Prof. Angelika Amon is honored as one of the recipients of this year’s Breakthrough Prize for her work determining “how extra or missing chromosomes in a person’s genetic makeup can lead to disease,” reports Olivia Vanni for the Boston Herald.
National Geographic reporter Nadia Drake highlights the work of Prof. Angelika Amon, winner of the 2019 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. “I’m extremely grateful to have been selected,” says Amon. “I’m the representative of all the people who work with me over the years, who this prize is really for—my students and postdocs and trainees, really, they are the winners here.”
Getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep helps your brain function at its peak on a daily basis, writes Senior Lecturer Tara Swart for Forbes. Sleep helps to remove the by-products of neural activity, so “when sleep is poor and this process is impaired, these waste products build up, leading to cognitive decline,” Swart warns.
In an article for Wired, research scientist Ashley Nunes writes about the need for legislation that regulates the use of human teleoperators that can assist robotaxis in emergency situations when human judgement is needed. “Self-driving technology can deliver considerable benefits to society, but realizing those benefits will require that safety and profitability go hand-in-hand,” writes Nunes.
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about how to reduce gun violence, highlighting research showing that gun owners and their friends and family are most likely to be the victims of gun violence. “Many victims could be saved if it weren’t so easy to bring death upon themselves in their moments of greatest distress,” writes Levenson.
Wall Street Journal reporter Ryan Dezember writes about Thasos Group, a company co-founded by Prof. Alex “Sandy” Pentland that aims to “paint detailed pictures of the ebb and flow of people, and thus their money” by gathering anonymous data about people’s activities through their smartphone usage.
Ground-penetrating radar or GPR, developed by researchers from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, scans for stable underground features like soil density and rocks to help autonomous trucks drive in all conditions, writes Steve Banker for Forbes. Once a road is scanned, GPR “creates a map of the subsurface strata that can determine the location of a vehicle within a few centimeters,” explains Banker.
In an article for Forbes, Jim Vinoski highlights MIT alumnus Peter Zieve’s company Electroimpact (EI), which produces equipment to help manufacturers create airplanes. Vinoski notes that the electromagnetic riveting method Zieve invented is “much more precise than the old manual processes and cleaner and quieter than the hydraulic equipment.”
Writing for Science, Prof. Richard Larson writes about his decision to enter semiretirement as a professor, post-tenure, a position at MIT aimed at creating more positions for rising academics. Larson writes that after investigating the impacts of eliminating the mandatory retirement age for tenured faculty he realized he was inadvertently “blocking the way of many young scholars who seek academic careers.”
Science reporter Tania Rabesandratana examines how MIT researchers are gathering and identifying gut bacteria from people around the world. The effort is aimed at preserving the human gut’s microbial biodiversity and developing new treatments for diseases. “I'm 100% confident that there are relevant medical applications for hundreds of strains we've screened and characterized,” explains Prof. Eric Alm.
Motherboard reporter Daniel Oberhaus writes that MIT researchers have developed an AI system that can generate theories about the physical laws of imaginary universes. Oberhaus writes that in the future the system could be used to help understand “massively complex datasets, such as those used in climate modeling or economics.”
Speaking with Reuters reporters Guy Faulconbridge and Paul Sandle, Prof. Tim Berners-Lee calls for disrupting the power held by giant companies over how the internet is operated. “What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up,” Berners-Lee explains. “There is a danger of concentration.”
Writing for the American History Magazine, Sarah Richardson highlights the trailblazing path of Ellen Swallow Richards. Richardson notes that Swallow Richards was a “one-woman parade of firsts: first female student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first female fellow of the American Association of Mining and Metallurgy, first female professor at MIT.”
Rachel Crowell highlights the 2018 gala of the National Museum of Mathematics. The fundraiser featured a keynote speech from MIT graduate student and former NFL player John Urschel.
Katharine Schwab of Fast Company writes about the Media Lab’s Moral Machine project, which surveyed people about their feelings on the ethical dilemmas posed by driverless vehicles. Because the results vary based on region and economic inequality, the researchers believe “self-driving car makers and politicians will need to take all of these variations into account when formulating decision-making systems and building regulations,” Schwab notes.