A new study by researchers from the MIT AgeLab finds that drivers of Tesla cars tend to be more distracted when using the car’s semi-autonomous system, reports Matt McFarland for CNN. The researchers found “drivers glanced more frequently away from the road, and thus paid less attention, when Autopilot was active.”
Gizmodo reporter George Dvorsky writes that astronomers from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, including MIT Haystack Observatory researchers, have studied the physical changes to M87* black hole and found that it appears to be wobbling. “With this paper, we’ve now entered into a new era of studying the intimate areas around black holes,” writes Dvorsky.
Prof. Regina Barzilay has been named the inaugural recipient of the Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence to Benefit Humanity for her work developing new AI techniques to help improve health care, reports Rebecca Robbins for STAT. Robbins writes that Barzilay is focused on turning the “abundance of research on AI in health care into tools that can improve care.”
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has awarded Prof. Regina Barzilay a $1 million prize for her work advancing the use of AI in medicine, reports John McCormick for The Wall Street Journal. "Regina is brilliant, has very high standards, and is committed to helping others,” says Prof. James Collins. “And I think her experience with—her personal experience with cancer—has motivated her to apply her intellectual talents to using AI to advance health care.”
The AP highlights how Prof. Regina Barzilay has been named the inaugural winner of a new award given by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence for her work “using computer science to detect cancer and discover new drugs has won a new $1 million award for artificial intelligence.”
MIT researchers have discovered an Earth-sized planet, named K2-315b, which is being referred to as the “pi planet” for its 3.14 day orbit, reports Allison Gasparini for Forbes. “Having planets like K2-315b will help us to further understand the diverse planet bodies out there,” says graduate student Prajwal Niraula.
Graduate student John Urschel speaks with Jamison Hensley of ESPN about his efforts aimed at empowering and encouraging more Black students to pursue careers in STEM fields. “Now more than ever, it’s really important that we highlight some of the diverse areas of mathematics that don’t typically get seen every day,” says Urschel.
Engine CEO Katie Rae speaks with Arielle Pardes of Wired about the need to invest in companies that are tackling the world’s most urgent problems. “We back transformational technology that could shape a market and solve a huge world problem all in a go,” says Rae. “But it requires patience, it requires capital and it requires imagination on how to get these types of companies to market.”
Tech Explorist reporter Amit Malewar writes that researchers from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) have “demonstrated a new way to manufacture human red blood cells (RBCs) that cuts the culture time by half compared to existing methods.”
Researchers at MIT and UMass Lowell have developed a completely flat fisheye camera lens. These lenses “could be used as depth sensors in smartphones, laptops, and wearables,” writes Victoria Song for Gizmodo. “The team also believes there could be medical applications—think imaging devices like endoscopes.”
In an article for The New York Times, Prof. Charles Stewart III examines how to ensure that voting is safe and accessible during this year’s presidential election. “We need the campaigns, the leaders with big followings and civil society to point voters to the correct information on all the different ways to vote this November and why each mode is safe and secure,” writes Stewart.
Writing for Forbes, research engineer Bryan Reimer explores a question that will be included on election ballots in Massachusetts that “proposes to augment the state’s 2013 Automobile Right to Repair Law with new added vehicle data access requirements.” Reimer argues that the provisions in the ballot initiative are “ripe for cyber terrorism that could quickly place vehicle occupants and other road users at increased risk.”
“At our best, scientists are explorers and what I’ve discovered is that life can change in the blink of an eye,” writes Prof. Sara Seager in an excerpt from her new book, “The Smallest Lights in the Universe” published by The Guardian. “We need to hold on to the glimmers of hope – however small – and to continue to search for what really matters.”
MIT researchers have designed a completely flat wide-angle lens that can produce clear, 180-degree images, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. “The engineers were able to make it work by patterning a thin wafer of glass on one side with microscopic, three-dimensional structures that are positioned very precisely in order to scatter any inbound light in precisely the same way that a curved piece of glass would,” writes Etherington.
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach about the Breakthrough Initiative she is leading aimed at exploring the feasibility of sending an exploration mission to Venus. “We just want to do something small and fast and focused,” says Seager. “Can we send a microscope and look for life directly?”