Mercury News reporter Victoria Kezra writes that Monta Vista High School graduate Steven Liu, who plans to attend MIT this fall, was a member of the team that won the 49th International Chemistry Olympiad. Liu explains that he was drawn to studying chemistry because of, “the way that small molecular building blocks can combine to create lifesaving drugs is beautiful.”
Writing for The New York Times Magazine, Wil S. Hylton highlights Prof. Ethan Zuckerman’s work examining how information travels around the internet. Zuckerman and his colleagues examined whether the internet, “serves mainly as a distribution network for the articles on major media, or if small blogs and websites can funnel their own stories back into the mainstream press.”
Research Scientist Jennifer Morris writes for Salon about her research showing that power companies should invest in carbon-free power sources despite uncertainty about future U.S. emissions limits. Morris and her colleagues found that investing in carbon-free sources, “best positions the United States to meet a wide range of possible future policies at a low cost to the economy.”
Noah Smith of Bloomberg writes that the foreign trade theory proposed by Prof. Cesar Hidalgo and his research team suggests that a country’s future growth is determined by how many different products it makes. This forecasting method is based on “the level of regulation or the amount of investment in education,” explains Smith.
Renée Richardson Gosline, a senior lecturer in the Sloan School of Management, writes for WBUR’s Cognoscenti about whether it is a good idea to integrate artificial intelligence in all aspects of the online shopping experience. People often “outsource decisions and tasks to technology based on the assumption that it will improve your performance,” explains Gosline.
CSAIL researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that can reduce video buffering, writes Kevin Murnane for Forbes. The system, “adapts on the fly to current network and buffers conditions,” enabling smoother streaming than other methods.
In an attempt to curb the increase in Lyme disease on Nantucket, Prof. Kevin Esvelt has proposed using gene-editing technology to engineer mice that can combat the spread of the disease, reports Cristina Quinn for WGBH. The idea is to, “genetically engineer these mice so that they are immune to the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.”
Prof. Feng Zhang has been honored as one of the recipients of this year’s Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for his work contributing to the development of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, according to the AP. The AP notes that CRISPR-Cas9, “has sparked a boom in research over the past five years.”
Prof. Warren Hoburg speaks with Jeffrey Mervis of Science about his decision to leave MIT to join NASA’s 2017 class of astronauts. He explains that he is working on ensuring his students can continue their research. “I think we have a bunch of ideas that are really powerful, and I want to set up my students to continue that research.”
Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, speaks with Meera Vankipuram of The Times of India about his research, his areas of focus as dean and what sets MIT apart. Chandrakasan explains that at MIT, there is an “emphasis on translating research into solutions that have a positive impact on the world.”
Metropolis selected Boston as one of the best design cities in the world, highlighting MIT's School of Architecture and Planning and the Fab Lab as key drivers of the city’s success. “Here in Boston our biotech and high-tech industries are offering designers incredible opportunities to express their creativity,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of SA+P. “It’s a place where design is being pushed to new frontiers.”
CNN Greece highlights the "Maker Summer School," a weeklong workshop for unaccompanied refugees in Athens developed by researchers from the MIT D-Lab. The article, which is in Greek, explores how participants spent six days learning the design process by making real products they can use in their daily lives.
A study co-authored by MIT researchers shows that the moon’s magnetic field could have lasted for as long as two billion years, according to Xinhua. “The researchers are planning to analyze more lunar rocks to determine when the dynamo died off completely.”
MIT researchers have found that the moon’s magnetic field lasted at least 1 billion years longer than initially thought, reports Charles Q. Choi for NBC News. “Understanding more about the nature of the magnetic field of Earth's moon could shed light on the magnetic fields of distant moons and planets, which could influence their habitability."
By examining a lunar rock from the Apollo 15 mission, researchers from MIT and Rutgers University have found that the moon had a magnetic field for at least one billion years longer than initially thought, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. The researchers found that the, “lunar dynamo was still going until somewhere between one billion and 2.5bn years ago.”