NIH Director Francis Collins highlights how MIT researchers have developed a new ingestible device, shaped like the shell of an African leopard tortoise, that can inject insulin directly into the stomach wall. Collins writes that, “this fascinating work serves as a reminder that when it comes to biomedical science, inspiration sometimes can come from the most unexpected places.”
Prof. Theodore Postol writes for The New York Times about the potential consequences of the United States of America withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. “It is the unimaginable capabilities of these weapons that must take center stage when considering the giant and still unknown terrors and threats they pose to global stability and humanity’s future,” argues Postol.
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes that MIT startup Altaeros has developed a helium-filled airship called a SuperTower that can be used to carry cellular antennas and can be tethered 800 feet above ground. Bray explains that radio signals from the SuperTower “have a range of more than 35 miles over flat terrain, taking the place of 15 land-based cell towers.”
MIT researchers have found that climate change could cause more thunderstorms and stagnant air in the summer, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. “With temperatures rising globally, and particularly in the Arctic, the energy in the atmosphere is being redistributed,” writes Finucane. “The result is that more energy will be available to fuel thunderstorms.”
Prof. John Deutch proposes a demonstration project to show how renewable energy could provide 95 percent of electricity generation, reports Jeff McMahon for Forbes. Deutch suggests “setting up a competition between energy developers, allowing them to bid on a 20-year contract to provide a system that meets 95 percent of demand in an area using solar, wind and storage alone.”
New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye writes about the years of effort that go into ensuring that large-scale, Nobel-prize winning scientific endeavors like LIGO – which is jointly operated by MIT and Caltech – are funded and successful. Overbye writes that LIGO’s success “was a saga of persistence, ingenuity and just plain bravery in the face of nature and professional skepticism.”
Forbes contributor Gil Press writes about MIT cybersecurity startup Duality Technologies, which is working on guaranteeing privacy and utility. Press explains that the company is using a cybersecurity technique called Homomorphic Encryption, which “allows for processing and analysis of the encrypted data without having the secret key.”
Prof. Tim Berners-Lee speaks with Wired reporter K.G. Orphanides about his startup Inrupt, which is aimed at transforming how we share personal data on the web. Orphanides explains that Berners-Lee’s idea is that, “instead of a company storing all your personal data on their servers, you would keep it on your own personal data ‘pod.’”
Keri Pearlson, executive director of Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan, speaks with Ally Donnelly of NBC 10 about protecting your online privacy. “Your spouse, your family, your birthday, your hometown, your high school, your college, your degrees,” says Pearlson. “I think we have to assume our information is out there and take other steps to protect ourselves.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with National Geographic reporter Jamie Shreeve about her work searching for an Earth-like planet orbiting a sunlike star. “You never know what’s going to happen,” Seager says. “But I know that something great is around those stars.”
In an article for The New York Times Magazine about the history of women working in the field of computer programming, Clive Thompson highlights the work of Mary Allen Wilkes, a “programming whiz” who worked at MIT’s Lincoln Lab back in the 1960s on the creation of the LINC.
MIT startup Vicarious Surgical is developing a minimally invasive surgical technique that combines virtual reality and miniature surgical robots, reports Jonathan Sieber for TechCrunch. The founders say they hope “to drive down both the cost of higher impact surgeries and access to the best surgeons through remote technologies.”
Washington Post reporter Taylor Telford highlights a working paper by MIT researchers that examines how misinformation about vaccines spreads on social media. “The majority of misinformation about vaccines is spread by individuals,” explains Prof. Catherine Tucker. “That is a far harder problem to solve, as trying to clamp down on that kind of social sharing has tensions with trying to preserve free speech.”
TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Sieber writes about biomanufacturing company Culture Biosciences, which was co-founded by MIT alumnus Will Patrick. Sieber writes that Patrick was inspired by his time at the Media Lab and by MIT startups like Gingko Bioworks, explaining that he noticed “that the problem and the bottleneck in the industry was moving from industrial design to scale-up.”
Forbes reporter Chuck Tannert spotlights alumnus R.J. Scaringe, founder and CEO of the electric vehicle company Rivian Automotive. Scaringe explains his motivation to build electric vehicles: “It was frustrating knowing the things I loved were simultaneously the things that were making the air dirtier and causing all sorts of issues, everything from geopolitical conflict to the smog to climate change.”