In the Media

In an article for The Wall Street Journal about next generation technologies that can create and quantify personal health data, Laura Cooper spotlights Prof. Dina Katabi’s work developing a noninvasive device that sits in a person’s home and can help track breathing, heart rate, movement, gait, time in bed and the length and quality of sleep. The device “could be used in the homes of seniors and others to help detect early signs of serious medical conditions, and as an alternative to wearables,” writes Cooper.

Fast Company reporter Mark Sullivan spotlights QuEra Computing as one of the 15 startups to watch in 2022. “Research breakthroughs by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University led to the launch of QuEra Computing, which uses a unique quantum architecture and laser techniques to arrange and direct the tiny qubits or quantum bits, in its 256-qubit system,” writes Sullivan.

MIT researchers have developed an approach to control methane emissions by using zeolite clays with small amounts of copper, reports The Engineer. “The systems’ ideal location, the team concluded, would be in places with a concentrated source of methane such as dairy barns and coal mines,” according to The Engineer. “These already tend to have air-handling systems in place since a buildup of methane can be a safety hazard.”

MIT researchers have developed a new approach to removing methane emissions from the air using zeolite, an inexpensive material used in cat litter, reports Adele Peters for Fast Company. Prof. Desiree Plata explains that compared to carbon dioxide, “methane is actually much worse, from a global warming perspective. What this allows us to do is bring immediate climate benefit into the Earth system and actually change global warming rates in our lifetime.”

Forbes reporter Christ Westfall spotlights “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines,” a new book by Prof. David Autor, Prof. David Mindell and Research Scientist Elizabeth Reynolds that explores the future of work in America. “The US has allowed traditional channels of worker voice to atrophy without fostering new institutions or buttressing existing ones,” they write. “It has permitted the federal minimum wage to recede to near irrelevance.”

New York Times reporter Steve Lohr spotlights Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s research showing that “excessive automation” has contributed to rising inequality. “We need to redirect technology so it works for people,” says Acemoglu, “not against them.”

Pierre-Oliver Gourinchas PhD ’96 has been appointed chief economist by the International Monetary Fund, reports Ana Monetiro for Bloomberg. “The economist, a French national who is also program director of international finance and macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economics Research, was an IMF visiting scholar and the editor-in-chief of the IMF Economic Review from 2009-2016,” writes Monetiro.

An international team of scholars, including MIT researchers, has published a new study exploring the history and use of letterlocking, reports William J. Broad for The New York Times. The researchers note that they hope their work prompts “novel kinds of archival research, and allows even very well-known artefacts to be examined anew.”

A study conducted by researchers from MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found that some N95 masks can undergo a standard decontamination process and remain effective, reports Meghan Roos for Newsweek. “After going through the VHP process 25 times, the N95 masks were found to retain a 95 percent filtration efficiency or greater,” writes Roos.

The Conversation reporter Stacy Morford spotlights research by climatologist Judah Cohen and atmospheric scientist Mathew Barlow, which shows how changes in the Arctic can lead to changes in the stratospheric polar vortex, and cold waves in North America and Asia. “Our research reinforces two crucial lessons of climate change: First, the change doesn’t have to occur in your backyard to have a big effect on you,” write Cohen and Barlow. “Second, the unexpected consequences can be quite severe.”

WBUR reporter Pamela Reynolds spotlights a new exhibit of Sharona Franklin’s work, which will be on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center this coming February. “Franklin presents a new installation combining the themes of chronic illness with bioethics, environmental harm and holistic approaches to healthcare,” writes Reynolds.

Prof. Justin Reich speaks with GBH’s Meg Woolhouse about the importance of addressing longstanding inequities in the education system. “It’s about creating a more equitable world where,” says Reich, “every kid in Boston has high-speed internet in their house, and has technology access, and has access to high-quality medical care and testing and things like that.”

MIT was named one of the top ten institutions for economics research in the Higher Education Research and Development Survey released by the National Science Foundation, reports Michael Nietzel for Forbes.

GBH’s Basic Black host Callie Crossley speaks with Lecturer Malia Lazu,about how issues surrounding Covid-19, voting rights, economic downturn, police brutality, education, climate change and politics will impact communities of color in the coming year. “What I see is a democracy fighting itself,” says Lazu. "People in power, republicans or democrats, being bought into the idea of democracy more than the people in the democracy.”

STAT reporter Megan Molteni writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that senescent cells, which are linked to aging, may potentially be a cause of Down syndrome. “We hope it opens up new avenues for how we look at Down syndrome — that there seems to be this whole other element that plays on a different timeline that we really need to explore more.”