Forbes contributor Daniel D’ambrosio highlights research affiliate Nan-wei Gong’s startup Figur8, which develops sensors that can help people better understand how they move. “We built a comprehensive platform to look at all the bio-markers that are affected by how you move,” Gong said.
Boston Globe reporter Bryan Marquard memorializes the life of alumnus Martin Trust, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who helped found the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. “We would not have been able to get started without his generous gift, and we would not have been able to reach the heights we have today without his continued support,” says Prof. Bill Aulet, managing director of the Trust Center.
MIT researchers have found that the ability to detect musical octaves is gained through exposure, reports Eva Amsen for Forbes. The researchers found to “match a note to the same note in a different octave, is not really all that natural. It’s a skill we got from being surrounded by music in which the octave is an important element.”
Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes that a working paper by postdoctoral fellow Baobao Zhang examined whether informing people of the impacts of automation on the labor market could shift views on immigration and trade. Zhang found, “even when presented with evidence that automation was by far the more salient risk to jobs, people continued to hold anti-immigration, anti-trade views.”
Writing for Forbes, Prof. David Mindell writes about the MIT Task Force on the Future of Work’s new report, which “shows that technologies evolve within social and economic contexts, and we have great influence over whether they replace workers or augment their skills.”
Prof. Joseph Formaggio speaks with Clara Moskowitz of Scientific American about how an international team of researchers (including MIT scientists) has found that a neutrino cannot weigh more than one electron volt. “Neutrinos seem to have broken our understanding of what the Standard Model was supposed to be,” says Formaggio.
Ruth Lehmann, a former member of the Whitehead Institute and faculty member at MIT, has been selected as the new head of the Whitehead Institute, reports Jonathan Saltzman for The Boston Globe. Lehmann is a “renowned biologist who is considered a world authority on the cells that give rise to sperm and egg.”
Washington Post reporter Justin Wm. Moyer highlights graduate student Ensign Christian Montgomery’s participation in the International Burn Camp, as part of an effort to support and inspire young people living with burn scars. “My scar is just something on my skin,” said Montgomery. “It’s not any deeper than that.”
NBC MACH reporter Denise Chow writes that researchers at MIT have created the blackest material to date using carbon nanotubes. “It was unexpected — like a proper scientific discovery,” explains Prof. Brian Wardle. “We were working on a new way to grow nanotubes, and when you make a new material, its properties may be interesting.”
Using a computing platform that applies unused processing power from home computers, researchers have solved a longstanding mathematical mystery by finding three cubes that sum to 3, reports Ryan Mandelbaum for Gizmodo. “Having access to this kind of computational power is like giving an astronomer a new telescope that is 100 times more powerful than any that existed before,” explains principal research scientist Andrew Sutherland.
MIT alumnus Cody Friesen, a professor at Arizona State University, has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize for his work developing long-lasting rechargeable batteries and solar panels that extract drinking water from the air, reports Max Jungreis for The Boston Globe. Friesen’s innovations “are truly improving lives,” said Lemelson Foundation Executive Director Carol Dahl.
New Scientist reporter Donna Lu writes that researcher from MIT and several other institutions have found a solution to the mathematical problem known as the sum of three cubes, which asks “whether any integer, or whole number, can be represented as the sum of three cubed numbers.”
Inspired by CAST artist-in-residence Diemut Strebe, MIT researchers have developed a new material that is 10 times blacker than existing materials, reports Kendall Trammell for CNN. “The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, which are microscopic filaments of carbon,” Trammell explains.
Prof. Sara Seager and postdoc Thomas Evans speak with WGBH’s Edgar Herwick about the quest to discover new planets in distant solar systems. “The hope one day is to find an Earth twin around a sun-like star and to be able to recognize it as such and to know that we’re not alone," Seager explains.
Prof. Brian Wardle speaks with CBC Radio reporter Carol Off about how, in collaboration with CAST artist-in-residence Diemut Strebe, his group has developed a new black material that absorbs 99.95 percent of visible light. Wardle explains that “the art really pushed the science in a different direction, which I think is an interesting and unexpected result.”