Writing for The Boston Globe, Alex Amouyel, executive director of MIT Solve, makes the case that “innovation is about solving problems. And if innovation is about solving problems, what problems you are solving and who is setting about solving them is key.” Amouyel adds: “If we are going to get serious about solving world challenges, we all need to adopt more open and participatory systems to find, fund, and support innovators, wherever they may be.”
Lecturer John Liu and Mary Ellen Wiltrout, director of online and blended learning initiatives in the Department of Biology, share how the pandemic has transformed the way in which universities approach digital teaching. Liu noted that the pandemic had “forced [universities] to rethink community and support…on a class level but maybe on a program level” as well as to refocus on how teaching modes best served learning objectives,” reports Times Higher Education.
Vice reporter Becky Ferreira writes that MIT researchers developed a new system, called the Reverberation Machine, to detect the echoes from eight new echoing black hole binaries. “These echoes offer a rarely seen glimpse into the otherworldly surroundings of stellar-mass black holes, which are about five to 15 times the mass of the Sun,” writes Ferreira.
Prof. Jared Curhan has found that “breakthroughs in negotiations occurred nearly twice as frequently after a conversational lapse of between 3.5 and 9.5 seconds as they did at any other point in the conversation,” reports Heidi Mitchell for The Wall Street Journal.
CSAIL researchers have developed a robotic arm equipped with a sensorized soft brush that can untangle hair, reports Douglas Belkin for The Wall Street Journal. “The laboratory brush is outfitted with sensors that detect tension," writes Belkin. “That tension reads as pain and is used to determine whether to use long strokes or shorter ones.”
CSAIL researchers have developed a robotic glove that utilizes pneumatic actuation to serve as an assistive wearable, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “Soft pneumatic actuators are intrinsically compliant and flexible, and combined with intelligent materials, have become the backbone of many robots and assistive technologies – and rapid fabrication with our design tool can hopefully increase ease and ubiquity,” says graduate student Yiyue Luo.
MIT researchers have detected eight echoing black hole binaries in the Milky Way and then converted the black hole X-ray emissions into sound waves, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. The researchers developed a new tool, dubbed the Reverberation Machine, which “combed satellite data from NICER, a telescope aboard the International Space Station that studies X-ray emissions from sources like black holes and neutron stars, including a weird type of emission known as an ‘echo.’”
Graduate student Anna Waldman-Brown writes for Wired about the future of automation technology and how it can impact labor dynamics in the future. “While some scholars believe that our fates are predetermined by the technologies themselves, emerging evidence indicates that we may have considerable influence over how such machines are employed within our factories and offices – if we can only figure out how to wield this power,” writes Waldman-Brown.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a machine learning technique for proposing new molecules for drug discovery that ensures suggested molecules can be synthesized in a lab. Coldewey also features how MIT scientists created a new method aimed at teaching robots how to interact with everyday objects.
A new portable, solar-powered desalination device developed by MIT researchers can create potable drinking water with the push of a button, reports Tony Ho Tran for The Daily Beast. “The device doesn’t rely on any filters like traditional desalination machines,” writes Tran. “Instead, it zaps the water with electric currents to remove minerals such as salt particles from the water.”
During the AI Cures Conference, Prof. Regina Barzilay spoke with Food and Drug Administration senior staff fellow Amir Khan about how the agency intends to regulate artificial intelligence in medicine, reports Casey Ross for STAT. “’My thinking is that models should be regulated based on their functionality, and not necessarily on the input data they use,” said Barzilay.
Researchers from MIT and the University of Waterloo have developed a new approach aimed at significantly increasing the probability of observing the Unruh effect, reports Juandre for Popular Mechanics. “Now at least we know there is a chance in our lifetimes where we might actually see this effect,” says Prof. Vivishek Sudhir. “It’s a hard experiment, and there’s no guarantee that we’d be able to do it, but this idea is our nearest hope.”
MIT researchers have developed a new ultrathin material that can turn any rigid surface into a speaker, reports Haje Jan Kamps for TechCrunch. “The loudspeaker could be used in active noise cancellation, for example — combine the speaker tech with some electronics and microphones, and it could cancel out sound,” writes Kamps. “The inventors also envision immersive sound experiences, and other low-energy use cases such as smart devices, etc.”
Prof. Anna Stansbury speaks with Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace about a new working paper she co-authored examining the lack of socioeconomic diversity in the field of economics. “Economists are really influencing policy and the public debate on all sorts of important subjects,” says Stansbury. “If we have a discipline [where] two-thirds of the U.S.-born economics profession is made up of people whose parents have graduate degrees, you know, that’s a very selected group that is maybe missing really important perspectives.”
In an article for the Financial Times, Prof. Robert Merton underscores the importance of providing workers with financial security in retirement and explains Selfies (Standard-of-living indexed, forward-starting, income-only securities), a pension-like bond innovation he helped create. “More such innovative instruments from academics, politicians and others are needed if we are to ensure more people can retire with resources that can withstand inflation and provide the security they need,” Merton writes.