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MIT researchers have discovered space matter that has been ‘missing’ since the 1990s using Fast Radio Bursts, individual flashes of radio waves traveling through space and coming from the distant universe, reports WCVB 5’s Cindy Fitzgibbon. “The takeaway of the study is that by discovering the distribution of the missing matter around galaxies, we have found evidence for strong activities in galaxies,” says graduate student Haochen Wang, a co-author on the study. “In other words, galaxies are busier and messier than we thought.” 

Associate Prof. Taha Choukhmane speaks to Associated Press reporter Adriana Morga about explores the growing trend of consumers using AI for financial guidance, and his recommendation that AI be used as a tool in combination with other trusted sources. “I would encourage people to use AI to explain and define,” says Choukhmane. “If you’re interested in knowing what the stock market is, what the difference between a mutual fund and an index fund is, using AI to explain these concepts can be very useful because it can empower people to get the most out of these methods.”

Prof. Danielle Wood joins Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss the growing problems posed by space junk, and how space technology helps support our critical infrastructure. “Technology from space helps make life safer on Earth, supports our weather forecasting [and] our daily transportation. All the technology that lets us get deliveries and Uber—that's all coming from space,” says Wood. “We definitely need space to be safe—to keep our lives safe.” 

Prof. Raphael Zufferey and his research group developed a winged robot that can swim underwater and fly through the air like a diving bird and “could one day be used to monitor and ultimately help protect the ocean,” reports Tom Page for CNN. “We’re really trying to understand better how birds do this,” says Zufferey. “The other reason we’re doing this is we’re hoping that this becomes (a) future tool for oceanography.” 

Fox Business’ Eric Revell highlights MIT being named to the top five of LinkedIn’s list of the top colleges that give graduates the strongest career edge. “The report uses LinkedIn data to rank colleges based on five categories: job placement, internships and recruiter demand, career success, network strength and knowledge breadth,” writes Revell.  

In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti and contributor Mario Carpo make the case that AI is built to imitate human creativity and is less capable of original design. “In a profession that defines itself through invention, GenAI increasingly is seen less as a creative genius and more as a ‘stochastic parrot’ — a term introduced in 2021 by leading AI researchers to describe a technology that learns to repeat the most likely sequences found in whatever data it’s been shown,” write Ratti and Carpo. 

Upworthy’s Tod Perry outlines five key takeaways from “How to Speak,” a popular lecture on the art of public speaking given annually for MIT students for 40 years by the late Prof. Patrick Winston, which is now available to watch on MIT OpenCourseware. “I always finish [ a speech] with a joke, and that way, people think they’ve had fun the whole time,” quipped Winston in his lecture. 

MIT spinoff Found Industries’ new Cambridge headquarters and metals processing development center is highlighted by Boston Business Journal's Lucia Maffei. “We are developing electrochemical processes to recover gallium and, in time, indium, and germanium, and antimony and other critical metals directly from existing industrial streams,” says Peter Godart PhD ‘21, Found Industries CEO.  

New Scientist’s Jacklin Kwan highlights Prof. Christoph Kehle’s work demonstrating that extremal black holes, a variety of black hole that has zero temperature, could exist. “Extremal black holes were thought of as an idealised, unattainable limit: something you could write down as a solution, but which could never be reached [through any real physical] process, but we proved that wrong,” says Kehle. 

Prof. Tavneet Suri joins NPR’s Robert Smith, host of “Planet Money,” to discuss several economic and business development programs in Kenya and Nigeria, and the lessons they offer for business students and entrepreneurs. “I do think that core to the growth of an economy is this thing we call human capital, which is about the education and the health of your population,” says Suri. “It's the sort of, in quotes, "capital" that a human brings to the table.” 

Bob Mumgaard PhD ‘15, co-founder and CEO of MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems, speaks to Fast Company’s Adele Peters about building his company’s first power plant, set to come online in the 2030s in Virginia. “To make fusion into more than just the first plants, it has to be an industry and there’s multiple parts of that,” says Mumgaard. 

Prof. Jackson Lu speaks to Fast Company’s Sarah Bregel about metacognitive techniques, tuning into one’s thinking and learning process, to use AI more creatively. “Even the most powerful AI won’t boost creativity if employees don’t know how to use it effectively,” says Lu. “Organizations should pair AI deployment with metacognition training to maximize the creative benefits.”