Of course, MIT’s cheetah isn’t just a carbon copy of last year’s robot from Boston Dynamics. The researchers have found that their robot can run much more efficiently by swapping out the pneumatics of the previous cheetah for motors. It may only be able to run at a speed of 13.7 mph at the moment, but it will be able to run for much longer periods of time. One day, it may also be able to carry its own battery.

Let’s just hope MIT never decides to equip their robot with metal teeth and an insatiable bloodlust.

[h/t: Engadget]

This particular video features MIT senior Annie Holladay demonstrating her algorithm that helps a robot adapt by using both arms instead of just one:

The remnant, named W49B, is only around 1,000 years old and only 26,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers have called the object “rare” because of the way the supernova took place. Instead of explosively ejecting matter in all directions the way an supernova does, W49B is the result of a supernova that ejected material from a star’s poles at a higher speeds than other material, creating jets that shaped the remnant.

A paper on the phenomenon is to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

“W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy,” said Laura Lopez, lead researcher on the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “It appears its parent star ended its life in a way that most others don’t.”

The data used in the study was obtained using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. W49B now glows brightly with X-rays, and Chandra was able to determine the distribution of elements in the remnant. The researchers found an uneven distribution of iron, matching predictions for asymmetric supernovae.

Astronomers searched for X-ray or radio pulses from the remnant, which would provide evidence for a neutron star, but found none. This suggests that a new black hole could have been formed at the core of the supernova.

“It’s a bit circumstantial, but we have intriguing evidence the W49B supernova also created a black hole,” said Daniel Castro, co-author of the paper. “If that is the case, we have a rare opportunity to study a supernova responsible for creating a young black hole.”

(Image courtesy NASA/CXC/MIT/L.Lopez et al/Palomar/NSF/NRAO/VLA)

As usual, the defaced Web site featured a message from Anonymous. In it, the hacktivist collective calls for a number of reforms in Internet law. Here’s the list courtesy of CNET:

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of copyright and intellectual property law, returning it to the proper principles of common good to the many, rather than private gain to the few.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for greater recognition of the oppression and injustices heaped daily by certain persons and institutions of authority upon anyone who dares to stand up and be counted for their beliefs, and for greater solidarity and mutual aid in response.

We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all.

Beyond Anonymous hacking MIT, another group has stood up in support of Swartz’ mission to make information free for all. A number of academics have been publishing studies online with the hashtag #PDFtribute. Most of these studies are copyright protected, but Swartz would likely have it no other way. He believed in freedom of information, especially when it came to academic studies. It’s hard to say if the publishers will prosecute authors uploading their own studies, but it would look really bad on those who do in the wake of Swartz’ death.

Swartz was a well known and beloved member of the online activist community. It’s unlikely that Anonymous is going to stop with a simple hack or defacement. The group is going to continue to push for reform with this particular tragedy only serving to bolster their cause.

[Image: okfn/flickr]

The material, which is made from an interlocking network of two different polymers, changes its shape when it absorbs water vapor. “One forms a hard but flexible matrix that provides structural support while the other is a soft gel that swells when it absorbs water,” says the description of the video, which comes from MIT. “Together these polymers create a material that converts water vapor to energy without the use of an external energy source.”

It makes you wonder what’s really possible, when you combine technology like this with stuff like this, this and this.

[via reddit]

The algorithm is claimed to predict with 95% accuracy the topics that will show up on Twitter’s trending topics list. It can make these predictions an average of an hour and a half before Twitter lists the topic as a trend, and can sometimes predict trends as much as four or five hours in advance.

Devavrat Shah, associate professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department at MIT, and MIT graduate student Stanislav Nikolov will present the algorithm at the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks in November.

Shah stated that the algorithm is a nonparametric machine-learning algorithm, meaning it makes no assumptions about the shape of patterns. It compares changes over time in the number of tweets about a new topic to the changes over time seen in every sample in the training set. Also, training set samples with statistics similar to the new topic are more heavily weighted when determining a prediction. Shah compared it to voting, where each sample gets a vote, but some votes count more than others.

This method is different from the standard approach to machine learning, where researchers create a model of the pattern whose specifics need to be inferred. In theory, the new approach could apply to any quantity that varies over time (including the stock market), given the right subset of training data.

For Shah and Nikolov’s initial experiments, they used data from 200 Twitter topics that were listed as trends and 200 that were not. “The training sets are very small, but we still get strong results,” said Shah. In addition to the algorithm’s 95% prediction rate, it also had only a 4% false-positive rate.

The accuracy of the system can increase with additional training sets, but the computing costs will also increase. However, Shah revealed that the algorithm has been designed to execute across separate machines, such as web servers. “It is perfectly suited to the modern computational framework,” said Shah.

“It’s very creative to use the data itself to find out what trends look like,” said Ashish Goel, associate professor of management science at Stanford University and a member of Twitter’s technical advisory board. “It’s quite creative and quite timely and hopefully quite useful.

“People go to social-media sites to find out what’s happening now. So in that sense, speeding up the process is something that is very useful.”

(Image courtesy MIT)

Let that sink in for a second. 1.13 trillion likes. With that kind of cultural dominance, the “like” has become a universal emotion, sometimes divorced from any other tangible human emotion. People “like” an engagement announcement that same way they “like” a funny picture. With Facebook users liking billions of posts every day, maybe the “like” has lost its punch? Does a “like” really mean anything anymore?

What if a like could translate into a physical hug? That way, when you “liked” your sister’s baby photo from across the country, she could feel your “like,” and it may just feel a little bit more like love.

