HealthDay News reporter E.J. Mundell writes that MIT researchers have developed an ingestible capsule that can be used to monitor health a patient’s health. “The capsule could deliver drugs as well as sense the condition of its surroundings in the gut, including infections or allergic reactions,” Mundell explains.
Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero’s discovery that when graphene is rotated to a “magic angle” it can act as a high-temperature superconductor has been named the Physics World 2018 Breakthrough of the Year. Physics World reporter Hamish Johnston writes that the “discovery led to the development of ‘twistronics’, which is a new and very promising technique for adjusting the electronic properties of graphene.”
MIT researchers have developed a new method to shrink 3-D printed objects, reports Douglas Heaven for New Scientist. The technique can be used to create a wide variety of shapes using different materials. “In the 1970s hobbyists built their own computers at home,” explains Prof. Edward Boyden. “Maybe people can now make their own chips.”
In an essay for Smithsonian, Ryan Smith chronicles how a group of MIT students created the first viral video game in the 1960s. Smith notes that the game, Spacewar!, “proved that video games made with heart could be addicting entertainment, and gave rise to the arcade culture of the decades to follow.”
Scientific American reporter Gary Stix highlights a study by researchers from the MIT Media Lab that examines the “underlying dynamics of collective attention and memory, traced as a bi-exponential curve (a steep drop followed by a slow decline over time).”
MIT researchers have engineered wasp venom to kill bacteria, reports Chukwuma Muanya for The Guardian. The researchers found that the altered peptides wiped out the antibiotic-resistant bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa within four days.
Provost Martin Schmidt and SHASS Dean Melissa Nobles speak with Wall Street Journal reporter Sara Castellanos about MIT’s efforts to advance the study of AI and its ethical and societal implications through the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Schmidt says this work “requires a deep partnership between the technologists and the humanists.”
Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, writes for Quartz about ways that new technologies can be used to make aging more fun for today’s seniors. “By investing in such uncharted aspects of the longevity economy now, we may pave the way for ourselves to live longer, better—and perhaps with a smile,” writes Coughlin.
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about the harm posed by casting doubt on the threat posed by climate change. “It falls both to the scientists at work in areas that have fallen prey to controversy — and the news media that covers both science and politics,” argues Levenson, “to make it clear what is truly known, and why it matters.”
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson speaks with Gizmodo reporter Brian Merchant about the 2018 AI Index report, which examines trends in the field of AI. Brynjolfsson says that when it comes to the impact of automation on the labor market, “developing countries are likely to be the hardest hit—they are the ones that depend most on low wages to compete in manufacturing.”
Writing for Forbes, research engineer Bryan Reimer examines how success can be measured as automated vehicles are introduced to our transportation system. “While automation may be the future,” writes Reimer, “the enabling technologies we are seeing today are pieces of a complex puzzle being assembled to build a picture of how automation will change the future of how we live and move.”
Writing for Wired, Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes about the need for creating more open, global datasets for such critical issues as air quality monitoring. “We need to start using data for more than commercial exploitation,” argues Ito, “deploying it to understand the long-term effects of policy, and create transparency around those in power—not of private citizens.”
Fast Company reporter Katharine Schwab writes that researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab have developed a new interactive tool, called Escape, that allows users to map flight costs to any destination in the world. Escape’s “design is meant to help narrow down countless destinations as you plan your next getaway.”
NASA’s Voyager 2 probe has entered interstellar space, reports CBS News. "Working on Voyager makes me feel like an explorer, because everything we're seeing is new," says John Richardson, principal investigator for the plasma science experiment onboard the spacecraft.
Boston Globe reporter Jessie Scanlon spotlights Prof. Regina Barzilay’s work developing machine learning systems that can identify patients at risk of developing breast cancer. Barzilay is creating “software that aims to teach a computer to analyze mammogram images more effectively than the human eye can and to catch signs of cancer in its earliest phases.”