Alyce Johnson, senior adviser to the Vice President for HR on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at MIT, speaks with Emer Moreau of University Times about MIT making Juneteenth a holiday. “For me, as an African American woman, seeing an organization that I’ve been with for 30 years, really shifting and growing and becoming much more inclusive – I’m very excited about [that],” says Johnson. “I do hope that it will spread along.”
Students in Prof. Azra Akšamija’s class created Covid-19 masks that reflected their experiences and shared powerful messages with the world, reports 7 News. “Students learn how to articulate problems they see in the world and issues that we are facing,” says Akšamija. “And to communicate that and translate that through their designs.”
In an interview with of CBC Radio, graduate student Carmelo Ignaccolo discusses the need to better understand how to make cities good places for residents and tourists to coexist. "There are very different ways in which data can really help us plan better cities," says Ignaccolo.
Koch Institute fellow Dr. Rameen Shakur and his colleagues have developed a new computer tool that could allow doctors to personalize treatments for patients with inherited heart disease. “In areas such as cardiology and oncology, where large amounts of clinical and genetic data need to be analyzed, adopting a computer-based approach…can make diagnosis, outcome prediction and treatment more effective and efficient,” writes Helen Albert for Clinical OMICs.
Time reporter Alice Park spotlights how MIT startup BioBot is sampling and analyzing sewage for communities across the U.S. to help track the spread of Covid-19. “Over the course of this pandemic, the entire world has seen how valuable wastewater epidemiology is as a tool,” says Newsha Ghaeli, president and co-founder of Biobot. “Our long-term vision is that wastewater epidemiology becomes a permanent part of the infrastructure embedded on top of sewage systems across the country and around the world.”
Senior research engineer Howard Herzog speaks with Climate Now about carbon capture and storage, and how the technology could be used to help reach net-zero emissions.
Writing for The Conversation, MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub Co-Director Randolph Kirchain and postdoctoral associate Hessam AzariJafari explore how building lighter-colored, more reflective roads could potentially help lower air temperatures and reduce heat waves. “As cities consider ways to combat the effects of climate change, we believe strategically optimizing pavement is a smart option that can make urban cores more livable,” they write.
Quinnton Harris ’11 speaks with Fast Company reporter Elizabeth Segran about the campaign to make Juneteenth a paid holiday. “There are so many times in my life that I haven’t felt American, whether that’s in the workplace or in white spaces,” Harris says. “When I learned that Juneteenth was a celebration of Black liberation, it felt so right.”
A new working paper by MIT researchers finds that automation is replacing more workers than outsourcing, reports Scott Tong for Marketplace. Prof. Daron Acemoglu notes that workers displaced by machines won’t be able to find better quality jobs unless “we invest in new technologies that create new tasks and new opportunities for workers.”
A new working paper co-authored by Prof. Daron Acemoglu finds that automation technology has been the primary driver of income inequality in the U.S. over the past 40-years. “Offshoring, the decline of unions, and corporate concentration have all played a part in widening the gap between lower-skilled and higher-skilled workers,” reports Bryan Walsh for Axios, “but automation is the single most significant factor, and will likely grow even more important in the years ahead.”
Forbes contributor Eric Tegler spotlights how MIT researchers are developing a fiber with digital capabilities. “Individuals wearing garments with digital fibers could be alerted to vital information about their physiology and environmental exposures, and share health/injury and location data with support forces,” Tegler explains.
MIT researchers have developed new programmable fibers that could help transform clothing into wearable computers, reports Kyle Mizokami for Popular Mechanics. “The polymer fibers contain hundreds of tiny silicon microchips that, once electrified, can sustain a digital connection across tens of meters,” Mizokami writes.
New Scientist reporter Leah Crane writes that a set of mirrors at LIGO have been cooled to near absolute zero, the largest objects to be brought to this frigid temperature. “The goal of this work is to help explain why we don’t generally see macroscopic objects in quantum states, which some physicists have suggested may be due to the effects of gravity,” writes Crane.
LIGO researchers have nearly frozen the motion of atoms across four mirrors used to detect ripples in space-time, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. “We could actually use the same capability of LIGO to do this other thing, which is to use LIGO to measure the random jiggling motion of these mirrors—use that information which we have about the motion—and apply a counteracting force, so that you know you would stop the atoms from moving,” says Prof. Vivishek Sudhir.
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that LIGO researchers have cooled a human-scale object to a near standstill. "One of the questions that we might be able to answer is: 'Why do large objects not naturally appear in quantum states?' There are various conjectures for why that might be; some say that gravity -- which acts strongly on larger objects -- might be responsible," explains Prof. Vivishek Sudhir. "We now have a system where some of these conjectures can be experimentally tested.”