That’s the idea behind the Like-A-Hug, a project from Melissa Chow, Andy Payne, and Phil Seaton of the MIT Media Lab.

“Like-A-Hug is a wearable social media vest that allows for hugs to be given via Facebook, bringing us closer despite physical distance. The vest inflates when friends ‘Like’ a photo, video, or status update on the wearer’s wall, thereby allowing us to feel the warmth, encouragement, support, or love that we feel when we receive hugs. Hugs can also be sent back to the original sender by squeezing the vest and deflating it,” says the project site.

Check out the concept below:

All that stuff about “likes” turning into love and meaning something is nice, but it’s doubtful that you could get that many people to wear an inflatable vest in public. Of course, the idea is probably not going to translate into an actual product – but that wasn’t really the point.

“Connecting it to Facebook conceptually was simply a way to explore how social media might push past the traditional graphic user interface (GUI),” says Chow.

Plus, nothing beats a real hug.

Meet Meshworm, it’s a robot that’s encased in a “flexible, meshlike tube that makes up its body.” The inside of the robot is controlled by what the researchers call “artificial muscle” that’s made up of wire made from nickel and titanium. It moves by using heat to stretch and contract the wires. Here’s the meshworm in action:

While I think the robot looks more like a Chinese finger trap, the scientists say the design is meant to mimic the lowly earthworm. They say that earthworms, snails and sea cucumbers move through a process called peristalsis. By that, they mean that the worm moves by “alternatively squeezing and stretching muscles along the length of their bodies.”

What makes the Meshworm so unique, beyond its movement, is that its more resilient than a regular earthworm. You can step on Meshworm and it will keep on moving. The materials that make up the robot can’t be damaged so easily as they’re made of soft materials that are meant to bend under pressure.

So what could Meshworm mean for the future of robotics? It would make robots more versatile and able to stand more damage than their counterparts. The scientists at MIT specifically mention these robots as being able to “explore hard-to-reach spaces and traverse bumpy terrain.”

What may be the most interesting part about this robot is that the scientists say it’s showing signs of “body morphing capability.” For all the futurists terrified of a robot controlled future, this is where you start to get afraid. If a robot is suitably soft enough, it could potentially mold itself into any object. The robot might even be your next door neighbor – mild mannered Mr. Johnson. I bet you never thought he was a robot, but he never thought the cute caterpillar was a robot either until it was too late.

They looked at the top 40 largest airports in the country, and found that traffic isn’t necessarily the only indicator of how much an airport would be to blame.

Unlike existing models, the new MIT model incorporates variations in travel patterns among individuals, the geographic locations of airports, the disparity in interactions among airports, and waiting times at individual airports to create a tool that could be used to predict where and how fast a disease might spread.

“The results from our model are very different from those of a conventional model that relies on the random diffusion of travelers … [and] similar to the advective flow of fluids,” says researcher Christos Nicolaides. “The advective transport process relies on distinctive properties of the substance that’s moving, as opposed to diffusion, which assumes a random flow. If you include diffusion only in the model, the biggest airport hubs in terms of traffic would be the most influential spreaders of disease. But that’s not accurate.”

Here’s what they mean: Although Honolulu’ airport is only about 1/3 as large as New York’s Kennedy International (in terms of traffic), it’s positioning in the “air transportation network” and its connection to many distant well-connected hubs makes it almost as influential in the spread of our unknown contagion.

Here are the final rankings in terms of most influential in the spread of disease:

1. Kennedy International (New York)
2. Los Angeles
3. Honolulu
4. San Francisco
5. Newark
6. Chicago (O’Hare)
7. Washington (Dulles)
8. Hartsfield-Jackson International (Atlanta)

Hartsfield-Jackson ranked only 8th in terms of influence, although it serves the most flights out of any airport in consideration.

[via The Verge]

For everyone that has run out of juice halfway through the day, and for everyone that has seen their smartphones flicker and fade away just when they needed it most – a new partnership between tech company Lilliputian Systems and specialty retailer Brookstone might make you pretty happy.

The two companies have just announced a new portable charging system, designed, developed and manufactured by Lilliputian and sold and marketed by Brookstone. The device will be named under the Brookstone brand.

The portable fuel cell is about as big as a “thick smartphone,” according to CNET, and contains recyclable cartridges that are about the size of a Zippo. The cartridges are made of plastic and filled with lighter fluid, which is what powers the charging. Although there’s no word yet on total pricing of the portable device, the cartridges will run you a few buck a piece.

“Today’s Smartphones use much more power, increasing the need for a more efficient way to recharge when on the go,” said Steven Schwartz, Vice President of Merchandising and Product Development at Brookstone. “Lilliputian’s groundbreaking technology provides power, wherever and whenever you need it. This breakthrough aligns well with our commitment to innovative solutions that make life easier.”

Charging on the go is always a pain, as most everyone is well aware. The good thing about this new portable device is that it obviously does not need an outlet, and it works with any USB-enabled device. That means smartphones, tablets, iPods, ereaders, etc. can all be charged by this new device. Each cartridge will give an iPhone, for instance, around a dozen full charges. Depending on how much you’re playing Words with Friends and surfing the interwebs, that could mean anywhere from 2-3 weeks without ever having to plug your device into the wall.

The new technology has already been approved by both the UN International Civil Aviation Organization and the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. Naturally, that means that you’ll be able to carry them on your plane.

Lilliputian Systems, an MIT spin-off company, just recently got into the manufacturing game. If their product works as well as advertised, they’re going to be incredibly busy.