Kate Darling, a research specialist at the Media Lab, speaks with Ira Flatow on Science Friday about “the historical lessons of our relationships with animals, and how they could inform our legal, ethical, and even emotional choices about robots and AI.”
MIT researchers have developed a new stent based on kirigami, the Japanese art of cutting and folding paper. The stent “can provide localized drug delivery through needle-like projections that pop out when the stent is extended,” reports Conn Hastings for Medgadget.
Ahead of Juneteenth, Malia Lazu, a Lecturer in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management Group at Sloan, speaks with Jeneé Osterheldt of The Boston Globe about what Black freedom looks like. “For myself, Black liberation can be defined as the self determination of Black people,” says Lazu. “Liberation is a culmination of honoring the past, being healthy in the present and curious about the future.”
Prof. Chris Knittel speaks with Stacey Vanek Smith on The Indicator from Planet Money podcast about the high price of oil and what that means for electric vehicles. “If everybody believed EVs were taking over next year, we would see oil prices tank now,” says Knittel. “The fact that they’re not tanking suggests that the markets think there’ll be sustained demand for oil for quite some time.”
Prof. John Fernández, Director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, partnered with Handel Architects on the design of a new Boston high-rise that will be the largest office building with Passive House-certification, an exacting sustainability standard. “This is exactly the kind of building that cities need to consider facilitating, because cities now have very aggressive carbon emissions reduction goals,” Fernández explains to Adele Peters of Fast Company.
Institute Professor Suzanne Berger speaks with Boston Globe reporter Jonathan Schlefer about how to ensure the new Senate bill that invests in research and development helps strength small and medium-sized companies. “The focus can’t just be on large firms at the top of the manufacturing chain because their ability to produce a range of advanced goods depends on their base of suppliers,” says Berger. “And today those suppliers lack the technology and skills to make the parts that would allow the top of the chain to take off.”
Mashable spotlights how MIT’s baseball pitching coach is using motion capture technology to help analyze and teach pitching techniques. Using the technology, Coach Todd Carroll can “suggest real-time adjustments as a player is pitching so that just one session using the technology improves their game.”
Scientists from the CHIME Collaboration, including MIT researchers, have reported that the radio telescope has detected more than 500 fast radio bursts in its first year of operation, reports Davide Castelvecchi for Nature. The findings suggest that these events come in two distinct types. “I think this really just nails it that there is a difference,” says Prof. Kiyoshi Masui.
CNN reporter Ashley Strickland writes about how researchers from the CHIME collaboration have announced that they have detected over 500 fast radio bursts (FRBs) using a radio telescope in Canada. "With all these sources, we can really start getting a picture of what FRBs look like as a whole, what astrophysics might be driving these events, and how they can be used to study the universe going forward," explains graduate student Kaitlyn Shin.
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique for labeling and retrieving DNA files, “a breakthrough that could help shrink the carbon footprint of the rapidly expanding digital world.”
Writing for Inside Higher Ed, Shigeru Miyagawa, senior associate dean of the Office of Digital Learning, and Meghan Perdue, a digital learning scientist at MITx, explore how the shift to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic has transformed education. “Faculty are now more aware of the ‘whole student,’ acknowledging their lives outside the classroom,” they write. “They have a heightened awareness of the need to create teaching practices that keep the students engaged and to use technology tools that enhance their teaching.”
Inverse reporter Passant Rabie explores how the CHIME radio telescope has identified more than 500 fast radio bursts in its first year of operation, providing clues as to the structure of the universe. “With enough of them, they are going to be the ultimate tool for mapping the universe,” says Prof. Kiyoshi Masui.
The CHIME radio telescope has catalogues more than 500 fast radio bursts (FRBs), which could be used to help map the universe, reports Charlie McKenna for The Boston Globe. FRBs are “kind of like lighthouses or sonar pings,” explains graduate student Calvin Leung, “and for the very first time we’ve shown that we can detect them in large enough quantities that you can really use them to make statements like, ‘Oh, the universe is expanding at this rate,’ or ‘This is how much matter there is in the whole universe.’”
President L. Rafael Reif speaks with Sabri Ben-Achour of Marketplace about the importance of the Senate passing a new bill that invests in research and development. “We are in a science and technology race for the future,” says Reif. “It is with science and technology that we address things like Covid and the biggest challenges the world has; the health of our economy, our security. That is key to all of the above.”
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey spotlights MIT startup ISEE, which is developing a robotic yard truck that could be used to move containers in shipping yards. Coldewey writes that the ISEE trucks could “transport containers (unmodified, it is important to note) to and from locations in the yards, backing the 50-foot trailer into a parking spot with as little as a foot of space on either side.”