Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah emphasizes the importance of representation in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which featured Riri Williams (Ironheart) as a Black female engineer at MIT. Attiah notes that she is “grateful that ‘Black Panther 2’ exists to show us what #BlackGirlGenius looks like.”
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights a new study by Prof. Daron Acemoglu that examines the impact of automation on the workforce. “We’re starting with a very clear premise here: in 21st-century America, the wealth gap is big and only getting bigger,” writes Heater. “The paper, ‘Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality,’ attempts to explore the correlation between the growing income gap and automation.”
Researchers at MIT have developed new gene-editing technology that can move large sequences of DNA into the human genome, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. “The molecular tool gives scientists a new way to completely replace broken genes, paving the way to potential cures for diseases such as cystic fibrosis,” writes Cross.
Vox reporter Kelsey Piper writes that a new report by Prof. Kevin Esvelt provides a roadmap for how to prepare for the next pandemic. In the report, Esvelt emphasizes that: “We’re not helpless, whether against nature or malign actions by human beings. We do have to invest in actually being prepared, but if we’re prepared, we could weather even a worst-case scenario: a deliberate release of a human-made virus engineered to be both extra deadly and extra contagious.”
Researchers from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms are developing fully autonomous robots that can work together to assemble “almost any conceivable structure or product, including bigger iterations of themselves as their projects scale larger,” reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “Potential uses include building structures to aid in protection against sea level rise and coastal erosion,” writes Paul, “as well as 3D printed houses and space habitat construction.”
NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered evidence of habitable conditions that once existed on Mars, reports Becky Ferreira for Vice. “In that kind of environment, we’re seeing very, very strange chemistry which is not common on Earth at all, but seems to be more common on Mars because we’ve seen these kinds of materials in almost all the missions now,” says postdoctoral fellow Eva Scheller.
A team of scientists, including researchers from MIT, have found that Martian rocks uncovered by NASA’s Perseverance contain “signs of a watery past and are loaded with the kind of organic molecules that are the foundations for life as we know it,” reports Joel Achenbach for The Washington Post. “On balance, we are actually super lucky that there are igneous rocks in the crater, and that we happened to land right on them, since they are ideal for determining ages and studying the past history of Mars’ magnetic field,” says Prof. Benjamin Weiss.
Scientists from around the world, including researchers at MIT, have found evidence of past chemical reactions between liquid water and carbon-compounds on Mars, reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. “We believe we have found these kinds of liquid water environments and organic compounds together. That’s sort of the limit to how we can describe what we call habitability,” explains postdoc Eva Linghan Scheller.
Alumna Geeta Sankappanavar founded Akira Impact, an investment firm that directs capital to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals, reports Cheryl Robinson for Forbes. “The firm invests in companies that support gender equality, clean water and sanitation, clean energy and responsible consumption and production,” writes Robinson.
“Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It” by Prof. Amy Finkelstein, Boston University Prof. Ray Fisman, and Stanford University Prof. Liran Einav was named one of the best economics books of 2022 reports Martin Wolf for Financial Times.
A new exhibit at the MIT Museum, “To Look and Learn: The Creative Photography Laboratory at MIT,” documents a “varied and vital visual era” at MIT," writes Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. One legacy of MIT’s Creative Photography Laboratory is “the tradition of rewarding photography shows at the MIT Museum," Feeney notes. "'To Look and Learn' is the latest example.”
MIT researchers have found that standard autism diagnostic tests could be “stymieing discovery of sex differences in autism,” reports Ingrid Wickelgren for Scientific American. “To qualify for the study, prospective participants had to take a standard activity-based assessment for autism to confirm their diagnosis,” says Wickelgren. “After testing, half of the 50 girls and women who would otherwise be eligible for the scientists’ study did not meet the test’s criteria for autism.”
Researchers from MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms are developing robots that can effectively self-assemble and could even build large structures, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “At the system’s center are voxels (a term borrowed from computer graphics), which carry power and data that can be shared between pieces,” writes Heater. “The pieces form the foundation of the robot, grabbing and attaching additional voxels before moving across the grid for further assembly.”
Fortune reporter Gabby Shacknai spotlights Joy Buolamwini PhD ’22 and her research in racial bias in AI. “After finishing grad school, Biolamwini decided to continue her research on A.I.’s racial bias and quickly realized that much of this was a result of the non-diverse datasets and imagery used by a disproportionately white, male tech workforce to train A.I. and inform its algorithms,” writes Shacknai.
Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul writes that a study co-authored by Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu examines the impact of automation on the workforce over the past four decades and finds that “‘so-so automation’ exacerbates wage gaps between white and blue collar workers more than almost any other factor.”