Tag archive: MIT

If you live and drive in any modern city, especially one which isn't well served by multi-storey car parks or clearly marked road-side parking bays, you'll no doubt be an expert at the parallel parking maneuver. It's a tricky skill, and one which many drivers still haven't mastered, but it's the most effective way of squeezing a car into a tight space. If you're one of those who still needs several attempts to… Read More

If you were excited about the speed of the Canon 1D X, expect to be blown out of the water. The MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture Group have created a faster-than-fast imaging system—which actually is being coined “the world’s slowest fastest camera.” The camera can capture images at a rate of one trillion frames per second, which is how the team was able to capture the motion of light. “There’s nothing in the universe that looks fast to this… Read More

One of the most annoying aspects of Internet life may prove to be key in eradicating one of the most challenging viruses in real life. Apparently, Microsoft's spam filtering research may prove beneficial in the fight to ban HIV from our bodies. The software giant says it is teaming up with members of the Ragon institute to take on HIV by supplying computing resources as well as MSR's experience building email spam filters. The first… Read More

Our most poignant boyhood fantasy just came true: Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory announced today that they have created a new radar technology that allows user to see through solid concrete walls. Really. As MIT news officer Emily Finn explains in the official announcement, radar “sees” differently than eyes see. Whereas eyes use light waves to view the world, radar can interpret surroundings using radio waves that bounce off… Read More

These days, almost every smartphone user has felt the pain of their battery giving up the ghost — often at the worst possible moment. Sure, maybe you didn't have to play Angry Birds or Words with Friends when the battery was at an 89 percent charge, but now that it's at 1 percent (with no USB or wall power in sight), you're desperate to receive that critical text or email message. We've all been there. New research from… Read More

When discussing eradication of the world’s ailments, we often focus on specific diseases: a cure for small pox, a cure for Ebola, a cure for AIDS, a cure for influenza. But what if we just devised a way to kill viruses in general—all of them? Researchers at MIT have developed an early-stage approach that may do just that. Called DRACO (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer, also the Latin word for dragon), the new procedure induces… Read More

A group of highly skilled, big-spending gamblers in Massachusetts are using a unique loophole in the state's Cash WinFall lottery to win millions of dollars every three months, without fail, reports the Boston Globe. And they are using their computer science and mathematical skills to help bring in massive paydays. What the gamblers are doing is not, in itself, illegal — or, at least, the law on the gambling practices live in a very grey… Read More

Aaron Swartz, a 24-year old software developer and writer well-known for his Internet political activism, is being indicted on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, criminal forfeiture and unlawfully obtaining information from (as well as damaging) a protected computer. The young man supposedly used MIT's computer networks to steal over 4 million documents from the online academic library JSTOR. He surrendered and pled not guilty on all… Read More

We've all dreamt of having X-ray glasses to reveal to us things which we cannot see. But what if we had a device that could show us something deeper, some truth about the people we meet? That is now a reality, with a new kind of glasses that use real-time facial recognition technology to unmask a person's true emotional state, reports Sally Adee in New Scientist. The implications of such a technology are profound, to say the least.… Read More

Consumer electronics company Bose Corporation was founded in 1964 by Amar Bose. The 81-year-old billionaire, who is a graduate of and former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has gifted a majority share of his company to the school, The Boston Globe reports. Bose accepted a job at the school after his graduation and continued teaching there until 2001, all in addition to his duties as the head of a major company. The… Read More

One-hour cancer detection in a handheld device and tiny robots doing all of the work. Is that science fiction or what? It is fiction made real today, with the news that a joint research team from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a handheld scanner that can accurately detect the presence of cancer cells in a patient more accurately than biopsies and other traditional methods can and more quickly.… Read More

Gesture-based controls for a computer is nothing new, but an interesting new idea from MIT might trump them all. Wired is reporting that a research group from MIT have made a breakthrough on gesture-based computing, and it is easy to use and inexpensive. For the cost of a webcam and a $1 pair of gloves, you can fully interact with 3D models on your computer, and have full gesture-based control of your system. By using a pair of lycra gloves that… Read More

Recent advances in processor technology have lead to a bottleneck in communication with memory. Trying to overcome this barrier with the currently used method — smaller, better designed semiconductors — is impractical due to the higher power necessary to transport data at higher rates. Scientists at MIT believe they may have discovered a way to circumvent this limit — the use of germanium lasers.

Technology patent battles often drag out for years, and often out-live the disputed technology itself as major players either work around the disputed technology or simply move on to bigger-better-smaller-faster solutions that give them a competitive edge. One such drawn-out patent case involves Seagate Technology—one of the world's largest makers of hard drives—and Convolve, a company that spun out of the MIT with technology that helped… Read More

If you’re a student at University College, London (UCL) or Trinity College, Dublin, a new academic service means you’ll be able to download lectures from iTunes, making the alarm clock a thing of the past. They’re the latest addition to the so-called iTunes U, where lectures from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UC Berkeley and MIT are all available for free. Video and audio recordings of the Trinity College and UCL… Read More