MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
July 13, 2017
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

A simple solution for terrible traffic

Study: Without HOV policies, urban traffic gets much, much worse.

Using chip memory more efficiently

System for generating ad hoc “cache hierarchies” increases processing speed while reducing energy consumption.

Miniaturizing the brain of a drone

Method for designing efficient computer chips may get miniature smart drones off the ground.

Why do some neighborhoods improve?

Density of highly educated residents, rather than income or housing costs, predicts revitalization.

Proximity boosts collaboration on MIT campus

Study: Being near colleagues helps cross-disciplinary research on papers and patents.

Antibiotic nanoparticles fight drug-resistant bacteria

Targeted treatment could be used for pneumonia and other bacterial infections.

In the Media

A study by MIT researchers shows that carpool lanes can help reduce a city’s traffic, reports Matt McFarland for CNN. The researchers found that the removal of HOV lanes increased driving times across Jakarta, Indonesia. "The magnitude was enormous and more than I would've expected," says Prof. Ben Olken.

A study by MIT researchers shows that physical proximity can increase collaboration, reports Colleen Flaherty for Inside Higher Ed. The researchers examined thousands of papers and patents stemming from MIT research and found that “paper collaborators in the same workspace were three times more likely to work together than those located 400 meters apart.”

Forbes reporter Kevin Murnane writes about how MIT researchers have used a computer vision system to examine how several American cities physically improved or deteriorated over time. Murnane writes that the study, “provides important support for nuanced versions of traditional theories about why urban neighborhoods change over time.”