In an article for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart III examines how the rural-urban divide is reshaping American politics. “Between 2016 and 2020, votes shifted most in the middle of that rural-urban continuum,” writes Stewart. “These regions’ voters are likely to be most prone to shifting again in 2024.”
MIT researchers have uncovered evidence that humans crave social contact in the same way they crave food, reports Ali Pattillo for Inverse. The study, “provides empirical support for the idea that loneliness acts as a signal – just like hunger – that signals to an individual that something is lacking and that it needs to take action to repair that," explains former MIT postdoc Livia Tomova.
PlateJoy, a company founded by MIT alumna Christina Bognet, “offers a sophisticated digital platform that helps take some of the guesswork, challenge and waste out of eating for better health,” writes Elaine Howley for U.S. News & World Report.
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters spotlights Particles for Humanity, an MIT spinoff that is developing a new technology that makes it possible to deliver multiple doses of a vaccine in one shot. “The new technology works like traditional drug delivery,” writes Peters, “but with the addition of tiny time-release capsules filled with antigens, the part of the vaccine that stimulates the immune system so that it can later respond to a virus.”
Prof. Eric Alm speaks with New York Times Magazine reporter Kim Tingley about how studying wastewater can provide public health officials with advance warning of an uptick in coronavirus cases. “If you want to really understand what’s going on in a city on a basic chemical, biological level, you should be looking at the wastewater," says Alm.
Prof. Martin Zwierlein speaks with Madeline Sofia and Emily Kwong of NPR’s Short Wave about his work with ultracold quantum gases and observing superfluid states of matter. “Luckily we have techniques to actually take rather beautiful pictures of this quantum soup of these whirlpools of individual atoms,” says Zwierlein, “to try and make it out of this invisible realm and make it very real, touchable.”
Danielle Grey-Stewart speaks with Robert Brodsky of Newsday about receiving a Rhodes Scholarship. “It will allow me to study how environmental policy is formed from the context of how we look at society and nature,” says Grey-Stewart. “It’s really important that when finding engineering solutions, you can connect with communities… and uplift them as equal thought partners in finding solutions to pervasive problems.”
MIT seniors Danielle Grey-Stewart and Ghadah Alshalan have been selected for the 2021 Rhodes Scholarship program, reports Gal Tziperman Lotan for The Boston Globe.
Financial Times reporter Henry Sanderson spotlights Prof. Donald Sadoway’s work developing new battery chemistries that would allow batteries to store energy for longer than six hours.
Forbes contributor Derek Newton writes about Prof. Justin Reich’s new book, “Failure to Disrupt,” noting that the book is a “must-read for the education-invested as well as the education-interested.”
Research scientist Clara Sousa-Silva speaks with Wired reporter Abigail Beall about phosphine, a molecule that she has spent the past decade investigating. “Phosphine is a horrific molecule, it’s foul in every way,” she says. “It’s almost immoral, if a molecule can be.”
Reporting for WCVB-TV, Katie Thompson highlights a new study by MIT researchers that examines the role of super-spreading events in the Covid-19 pandemic. "The main idea is that most people generate zero or one cases, but it's the people generating hundreds of cases that we should perhaps be worried about," says postdoc Felix Wong said.
Writing for Science, Charlie Greenwood spotlights how MIT researchers are building upon their pioneering work twisting sheets of graphene together to create superconductors by using twisted graphene to develop working devices. “Many researchers are excited by the promise of exploring electronic devices without worrying about the constraints of chemistry,” writes Greenwood.
Prof. Charles Stewart III writes for The New York Times about claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia. “The evidence available in the public record demonstrates on its own that the claim of widespread fraud is itself a fraud,” notes Stewart.
Prof. Yossi Sheffi speaks with Boston 25 reporter Jason Law about how the Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting supply chains. “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad because we are more prepared for this,” says Sheffi of potential impacts caused by the latest rise in Covid-19 cases. “People now in factories and warehouses have dividers that they can work between. Everybody is wearing a mask. People understand the issue better.”