April/May 2009

Feed

Each day you take in food to nourish your body and information to feed your mind. This edition of Quick Take gives you a chance to test your feedback skills, learn about stem-cell feeding, tap into MIT-related RSS feeds, pick up some good food equations (pass the chicken), and play food-for-your-brain riddles and games. And, in the spirit of news feeds, all entries are 140 characters or less. In other words, Twitter-able.

Feed the Mind

Part of an origami puzzle created by Erik and Martin Demaine. Click for the downloadable version.

Print, solve origami puzzles
Associate Professor Erik Demaine & his father, visiting scientist Martin Demaine, design a new puzzle annually.

Cutting the cheese
Can you cut a cylinder of cheese into eight identical pieces with three straight cuts? View the solution.

Name that feed
Test your knowledge of the types of food fish eat while raised through aquaculture. From the MIT Sea Grant College Program.

Like riddles?
MIT professor Dan Ariely and Jelani Nelson '05, MNG '06 offer riddles on their Web pages—but, be forewarned, not solutions.

Drawing exercises improve design
Find 20 exercises to boost creativity taught to students in the 2.007 Design and Manufacturing class.

"Puzzles" aim to improve password security
Try the inkblot, drawing, and word association tests and more—and help further the research.

What happens to Dottown?
Try your hand at this mathematical puzzle.

Food Equations

Soup course with bread
Pumpkin soup with Gruyère cheese and ciabatta

Salad course
Caesar salad

Main course
Almond chicken

Dessert
Apple pie or "dirt"

Photo: ©iStockphoto.com/_zak.

Consume

Giving thanks at Fourth East feeds
Glimpse 4E's past Thanksgiving feeds, read their Thanksgiving poetry, and prepare to get hungry.

Feeding stem cells
Learn how the director of Whitehead's stem-cell facility feeds a calf-blood mixture to hundreds of stem cells.

MIT Press: America's Food
By Harvey Blatt
Tells what you don't know about American food production & its effect on health & the environment.

Don't feed the bad wolf
Read a post on Professor Peter Fisher's blog about the bad wolf in everyone.

Bird flaunts feeding behavior
MIT researchers study how red-necked phalaropes defy gravity to move prey caught in water to their throats.

Meet the self-feeding robot
MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory built a robot that emulates the self-feeding behavior of a living organism.

Copyright©2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology