News

A new way to automatically build road maps from aerial images

Artificial antimicrobial peptides could help overcome drug-resistant bacteria

Researchers at MIT and the Catholic University of Brasilia have now developed a streamlined approach to developing artificial antimicrobial peptides. Their strategy, which relies on a computer algorithm that mimics the natural process of evolution, has yielded one potential drug candidate that successfully killed bacteria in mice.

Rethinking GPS: Engineering Next-Gen Location at Uber

Location and navigation using global positioning systems (GPS) is deeply embedded in our daily lives, and is particularly crucial to Uber’s services. To orchestrate quick, efficient pickups, our GPS technologies need to know the locations of matched riders and drivers, as well as provide navigation guidance from a driver’s current location to where the rider needs to be picked up, and then, to the rider’s chosen destination. For this process to work seamlessly, the location estimates for riders and drivers need to be as precise as possible.

A Face-Detection Library in 200 Lines of JavaScript

The pico.js library is a JavaScript implementation of the method described in 2013 by Markuš et al. in a technical report. The reference implementation is written in C and available on GitHub: https://github.com/nenadmarkus/pico.

Drilling with Curiosity

Remotely operating a rover on another planet so that it can gather and analyze samples requires extensive planning, failure work-arounds, and compromise.

Doctors tried to lower $148K cancer drug cost; makers triple price of pill

Velodyne invented modern lidar—it’s about to face real competition

David Hall invented modern three-dimensional lidar more than a decade ago for use in the DARPA Grand Challenge competitions. His company, Velodyne, has dominated the market for self-driving car lidar ever since. Last year, Velodyne opened a factory that it said had the capacity to produce a million lidar units in 2018—far more than any other maker of high-end lidars.

The AI Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the mantra of the current era. The phrase is intoned by technologists, academicians, journalists and venture capitalists alike. As with many phrases that cross over from technical academic fields into general circulation, there is significant misunderstanding accompanying the use of the phrase.

MIT Discovers Way to Mass-Produce Graphene in Large Sheets

The team’s results are the first demonstration of an industrial, scalable method for manufacturing high-quality graphene that is tailored for use in membranes that filter a variety of molecules, including salts, larger ions, proteins, or nanoparticles. Such membranes should be useful for desalination, biological separation, and other applications.

The Quest for the Next Billion-Dollar Color

Mas Subramanian, the biggest celebrity in the uncelebrated world of pigment research, glances at a cluster of widemouthed jars containing powders in every color of the rainbow, save one. He’s got OYGBIV. “We’re getting closer,” he says brightly.