Jesus Diaz of Fast Company writes that researchers from MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab are experimenting with the “truly wild” future of manufacturing with their 4-D printing technology that allows designers to rapidly print flexible, complex shapes. “It’s not hard to imagine the complex products and materials that this new technology could enable,” writes Diaz.
MIT alumna Stephanie Lampkin has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40 List. As the founder and CEO of Blendoor, Lampkin “is determined to mitigate systemic bias in tech and beyond,” writes Ellen McGirt for Fortune.
A new study co-authored by researchers at MIT finds that, “human activities are altering Earth's seasons in a way that is creating a greater contrast between summer and winter in much of North America, Europe and Eurasia,” reports Andrew Freedman for Axios.
The BBC’s Jane Wakefield attends a breast pump hackathon at MIT, where she meets with “a group of women determined to improve this old-fashioned tech.” MIT research affiliate Catherine D’Ignazio highlights matters like comfort, discretion and milk tracking capabilities as the type of issues the hackathon looks to solve.
Prof. Emeritus Ernest Moniz – former US Energy Secretary and co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative – speaks with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR’s Here & Now about the Trump-Putin summit and what it could mean for nuclear dialogue.
At the International Conference on Machine Learning, MIT researchers demonstrated an adversarial attack, fooling an AI system into thinking a 3-D printed turtle was a rifle, reports Matthew Hutson for Science. Prof. Aleksander Madry explains that the ability to fool AI systems shows, “we need to rethink all of our machine learning pipeline to make it more robust.”
Newsweek reporter Aristos Georgiou writes that physicists from MIT and other institutions have observed a star, called RW Aur A, consuming a young planet. Observations made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory over a five-year period enabled the finding, explains Georgiou.
WCVB-TV’s Karen Holmes Ward highlights how MIT students created a summer camp, called DynaMIT, aimed at getting middle school students interested in STEM fields. MIT undergraduate Julia Cho explains that DynaMIT tries to, “focus on hands-on activities because we know that students are much more interested in those sorts of experiments and places where they can explore to their heart’s content.”
Using data on subatomic particles called neutrinos from Antarctica’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a team including MIT researchers has determined that Einstein’s theory of special relativity is correct. “Neutrinos had not yet been discovered when Einstein died, but his theory still predicts their behavior,” explains Kimberly Hickok for LiveScience.
A team including MIT research scientist Ulrich Faul has discovered that the Earth’s interior contains 1,000 times more diamonds than was previously thought, writes Sarah Emerson for Motherboard. The researchers believe that one to two percent of “craton roots,” which are the deepest sections of the “rock layers extending upwards of 200 miles through the Earth’s crust and mantle,” may contain diamonds.
MIT researchers have discovered a cache of diamonds below the surface of the Earth, deeper than any drilling expedition has ventured, reports the Agence France-Presse wire. This discovery was made after “scientists were puzzled by observations that sound waves would speed up significantly when passing through the roots of ancient cratons.”
A new MIT study “offers ideas on job retraining programs for professional drivers and other workers who could be displaced by new technologies,” reports Callum Borchers for WBUR Bostonomix. The researchers hope to “provide a tool for people who might be planning these retraining programs that allows them to see what viable skill transformations exist," says graduate student Morgan Frank.
Using “recorded sound waves from seismic activity like earthquakes and tsunamis,” MIT researchers have found that there may be a quadrillion tons of diamonds under the Earth’s surface, reports Sarah Gray for Fortune. The seismic data provided this information, “because the speed of sound waves changes depending on the temperature, density and composition of the earth they travel through,” explains Gray.
In recent weeks, several groups of scientists have proven three of Einstein’s theories, reports Aristos Georgiou of Newsweek. Highlighting a team of researchers led by MIT Prof. Janet Conrad that proved Lorentz symmetry, Georgiou writes that their work “has shown that the great German physicist’s theory of special relativity applies even to tiny, high-energy subatomic particles known as neutrinos.”
Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press reports that astronomers, led by MIT research scientist Hans Mortiz Guenther, believe they may have witnessed a star devouring a young planet. According to computer simulations, the observed “30-fold increase in iron on the edge of the star” and “pronounced dimming” could be the result of planet devouring.