A new study by researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School has helped identify the impact of exercise and high-fat diets on cells, reports Darren Botelho for NBC Boston 10. “Years from now, those researchers say the data could lead to a pill that would help not only with weight loss, but with the overall effect from exercise – a better wellbeing,” explains Botelho.
MIT spinoff Gradiant, a water treatment facility developer, is working on new technology aimed at limiting the amount of water needed to produce lithium, reports Annie Lee and Janet Wu for Bloomberg. Gradiant’s process “can vastly improve lithium recovery and allow almost all wastewater to be recycled, has been developed in connection with Schlumberger’s NeoLith Energy venture,” writes Lee and Wu.
Writing for Times Higher Ed, Prof. Andres Sevtsuk explores how campus design can boost communication and exchange between researchers. “Low-rise, high-density buildings with interconnected walkways and shared public spaces are more likely to maximize encounters,” writes Sevtsuk. “In colder climates, having indoor walking paths between buildings can help ensure that encounters continue during colder parts of the year.”
Prof. Laura Kiessling speaks with Ryan Cross and Emily Sweeny at The Boston Globe about the work of Stanford professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi, daughter of MIT professor emeritus William Bertozzi, who won this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Bertozzi’s work “changes the way people think about doing science. There have been further advances, but they all build on her work” says Kiessling.
WBUR host Tiziana Dearing speaks to Namrata Sengupta, Associate Director of Scientific Public Engagement and the Broad Discovery Center at the Broad Institute, about the Innovation Trail, a walking tour that highlights the history of innovation in Boston and Cambridge. Sengupta shares what “a great honor [for the Broad Discovery Center] to be a part of the Innovation Trail of Greater Boston and this ecosystem.”
In a review for The New York Times, University of Bonn Prof. Irina Dumitrescu spotlights Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way” Dumitrescu writes: “Setiya’s main goal is not to describe how things should be; in his view, given that there is much in life that makes us miserable, and that we can neither change nor ignore, we might as well find ways of dealing with the reality.”
Prof. Nathan Wilmers and his colleague have used multiple measures of earnings to trace income inequality in the U.S., reports Tim Fernholz for Quartz. “After decades of increase since the 1980s, they found that income inequality peaked in 2012 and has held steady or perhaps even fallen since,” explains Fernholz.
MIT researchers have created a robotic pill that can safely penetrate the mucus barrier in the digestive tract to deliver drugs more efficiently, reports Margaret Osborne for Smithsonian Magazine. “The device’s textured surface clears away the mucus, and the rotating motion erodes the compartment with the drug payload, which slowly releases into the digestive tract,” explains Osborne.
Prof. Manolis Kellis speaks with Boston 25 about his team’s work exploring the underlying mechanisms exploring how exercise influences weight loss, findings that could offer potential targets for drugs that could help to enhance or mimic the benefits of exercise. “Such an intervention would be a complete game changer and the reason for that is that the obesity epidemic has led to the U.S. having a decreased life span compared to all other developed countries,” says Kellis.
Researchers from Sloan have released a survey “detailing how 600 board directors worldwide view the cyber threats facing their companies,” reports Sam Sabin for Axios. “Competing perceptions of the threat landscape could make it difficult for CISOs to get board members to support their plans for securing their organizations,” writes Sabin.
Prof. David Kaiser discussed the significance of Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger’s research conducting experiments concerning quantum entanglement, for which they were honored with the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. “Clauser got a lot of pushback from scientists who didn’t think this was even part of science,” said Kaiser. “He had to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness to publish his result.”
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for Forbes about the three major risk factors to consider when planning where to live in retirement. “Retirement planning can’t control the weather,” writes Coughlin. “However, critically and realistically assessing our personal resilience and how to best prepare for the possible risks of where I live, is a critical element to thinking about how I will live in older age.”
Boston Globe reporter Scott Kirsner spotlights the work of Katie Rae, CEO of The Engine, on his roundup of some of the key figures in Boston’s tech network. The Engine is “for startups focused on ‘tough tech,’ technology that can often take years to perfect and build a business around,” writes Kirsner.
Prof. Richard Binzel speaks with CBS News reporter David Pogue about asteroids and the Torino scale, a 10-point danger scale for asteroids that he created. "All the objects [asteroids] we know of today reside at zero or one, which simply means they're so small that they don't matter, or that we know for sure there's no impact possibility," says Binzel.
Institute Prof. Barbara Liskov discusses the importance of including ethics and foresight as a key parts of computer science education, reports Susan D'Agostino for Inside Higher Ed. “The days of being naïvely technical, which we were for many years, are over,” says Liskov. “We need to open students’ minds so they think about the harm that can come from what they’re doing and so they ask, ‘What could I add that could act as a safeguard?’ It’s more than ethics. They need to think from a different perspective.”