Writing for Astronomy, Korey Haynes spotlights Elaine Denniston, who was hired as a keypuncher at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, but went above and beyond, reviewing the Apollo code for errors. Denniston, who went on to become a lawyer, says that she “didn’t realize then that what I did was anything special. I typed, I found errors, I nagged people.”
Prof. Dava Newman speaks with WBUR’s Sharon Brody about the impact of the Apollo program on her own career and on humanity at large. Newman, who notes that the success of the Apollo 11 mission, “taught her to dream,” notes that, “if you're going to do the big, audacious engineering, technological, scientific breakthroughs? Well, you have to take risks.”
In an article originally written for Popular Mechanics for the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, MIT alumnus Buzz Aldrin makes a case for why Americans should aim to travel to the Moon again. “A return to the Moon offers a way to leverage an evolutionary expansion of our capability in space,” Aldrin wrote.
CSAIL researchers have developed a new system aimed at allowing non-experts to design drones of different sizes and shapes that can alternate between hovering and gliding. The drones combine “the stability and flexibility of a multi-copter, with the speed and fuel efficiency of an airplane.”
Prof. Max Shulaker has fabricated the first foundry-built silicon wafer, a monolithic 3D carbon nanotube integrated circuit, reports Samuel K. Moore for IEEE Spectrum. “We’ve completely reinvented how we manufacture this technology,” explains Shulaker, “transforming it from a technology that only worked in our academic labs to a technology that can and is already today working inside a commercial fabrication facility within a U.S. foundry.”
USA Today reporter Joshua Bote highlights Prof. Dava Newman’s work developing a skintight spacesuit called the BioSuit, which should provide astronauts greater mobility. The BioSuit includes “nucleated boron minitubes spun into thread and sewn into these stretchy suits – effectively protecting the human body from space radiation,” writes Bote.
A new study by MIT researchers finds that there are differences in how genes are used in men and women, reports Angus Chen for WBUR. “I think we are at present missing a lot because we operate with what is essentially a unisex model in biomedical research,” explains Prof. David Page.
Prof. Jeff Hoffman speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Deborah Netburn about the importance of sending a woman to the moon. “When people ask when I knew I wanted to be an astronaut, I always say that like every other red-blooded boy, I was inspired by the men who flew on Apollo,” he said. “Unfortunately, the red-blooded girls didn’t have those role models.”
Writing for The New York Times, research scientists Chelsea Barabas and Karthik Dinakar argue that risk assessment algorithms designed to help predict people’s future criminal behavior are “fundamentally flawed. They give judges recommendations that make future violence seem more predictable and more certain than it actually is. In the process, risk assessments may perpetuate the misconceptions and fears that drive mass incarceration.”
Boston Globe reporter Cate McQuaid spotlights the Ericka Beckman exhibit at the List Visual Arts Center. “Beckman models her incantatory, hallucinogenic films on the ritualistic repetitions of games and hard labor,” writes McQuaid. She draws on fairy tales and uses percussive, throbbing music. Woven together, these structures offer a desperate, frenzied model of life in a society driven by work, production, and the almighty dollar.”
A study by Prof. Dan Rothman finds that increasing greenhouse gas emission rates could trigger a mass extinction in the ocean, reports Priya Shukla for Forbes. Shukla writes that Rothman found if a certain carbon threshold “is breached, it would take tens of thousands of years for the oceans to return to their original unperturbable state.”
Code developed by Margaret Hamilton, who led the development of the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, was “good — so good, in fact, that it very well might have saved the entire Apollo 11 mission,” writes Dylan Matthews for Vox.
MIT researchers have found that online restaurant data can be used to accurately predict key socioeconomic factors for neighborhoods in China, reports the Xinhua news agency. The researchers found that “in nine Chinese cities, the presence of restaurants could effectively predict a neighborhood's daytime and nighttime population, the number of businesses and overall spending.”
Washington Post reporter Martin Weil spotlights the work of Prof. Fernando Corbató, who “drastically expanded the usefulness of the computer and put its benefits at the reach of all.” Weil notes that Corbató, who died on July 12, “fostered the digital revolution by developing shared computer operating systems and also put his stamp on daily life by introducing the computer password.”
MIT Solve has launched an innovation fund aimed at attracting funding for social-impact ventures tackling global issues such as access to clean water, reports Eillie Anzilotti for Fast Company. “There’s an increase in focus on these issues in the U.S. and across the world, and there’s definitely increased movement on the political and investment spectrums,” explains Alex Amouyel, executive director of Solve.