Prof. Kerry Emanuel and First Street Foundation have found that based on warming climate conditions and patterns, future storms will increase in intensity and travel farther north up the East Coast, reports Leslie Kaufman and Eric Roston for Bloomberg.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporters Ella Nilsen and Renée Rigdon about future hurricane trends. “The bottom line is the models that are being used by the existing [catastrophe] modeling industry are based strictly on historical statistics,” says Emanuel. “The historical record isn’t very long, and it isn’t very good when you get back to before 1970.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explore how generative artificial intelligence “presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the beginning of the Enlightenment.” Huttenlocher, Kissinger and Schmidt make the case that “parameters for AI’s responsible use need to be established, with variation based on the type of technology and the context of deployment.”
Undergraduate student Sasha Horokh speaks with GBH reporters Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel about the ongoing war in Ukraine. “I think it's important that we do not get used to this, and to keep supporting Ukraine,” says Horokh.
Former U.S. Representative John Olver PhD '61, has died at age 86, reports Steve LeBlanc for the Associated Press. “[Olver’s] quiet demeanor and wry sense of humor concealed a razor-sharp understanding of the issues facing the American people and a deep faith in our ability to solve them together,” says Democratic U.S. Representative James McGovern.
Popular Science reporter Andrew Paul writes that MIT engineers have developed a new chip for smart phones that blocks unwanted signals, which could “greatly reduce production costs, make devices smaller and more efficient, and potentially even improve battery life.” Graduate student Soroush Araei explains that “our research can make your devices work better with fewer dropped calls or poor connections caused by interference from other devices.”
Artist Alison Nguyen’s exhibition, “History as Hypnosis” - a video installation that “surfaces themes of alienation and assimilation through three narratives” - opens this weekend at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, reports Jenn Stanley for WBUR. “Nguyen’s work explores digital media’s psychological effects on the public,” writes Stanley, “reflecting on how images are produced, circulated and consumed in mainstream U.S. culture.”
Fast Company reporter Amelia Hemphill spotlights the work of Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18, and her startup Bloomer Tech, which is “dedicated to transforming women’s underwear into a healthcare device.” “Our big goal is to generate digital biomarkers,” says Chong Rodriguez. “Digital biomarkers work more like a video, so it will definitely allow a more personalized care from the physician to their patient.”
Bloomberg reporter Tanaz Meghjani writes that MIT researchers created a new system to 3D print a customized replica of the human heart, which could help improve replacement valve procedures. The new system “mimics blood flow and pressure in individual diseased hearts, suggesting a way to predict the effects of various replacements and select the best fit, avoiding potential leakage and failure,” Meghjani writes.
MIT engineers have developed a new technique for 3D printing a soft, flexible, custom-designed replica of a patient’s heart, report Gabrielle Emanuel and Amy Sokolow for WBUR. The goal of the research is to “provide realistic models so that doctors, researchers and medical device manufacturers can use them in testing therapies for different types of heart disease,” Emanuel and Sokolow explain.
Aera Therapeutics, founded by Prof. Feng Zhang, is working to “debut a type of protein nanoparticle that it believes can be used to ferry all sorts of genetic medicines around the body,” reports Lisa Jarvis for Bloomberg.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Erin Kelly shares her research on the impact of remote work. “The challenge is setting boundaries and feeling it’s acceptable to set them, and that requires deliberate company policies,” writes Kelly.
Graduate student Ziv Epstein speaks with Vice reporter Rachel Cheung about the legal implications of the development and use of AI tools being used to create art. “We need more both technical and social research, understanding how these things work, how people feel about them, and then we can make those decisions based on good science,” Epstein said. “Because right now, we’re just really at the brink of the beginning.”
MIT researchers have constructed a mini city to test to safely test algorithms designed for autonomous vehicles, reports Mashable. “The idea of the mini city is that we have lots of cars going at the same time and we can actually test out new algorithms in a safe environment,” says graduate student Noam Buckman.
Writing for Fortune, Prof. Elazer R. Edelman and Mike Mussallem of Edwards Lifesciences write that the backlog of deferred medical treatments caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting long-term health consequences could impact public health for years. Edelman and Mussallem emphasize that “it is incumbent upon us to identify timely real-world evidence to elucidate the effects of policy changes so they can be adaptive and agile enough to provide access to critical interventions and procedures.”