Samara Oster MBA '22 has founded Meli, a company that has crafted a gluten-free beer made with organic quinoa, reports Ann Trieger Kurland for The Boston Globe. “With 4.4 percent alcohol, typical of light beers, it’s produced merely with water, high-quality organic quinoa, hops, and yeast,” explains Kurland.
Writing for MarketWatch, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, examines how the revival of nuclear power could be beneficial for older workers with expertise in the industry. “The myth of older workers taking up space must end in every industry, but in a high-stakes sector such as nuclear power, older workers aren’t taking up space — they are a critical part of the future," writes Coughlin.
In an article for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, makes the case that people typically “look at retirement as leaving work, but we don't often think ahead of what else we might be leaving behind.” Coughlin emphasizes that retirees should not “forget to review your social portfolio’s retirement readiness and determine if you have saved and invested adequately in the social assets you will need in life after work.”
Prof. Christopher Reinhart speaks with GBH reporter Craig LeMoult about the feasibility of harvesting energy from the Charles River. Reinhart notes that using renewable heat pumps along with the old, existing steam infrastructure could be a good option for Boston and other cities around the country that have district energy systems. “I think you would see a lot of those, especially with the overall push towards decarbonization,” says Reinhart.
Lithios, a startup cofounded by Mohammad Alkhadra PhD '22 and Prof. Martin Bazant, is developing “a clean and relatively cheap way to access vast amounts of lithium,” reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Lithios has developed a lithium-absorbing material that can be made into electrodes using the same technologies created to make electrodes for lithium-ion batteries,” explains Bray.
Prof. Ariel White speaks with NPR reporter Elena Moore about how voting laws for formerly incarcerated individuals vary from state to state. “The right to vote is going to vary quite a bit across different states in the U.S.,” says White. “It can be really challenging for people to get accurate information about what the law is and how it might be applied to them.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new model for training robots dubbed Heterogeneous Pretrained Transformers (HPT), reports Brain Heater for TechCrunch. The new model “pulls together information from different sensors and different environments,” explains Heater. “A transformer was then used to pull together the data into training models. The larger the transformer, the better the output. Users then input the robot design, configuration, and the job they want done.”
Graduate student Aruna Sankaranarayanan speaks with Mashable reporter Cecily Mauran the impact of political deepfakes and the importance of AI literacy, noting that the fabrication of important figures who aren’t as well known is one of her biggest concerns. “Fabrication coming from them, distorting certain facts, when you don’t know what they look like or sound like most of the time, that’s really hard to disprove,” says Sankaranarayanan.
Three mathematicians, including graduate student Aleksandr Zimin, have disproved the “bunkbed conjecture,” offering “fresh guidance on how to approach related problems in physics about properties of solid materials,” reports Joseph Howlett for Quanta Magazine.
Postdoctoral associate Stewart Isaacs SM ’19 PhD ’24 speaks with Physics Today reporter Toni Feder about his passion for the sport of jump roping, research into solar-powered egg incubators for use in West Africa, and his work at MIT focused on addressing climate change and social inequities through the development of clean energy systems. “In jump rope, you have the basic building blocks of tricks. You need to combine them in ways that look interesting and are creative and fun to do. In engineering, you have the basic building blocks of physics. When you need to solve a problem, you need to come up with a creative solution to get there,” says Isaacs of the intersection between jump roping and scientific research. “And jump rope is hard. To be really good at it takes a lot of effort. The habits of working hard and problem-solving are also very useful in engineering.”
Researchers at MIT have found that “more than 98% of prisons in the United States experienced at least ten days that were hotter than every previous summer, with the worst of the heat-exposed prisons concentrated in the Southwest,” reports Minnah Arshad for USA Today. s
MIT researchers have used a sonar imaging system to observe a “colossal congregation of cod consume over 10 million capelin,” reports Mark Kaufman for Mashable. This event “was the largest predation event ever documented in the ocean,” writes Kaufman.
Prof. Katharina Ribbeck speaks with New York Times reporter Nina Agrawal about her research studying the health and medical benefits of mucus. “Ribbeck’s research has shown that the sugars on mucins can effectively switch off mechanisms that the bacteria involved in strep throat or cholera, for example, or fungus in a yeast infection, use to go from innocuous to harmful,” explains Agrawal.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a “black-hole triple, the first known instance of a three-body system that includes a black hole, which is not supposed to be part of the mix,” reports Dennis Overbye for The New York Times. The researchers propose that the black hole “could have resulted from a sort of immaculate conception whereby the progenitor star disappeared from the universe without any fireworks.”
Postdoctoral associate Peter Slattery speaks with Forbes reporter Tor Constantino about the importance of developing new technologies to easily distinguish AI generated content. “I think we need to be very careful to ensure that watermarks are robust against tampering and that we do not have scenarios where they can be faked,” explains Slattery. “The ability to fake watermarks could make things worse than having no watermarks as it would give the illusion of credibility.”