The Economist explores how the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led NASA mission, has identified a number of new exoplanets and, in the process, helped astronomers and scientists unearth new details about our universe. This latest discovery, according to The Economist, “will help answer some of the biggest questions in the rapidly growing science of exoplanetology.”
MIT researchers have developed a new technique to synthesize the feel-good molecules in the Kava plant root, reports Carey Goldberg for WBUR. “What we do in our lab is to actually start from plants that have thousands of years of use in traditional medicine," says Prof. Jing-Ke Weng. "We already know there's something in that plant that works to treat some illness."
The Department of Veterans Affairs is participating in a series of MIT “GrandHacks,” problem-solving sessions aimed at tackling some of the VA’s biggest health care challenges, reports Patricia Kime for Military.com. The sessions, explains Kime, “bring together teams of students, entrepreneurs, tech gurus, health providers, patients, insurers and academicians to find solutions to problems in a short amount of time.”
WGBH’s Cristina Quinn visits an AI Ethics camp for middle school-aged kids co-hosted by the MIT Media Lab and local STEM organization Empow Studios. “I love to think about a future where the students in this workshop make up the majority of the people who work in Silicon Valley or the majority of the people who work on Wall Street,” says graduate research assistant Blakeley H. Payne, a leader at the camp.
John Yang reports for PBS NewsHour about technologies to harvest fog to secure the world’s water supply, including one system designed by Prof. Kripa Varanasi to collect water from power plant cooling towers. Varanasi and his team “discovered that zapping air rich in fog with a beam of electrically charged particles draws the droplets toward the mesh, dramatically increasing its ability to collect water,” says Yang.
WGBH reporter Cristina Quinn visits MIT to learn about a new ethics of AI workshop offered to middle school-aged children this summer. “I don't want the ethics piece to go to an elite few,” says graduate research assistant Blakeley H. Payne of the importance of offering an education in AI ethics. “And then you're just perpetuating these systems of inequality over and over again.”
Prof. Ed Boyden speaks with New Scientist reporter Clare Wilson about his work studying the inner workings of the human brain. “I have a deep desire to understand what it means to be human – the meaning of our thoughts and feelings,” says Boyden. “That is really what motivates me to get out of bed in the morning.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with The Economist podcast “Money Talks” about how computers changed the US labor market, the impact of the rise of China and his own experience as an economist. “You have to take your results and accept them and sort of try to understand them,” said Autor. “You can’t simply reject them because they’re not consistent with what your expectations were.”
In a column for Wired, Media Lab Director Joi Ito argues that we must find a better way to measure the impact of charitable giving. After working with philanthropists and investors for years, Ito admits that, “all of us have struggled to measure the effectiveness of grants and investments that seek to benefit the community, the environment, and so forth.”
Prof. David Autor discusses the steady rise of “wealth work,” a term used to describe jobs that cater “to the whims and desires of affluent households.” Although these types of positions “have long been part of the U.S. workforce, Autor expects them to become a more substantial source of jobs and income in coming years, especially in cities,” writes Christopher Rugaber for the Associated Press.
Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder writes for US News & World Report about the planet hunting satellite TESS, which has recently discovered three new exoplanets. "The pace and productivity of TESS in its first year of operations has far exceeded our most optimistic hopes for the mission," said Senior Research Scientist George Ricker, TESS's principal investigator.
Martin Finucane reports for The Boston Globe on the latest findings of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, “a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center,” which hunts for exoplanets. TESS recently discovered a rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes in a system known as TOI-270.
A new MIT study shows that NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered three new exoplanets in a system known as TOI-270. “The newly discovered exoplanets are some of the smallest and closest ever found,” reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “All three planets are similar in size, which is very different from our own solar system filled with extremes.”
In an article for Fortune, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen argues that the Federal Reserve should not lower interest rates. “When the U.S. economy falls into the next recession, as it inevitably must, the Federal Reserve needs to respond by sharply lowering interest rates,” writes Pozen. “However, U.S. interest rates are now so low that the Fed has little dry powder in its arsenal.”