Hill reporters Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin spotlight how MIT researchers have developed a way to make lightweight fibers for possible use in the bodies of cars out of the waste material from the refining of petroleum. “The ‘heavy, gloppy’ leftovers from the petroleum refining process could become a key ingredient in making electric vehicles lighter, less expensive and more efficient,” they write.
Researchers from MIT and MIT spinoff Quaise Energy speak with Boston Globe reporter David Abel about their work developing a new way to drill as deep as 12 miles into the Earth’s crust, using a special laser, which could provide a way to tap the geothermal energy in the rocks. “This is game-changing,” Woskov said. “We now have the potential to exploit an energy source that . . . could unleash the virtually limitless supply of energy beneath our feet.”
MIT startup Volta Labs is developing a new instrument that can automate the processes used to prepare genetic samples, reports Emma Betuel for TechCrunch. CEO and co-founder Udayan Umapathi ’17 is confident that with the right programming, the platform could allow “liquids to be manipulated in even more complex ways, like using magnetic fields to draw certain molecules out of samples for further analysis,” writes Betuel.
MIT researchers have created a new computer algorithm that has allowed the mini cheetah to maximize its speed across varying types of terrain, reports Shi En Kim for Popular Science. “What we are interested in is, given the robotic hardware, how fast can [a robot] go?” says Prof. Pulkit Agrawal. “We didn’t want to constrain the robot in arbitrary ways.”
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Jinhua Zhao explores how many people, when provided the opportunity to work remotely, work from a location other than their home. “If employers provide the necessary flexibility to their staff, and policymakers engage in smart land use and transportation planning for third-place trips,” writes Zhao, “the result could be a rare win-win-win for workers, businesses, and the public good.”
Prof. Kripa Varanasi, graduate student Sreedath Panath, and a team of researchers are developing a water-free way to clear dust off of solar panels, reports Billy Hurley and Ed Brown for Tech Briefs. “Water is such a precious commodity, and people need to be careful about how to make use of this resource that we have,” says Varanasi. “The solar industry really needs to keep this in mind; we don’t want to be solving one problem and creating another.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights how a number of MIT spinoffs are working on changing the world’s energy-storage systems. “Behind these companies are key technological advances in chemistry and materials, many of them pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” writes Bray. “These breakthroughs have put battery startups at the forefront of the region’s climate-tech sector.”
Prof. Emily Richmond Pollock speaks with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker about how some Western institutions have cancelled performances by Russian artists following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Some of the discussion of these issues has fallen into some old patterns of thinking that we as musicologists are alert to,” says Pollock, “and want to warn against, which includes reacting to these kinds of bans by insisting that music is apolitical, or that there’s something fundamentally and inherently apolitical about music, which is a really problematic and untrue statement, and a knee-jerk response.”
MIT researchers have used a new reinforcement learning system to teach robots how to acclimate to complex landscapes at high speeds, reports Emmett Smith for Mashable. “After hours of simulation training, MIT’s mini-cheetah robot broke a record with its fastest run yet,” writes Smith.
Professor Linda Griffith speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about her research on endometriosis. The dream is “that we get diagnosis at the start, and you get your therapy at the start, and you don’t even develop the disease,” says Griffith.
Boston Globe reporter Nina MacLaughlin spotlights how the MIT Press, MIT Press Bookstore and the MIT Libraries have launched a new reading series called authors@mit. The series will kick off with Maia Weinstock, deputy editorial director at MIT News, and her new book, “Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus.”
Boston Globe reporter Kevin Lewis spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that explores why it is often so difficult to comprehend the language in legal contracts. “In other words, what sets lawyers apart from laypeople is not necessarily their greater familiarity with legal concepts,” writes Lewis. “It’s that they’ve been trained in how to handle such esoteric language.”
Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with WHDH about his team’s work developing an acoustic fabric that can listen to and record sound, a development inspired by the human ear. "The fabric can be inserted into clothes to monitor heart rate and respiration. It can even help with monitoring unborn babies during pregnancy."
CSAIL researchers developed a new machine learning system to teach the MIT mini cheetah to run, reports James Vincent for The Verge. “Using reinforcement learning, they were able to achieve a new top-speed for the robot of 3.9m/s, or roughly 8.7mph,” writes Vincent.
Gizmodo reporter Andrew Liszewski writes that CSAIL researchers developed a new AI system to teach the MIT mini cheetah how to adapt its gait, allowing it to learn to run. Using AI and simulations, “in just three hours’ time, the robot experienced 100 days worth of virtual adventures over a diverse variety of terrains,” writes Liszewski, “and learned countless new techniques for modifying its gait so that it can still effectively loco-mote from point A to point B no matter what might be underfoot.”