Mashable spotlights how two high school students, who were part of Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and MIT, have discovered four new exoplanets. “Both the students took guidance from mentor Tansu Daylan, a postdoc at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and helped the students study and analyze data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).”
Two high school students and their mentor, MIT postdoc Tansu Daylan, have discovered four new exoplanets located about 200 light years from Earth, reports Nora McGreevy for Smithsonian. The students were participating in the Student Research Mentoring Program, which pairs young astronomers with scientists at MIT and Harvard. “[The students] are so good at finding things that may skip your eyes, basically. It’s fun. And I really like the exchange of ideas,” Daylan adds.
New York Times reporter Brad Plumer spotlights a new study by Prof. Jessika Trancik that finds “new chargers on residential streets, as well as high-speed charging stations along highways, would go a long way to supporting an electric-vehicle boom.”
TechCrunch reporter Darrell Etherington writes that MIT researchers have developed a new “liquid” machine learning system that can learn on the job. Etherington notes that the system has “the potential to greatly expand the flexibility of AI technology after the training phase, when they’re engaged in the actual practical inference work done in the field.”
Wired reporter Will Knight spotlights how MIT researchers built a machine learning system that can help predict which patients are most likely to develop breast cancer. “What the AI tools are doing is they're extracting information that my eye and my brain can't,” says Constance Lehman, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and division chief of breast imaging at MGH.
Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint writes about how MIT researchers have developed a new technique for growing wood-like plant tissues in the lab. The work, they say, is still in its very early stages, but provides a starting point to a new way of producing biomaterials. “It’s a process that eventually could help accelerate our shift away from plastics and other materials that end up in landfill toward materials that can biodegrade,” writes Toussaint.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights Pison Technology, an MIT startup that has developed a new gesture control system that can be used to manipulate “digital devices by intercepting the electronic traffic between our hands and our brains, and translating them into commands the machines can understand.”
Quartz reporter Michael Coren spotlights a study by Prof. Fiona Murray examining the effectiveness of prizes and competitions in finding solutions for real-world problems. “If you’re not quite sure what the solution should look like and you want to focus attention on something,” says Murray, “then you actually don’t mind the fact that lots of people are turning up and coming with novel ideas.”
Writing for Cambridge Day, Marieke Van Damme, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Society, explores the life and work of alumna Lois Lilley Howe, a member of the Class of 1890. Howe was “a trailblazer, one of the first women to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s architectural program, the organizer of the only all-woman architectural firm in Boston in the early 20th century and the first woman elected as a fellow of the American Institute of Architects,” writes Van Damme.
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that debunking misinformation is the most effective method of addressing false news on social media platforms. “The team speculated as to the cause of this, suggesting that it fits with other indications that people are more likely to incorporate feedback into a preexisting judgment rather than alter that judgment as it’s being formed,” writes Coldewey.
Mashable reporter Sasha Lekach spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that finds installing more charging stations close to residences and in locations that match where people naturally stop, would help increase usage of electric vehicles. The researchers found that “this helps to make charging more accessible while drivers are going about everyday activities.”
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Amy Finkelstein examines the difficulties posed by trying to reduce waste in health care spending. “If something becomes more expensive, people will buy less of it,” writes Finkelstein. “And the empirical evidence is overwhelming: When patients have to pay more, they use less medical care. The problem is they use less of all types of care.”
Writing for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the development of new technologies that enable older adults to connect with their communities. “The pandemic has served as a propellant accelerating the adoption of devices and related services perhaps a decade faster than might have otherwise occurred.
The Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA), which includes a number of MIT researchers, is working on developing a new climate model that could be used to create more accurate climate predications that could be useful at the local or regional levels, reports Doug Struck for The Christian Science Monitor. “It’s always a mistake to say that you shouldn’t try something new,” says Prof. Raffaele Ferrari. “Because that’s how you change the world.”
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers examines the carbon emissions associated with video conferencing, reports Rachel Moss for HuffPost. The researchers found “just one hour of video conferencing or streaming emits 150-1,000 grams of carbon dioxide.”