In an article for Forbes, Elaine Pofeldt highlights how programs such as the MITx MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management provide workers with an opportunity to update their skills at any point in their career. “Education is the ultimate safety net,” explains Anant Agarwal, president of edX.
MIT freshman Katie Collins is highlighted by The Boston Globe for her “noteworthy performance” at the Division 3 pre-nationals women’s cross-country meet. Collins’ performance helped the Engineers to a second-place finish in the meet.
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that an international team of astronomers, including MIT Prof. Saul Rappaport, has detected comets outside the Milky Way. “The distant ice balls, roughly the size of Halley's Comet, were spotted orbiting a small star 800 light-years from Earth. They were documented using transit photometry,” Hays explains.
Noreen O’Donnell and Estefania Hernandez report for NBC Boston on how sustainable energy could be used to help bring power back to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. O’Donnell and Hernandez note that Francis O’Sullivan, director of research for MITEI, explains that, “new technologies could be introduced in strategic locations, such as around public safety buildings or hospitals.”
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald is the recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, which includes a residency and public talk by the singer-actress, reports Don Aucoin for The Boston Globe.
MIT scientists have developed a technique that could potentially be used one day to treat diseases of the brain, muscles, liver and kidneys by using CRISPR to edit RNA, writes Melissa Healy for The Los Angeles Times. Making edits to the chemical message of RNA, “doesn’t effect a permanent change in a cell’s architectural plan; rather, it essentially alters the implementation of that plan,” explains Healy.
Newsweek reporter Joseph Frankel writes that MIT Media Lab researchers have developed an AI system named Shelley that uses human input to write short horror stories. Frankel explains that Shelley, “tweets out one or two sentences as the start of a new horror story, then calls for users to respond with their own lines.”
Prof. Feng Zhang and his colleagues have created a CRISPR-based system that can edit RNA in human cells, reports Amy Dockser Marcus for The Wall Street Journal. “The new RNA-editing system, which the scientists have dubbed Repair, allows the editing of individual RNA letters, correcting a common mutation known to play a role in a number of diseases.”
Financial Times reporter Clive Cookson writes that Prof. Feng Zhang and his colleagues have engineered CRISPR so that it can edit single RNA letters in human cells. Cookson explains that the researchers believe that, “RNA editing offers a safer and more flexible way to make corrections than the permanent changes involved in DNA editing.”
New Scientist reporter Timothy Revell writes that researchers from the MIT Media Lab have developed a new AI system that can tell scary stories. Revell explains that the system is “powered by deep learning algorithms that have been trained on stories collected from the subreddit /r/nosleep where people share their own original eerie works.”
Ike Brannon writes for Forbes about a survey he conducted with Prof. Michelle Hanlon asking equipment manufacturing companies what they want from tax reform. The majority of respondents in this diverse industry were in favor of removing all business tax breaks to “achieve a corporate income tax in the vicinity of 20 percent that is fully ‘paid for’,” writes Brannon.
MIT research scientist John Wright speaks with Hannah Osborne of Newsweek about a new process developed to heat fusion plasma, raising ions to energy levels greater than previously achieved. Wright explains that, “this method may have applications to more efficient heating of the plasma to the temperatures needed to begin the fusion burn.”
New Scientist reporter Michael Le Page writes that a study co-authored by Prof. Kerry Emanuel finds that while in the future hurricanes may be more likely to miss New York City, the city could experience 15-metre storm surges. “The result is peculiar to New York City,” says Emanuel. “Almost everywhere else, including Boston, we see an increase in surge heights and storminess.”
CNN reporter Jacqueline Howard highlights a new study by MIT researchers examining how children interpret an adult’s emotional response to a situation. "The results were surprising in the sense that we found infants were able to make fine-grained distinctions among positive emotions," explains graduate student Yang Wu.
Prof. Mitchel Resnick speaks to Radio Boston’s Meghna Chakrabarti about his research with the Lifelong Kindergarten group and what makes the kindergarten teaching method ideal. Children in kindergarten, “spend a lot of time playfully creating things in collaboration with one another,” Resnick explains, adding that “they’re really developing as creative thinkers.”