Latest MIT Stories

An international team of researchers found that infants can use their knowledge of the physical world to form sophisticated expectations of how novel situations unfold. The scientists developed a computational model of infant cognition that accurately predicts the infants' surprise at events that violate their conception of the physical world. The model calculates the probability of a particular event, given what it knows about how objects behave.  MIT's Josh Tenenbaum, co-leader of the...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TechConnect World (www.techconnectworld.com) announced today that Harvard University's Office of Technology Development and the MIT Technology Licensing Office will present the Harvard and MIT Technology Showcase at TechConnect World, taking place June 13-16, 2011, at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA, US. The Harvard and MIT Technology Showcase on June 14 is a unique opportunity to see faculty research presentations from both...

MIT neuroscientists have found that the most memorable photos taken are those that contain people, followed by static indoor scenes and human scale objects.  The researchers said that landscapes are the most forgettable images in most cases. "Pleasantness and memorability are not the same," MIT graduate student Phillip Isola, one of the lead authors of the paper, said in a statement.  This study is the first to model what makes an image memorable. "People did not think it was possible...

BOSTON, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- iSoftStone Holdings Limited ("iSoftStone", NYSE: ISS), a leading China-based IT services provider, joined more than 900 CIOs and senior IT executives from all over the world as a featured gold sponsor of the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium (http://www.mitcio.com), the premier international event to help CIOs and senior IT executives become better business leaders. The theme of 2011 Symposium was "Beyond the Crossroads - How will the CIO Role Evolve in...

SEATTLE, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Opscode (http://www.opscode.com), the leader in cloud infrastructure automation, today announced that it has been selected as a finalist in the 2011 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovation Showcase (http://www.mitcio.com). The Innovation Showcase highlights ten early stage companies that provide cutting-edge technology and offer new levels of value and advancement to enterprise IT. "MIT is all about innovation and entrepreneurship, and we developed the...

TOKYO, May 17, 2011/PRNewswire/ -- Dentsu Inc. (Tokyo: 4324; ISIN: JP3551520004; President & CEO: Tadashi Ishii; Head Office: Tokyo; Capital: 58,967.1 million yen; hereinafter "Dentsu") announced on May 17 the launch of the "Finding Gifts with Sasha" (http://sasha.nadya.jp) site as the third step of its collaborative project with Nihon Unisys Ltd. (Tokyo: 8056; President & CEO: Katsuto Momii; Corporate Headquarters: Tokyo; hereinafter "Nihon Unisys" and...

Researchers at MIT and the University of Augsburg have found a way to operate a semiconductive material at a lower voltage, which could inevitably help kick-start a race in computing speed that leveled off a few years ago. Computer chip makers throughout the 1980's and 1990's continued to out-do each other with faster speeds, moving from megahertz to gigahertz.  Eventually computers ran into a wall in that race as the faster processors lead to an increase in heat, which the machines are...

Ever since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in 1859, scientists have wondered whether evolutionary adaptations can be reversed.Answering that question has proved difficult, partly due to conflicting evidence. In 2003, scientists showed that some species of insects have gained, lost and regained wings over millions of years. But a few years later, a different team found that a protein that helps control cells' stress responses could not evolve back to its original form.Jeff...

Researchers at MIT have created a new type of sensor that could bring homeland security to a new level.The researchers, lead by Charles and Hilda Roddey Career Development Associate Professor of Chemical Engineer Michael Strano, developed a detector that is capable of picking up a single molecule of an explosive material.Chemical engineers used one-atom-thick hollow cylinders made of pure carbon to create the sensors.  These detectors are more sensitive than explosive sensors currently...

MIT researchers have found a way to make solar power perform more efficiently. The team's system produces power using the sun's heat with about eight times the power than previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device. Gang Chen, MIT's Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering and director of the Pappalardo Micro and Nano Engineering Laboratories, said on MIT's website that the concept "is very radical."The new system uses flat, stationary panels similar to...