MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that attaches to a bra and could be used to detect early-stage breast tumors, reports Lizzy Lawrence for STAT. “I’m hoping to really make it real, and to touch people’s lives,” says Prof. Canan Dagdeviren. “I want to see the impact of my technology not only in the lab, but on society.”
Celtics forward Jaylen Brown spoke with Dana Jacobson of CBS Mornings about his mission to help improve equality in the City of Boston, highlighting the Bridge Program at the Media Lab, which is aimed providing opportunities in science and technology for underrepresented communities. “I think education is one of the most powerful devices that we have and is one of the ways our social mobility is being controlled at a very early age,” says Brown. “Being able to have my students… get to learn directly from MIT professors, MIT scientists, NASA astronauts, you get to directly benefit from those stories and life lessons. My goal is to build the next leaders, the next generation of leaders for the world.”
Celtics forward Jaylen Brown signed his supermax contract extension in front of high school students participating in the Bridge Program at the Media Lab, an effort focused on providing opportunities in science and technology for underrepresented communities, writes Adam Himmelsbach for The Boston Globe. Brown noted he found out the deal was finalized during a robotics session with the students. “I was learning,” he said. “I was a part of the curriculum. We were doing some teaching, doing some active engaging, some workshops. So I was able to put my phone down and just get right into class with the Bridge students.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a wearable patch that can allow drugs to pass through the skin using ultrasonic sound waves, reports Sandra Tsing for NPR. “The researchers say their lightweight design allows for reliable use on the go,” says Tsing. “This could treat skin conditions, both medical or cosmetic.”
Researchers from MIT have found that since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decrease in the number of interactions between people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, reports Danny Westneat for The Seattle Times. “It’s creating an urban fabric that is actually more brittle, in the sense that we are less exposed to other people,” says research scientist Esteban Moro. “We don’t get to know other people in the city … to know other people’s needs. If we don’t see them around the city, that will be impossible.”
In conversation with Matthew Huston at Science, Prof. John Horton discusses the possibility of using chatbots in research instead of humans. As he explains, a change like that would be similar to the transition from in-person to online surveys, “"People were like, ‘How can you run experiments online? Who are these people?’ And now it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, of course you do that.’”
Prof. Deb Roy speaks with CNBC reporter Deirdre Bosa about “the relationship between machine-leaning technology and humans.”
Prof. Kevin Esvelt and his students have found that language-generating AI models could make it easier to create pandemic potential pathogens, reports Kelsey Piper for Vox.
Researchers at MIT have showed that “they could induce people to dream about a particular subject and that doing so helped them become more creative,” writes F.D. Flam for Bloomberg. “The findings should remind us that the line between productivity and resting is blurry — especially in creative endeavors,” writes Flam.
MIT researchers and an undergraduate class found that chatbots could be prompted to suggest pandemic pathogens, including specific information not commonly known among experts, reports Ryan Health for Axios. The MIT researchers recommend "pre-release evaluations of LLMs by third parties, curating training datasets to remove harmful concepts, and verifiably screening all DNA generated by synthesis providers or used by contract research organizations."
Writing for The Conversation, postdoc Ziv Epstein SM ’19, PhD ’23, graduate student Robert Mahari and Jessica Fjeld of Harvard Law School explore how the use of generative AI will impact creative work. “The ways in which existing laws are interpreted or reformed – and whether generative AI is appropriately treated as the tool it is – will have real consequences for the future of creative expression,” the authors note.
Science reporter Robert F. Service spotlights how Prof. Kevin Esvelt is sounding the alarm that “AI could help somebody with no science background and evil intentions design and order a virus capable of unleashing a pandemic.”
Undergraduate student Kathleen Esfahany speaks with GBH host Jeremy Siegel about her work discovering that people are most creative in the early stages of sleep. “The biggest finding and the thing that I think most people would relate to is that there was a nice effect of people being more creative after a nap, versus staying awake,” says Esfahany. “And I think this is well-corroborated by a lot of other studies, but this was just really exciting to be able to see.”
MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers have found that people are most creative when drifting off to sleep, reports WHDH. “The earliest stage sleep, we call that N1 stage sleep, just a brief nap in that period can really boost your creativity,” says undergraduate student Kathleen Esfahany.
Researchers from MIT have found that, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, people are less likely to explore economically different parts of their home cities, reports Immanual John Milton for Bloomberg. “Fewer people are visiting attractions like museums, restaurants or parks that are outside their immediate mobility radius, and they’re spending less time among residents at different socioeconomic levels,” writes Milton.