CNBC reporter Catherine Clifford writes that researchers from MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems have successfully demonstrated the high-temperature superconducting electromagnet they developed, creating a 20 tesla magnetic field. “This magnet will change the trajectory of both fusion science and energy, and we think eventually the world’s energy landscape,” says Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems scientists have created a 20 tesla magnetic field using a large, high temperature superconducting fusion magnet, a step towards creating a fusion power plant, reports Stephen Jewkes for Reuters. The researchers aim “to use the technology to build a commercially viable fusion power plant to generate zero-emission electricity.”
Nuria Oliver PhD ’00 speaks with Wired reporter Willem Marx about her work developing a data gathering system to help combat Covid-19 in Valencia, Spain. Olivier and her team developed “a powerful predictor that's been road-tested during a time of unprecedented strain, and continues to be used across Valencia," writes Marx. "They have also created a system that can suggest a small number of specific, effective pandemic-related policies or interventions that a government can make.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Sara Castellanos spotlights Prof. Markus Buehler’s work combining virtual reality with sound waves to help detect subtle changes in molecular motions. Castellanos notes that Buehler and his team recently found, “coronaviruses can be more lethal or infectious depending on the vibrations within the spike proteins that are found on the surface of the virus.”
In an article for Fortune, Prof. Amy Glasmeier and Alison Omens of JUST Capital underscore the importance of paying workers a living wage. “Those companies that will thrive in both the current and post-pandemic economy will be those that prioritize their workers—not just in their rhetoric but in paying them a living wage,” they write.
Wired reporter Viviane Callier writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers examines a Vietnam-era training program that brought recent medical school graduates to the NIH for several years of intensive research training. The researchers found program participants were “twice as likely to pursue research careers than the controls; they published more (and more highly cited) papers, and they disproportionately participated in training the next generation of physician-scientists and researchers.”
Vox reporter Jerusalem Demsas spotlights a new study by graduate student Benjamin Preis that “compared four different models of gentrification and displacement risk and found ‘striking differences between the models.’” The models “disagree on the front end, they disagree on what we call gentrification, and then not surprisingly, they really disagree on the back end to actually map out what those neighborhoods are,” says Preis.
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. David Autor explores how the current labor shortage provides an opportunity to improve the quality of jobs in the U.S. “The period of labor scarcity, then, is an opportunity to catalyze better working conditions for those who need them most,” writes Autor.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Kara Miller of GBH’s Innovation Hub about the impact of Covid-19 on the future of work.
Forbes contributor David Blackmon spotlights Ambri, an MIT startup that is developing liquid-metal batteries. Blackmon writes that Ambri has developing a new battery technology that could “help renewables like wind and solar scale up more rapidly in the coming years and help them occupy a larger share of electricity generation around the world.”
Boston Globe correspondent Dana Gerber spotlights how eight of the photographs alumna Linda Benedict-Jones captured of Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school students will be on display at the Harvard Art Museums this fall. “I thought of Cambridge Rindge and Latin as a kind of microcosm of society,” said Benedict-Jones. “I figured, there are probably kids in this school who are the sons and daughters of Harvard professors, and there are probably kids in this school who are recent immigrants.”
A team of researchers led by MIT visiting scientist Judah Cohen has found that climate change is amplifying winter weather disasters, including the rare cold snap in Texas and other southern states in February 2021, reports Becky Ferreira for Motherboard. “The team used both observational data and climate models to expose ‘stretching events’ in the polar vortex that cause its circular shape to become elongated across the Arctic,” writes Ferreira. “This phenomenon ‘is linked with extreme cold across parts of Asia and North America.’”
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that climate change is likely causing more extreme winter weather, reports Hallie Golden for The Guardian. The researchers found that changes in the Arctic brought on by climate change “actually increased the chances of tightly spinning winds above the North Pole, known as the Arctic stratospheric polar vortex, being stretched and thus boosting the chances of extreme weather events in the US and beyond.”
New Scientist reporter Adam Vaughan writes that a new study led by visiting scientist Judah Cohen finds that climate change may be causing more extreme winter weather in North America and Eurasia. “If you expected global warming to help you out with preparing for severe winter weather, our paper says the cautionary tale is: don’t necessarily expect climate change to solve that problem for you,” says Cohen. “This is an unexpected impact from climate change that we didn’t appreciate 20 years ago.”
A study by MIT researchers finds that crowdsourced fact-checking of news stories by laypeople tend to be just as effective as professional fact-checkers, writes David Scharfenberg for The Boston Globe. The researchers found that “even when pooling a relatively small number of laypeople’s evaluations, the correlation between laypeople’s and fact-checkers’ evaluations was about the same as the correlation among the fact-checkers’.”