New York Times reporter William J. Broad writes that researchers from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have found that sunlight can degrade polystyrene, a common plastic found in trash, in centuries or potentially decades.
MIT researchers developed a 3-D model of a bridge designed by Leonardo da Vinci and found that “not only did it work, but it would have also revolutionized bridge design five centuries ago,” reports Andrew Liszewski for Gizmodo.
Boston Globe reporter Murray Whyte spotlights the Alicja Kwade exhibit on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in a roundup of recommended museum shows this fall. Whyte notes that “Kwade brings her playful, monumental modernism to Cambridge with a new solo show.”
Boston Globe reporter John Ellement spotlights the work of John Goodenough, a longtime researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory who received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on lithium-ion batteries. “During his time at the Lab in the early 1950s, Goodenough was a major factor in the creation of a new type of RAM,” Ellement notes.
Engadget reporter Christine Fisher writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique that improves the speed and performance of video recognition models. Fisher writes that the new method “reduces the size of video-recognition models, speeds up training and could improve performance on mobile devices.”
Popular Mechanics reporter Jennifer Leman writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique that uses radio waves to enable neural networks to spot activity through walls. The technology is low resolution and cannot identify faces and has been “proposed as a more secure alternative to visible light cameras, which can easily pick up a number of details.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal about mixing AI into cooking, Jaewon Kang highlights how MIT researchers developed an AI system that generates new pizza recipes. “MIT asked a chef to add final touches to these combinations and make sure they tasted good,” Kang notes. The researchers believe “collaborations between humans and algorithms generate the most creative results.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal David A. Shaywitz reviews Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s new book, “More From Less.” Shaywitz writes that McAfee “argues that when the ‘fuel of interest’ is joined with the ‘fire of genius’—that is, when incentive and talent combine—seemingly impossible things can happen, even environmentally friendly ones.”
Prof. John Goodenough, who worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for over 20 years, has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of lithium-ion batteries, reports the Associated Press.
Dr. Francis Collins writes for the NIH that MIT researchers have developed an imaging technique that makes it possible to view dozens of proteins in the human brain in rapid succession. The technique, “may shed light on key differences among synapses,” writes Collins, and “provide new clues into the roles that synaptic proteins may play in schizophrenia and various other neurological disorders.”
MIT researchers have developed a capsule to deliver medications that currently have to be injected, reports Steven Reinberg for HealthDay. “This experimental pill can withstand the trip through the gastrointestinal tract,” writes Reinberg. “When it gets to the small intestine, it breaks down into dissolving microneedles that attach to the intestinal wall and release the drug into the bloodstream.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Boston Globe reporter Marin Finucane about an MIT report on automation and the future of work. “The point of the Task Force has been to bring all of these different parts of MIT together to weigh in on this critical topic for society,” explains Autor, “the roboticists, computer scientists, engineers, and data geeks as well as the political scientists, anthropologists, historians and economists.”
HealthDay reporter Steven Reinberg writes about an MIT study examining the impact of sleep on academic performance. Researchers found that “it's not just how many hours one sleeps that counts, but also the quality of the sleep, including regular sleep times,” Reinberg explains.
Principal research scientist Andrew McAfee appears on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to discuss his new book, “More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next.” “There are these assets all over the economy that are underutilized,” says McAfee. “I do think we are going to use software to make much more efficient use out of them.”
CNBC reporter Pippa Stevens spotlights a new art installation in New York’s East River that is collecting real-time information on water quality. Stevens notes that the installation was developed with the help of MIT researchers who installed a water monitoring device and “created an algorithm that sifts through the data and ultimately determines whether or not the water is safe for swimming.”