
BetaBoston reporter Curt Woodward writes about a new study by researchers from the MIT Laboratory for Social Machines examining how the government of Jun, a small town in southeastern Spain, is using Twitter to interact with residents. The researchers found that “residents’ tweets are incorporated into livestreamed city council meetings.”
Research by Prof. John Gabrieli demonstrates that poverty can have a negative impact on the adolescent brain, writes Brooks Hays for UPI. “When researchers at MIT scanned the brains of some 54 students, they found high-income students (in comparison with lower-income peers) have thicker cortex tissue in areas of the brain linked with visual perception and knowledge acquisition,” Hays writes.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes about how Prof. Amos Winter and graduate student Natasha Wright are testing their solar-powered desalination system in a competition aimed at finding cheaper and more efficient ways to provide clean water to the developing world. “It’s a two-billion-person problem,” says Winter. “That’s a pretty motivating problem.”