Nature reporter Anna Nowogrodzki spotlights Prof. Aviv Regev’s quest to map every cell in the human body. “One of the things that makes Aviv special is her enormous bandwidth. I've never met a scientist who thinks so deeply and so innovatively on so many things,” says Dana Pe'er, a computational biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Randall Stross of The Wall Street Journal examines the latest book by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee, which explores technologies shaping the future of business. Stross writes that the, “authors present a splendid tutorial on things that are too new for most civilians to have gained a good understanding of—cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts.”
Scientists at the Broad Institute are trying to map every cell in the human body, reports Sy Mukherjee for Fortune. Once complete, the human cell atlas could “ultimately tailor drug discovery and treatment to a person's genetic makeup,” explains Mukherjee.
MIT researchers have designed a drone that can stay aloft for several days and could serve as an airborne telecommunications hub for disaster zones, reports Katherine Lin for NBC News. Prof. Warren Hoburg explains that the aircraft has a, “five-day endurance that is sized to carry a 10-pound payload at 15,000 feet.”
Wired reporter Aarian Marshall writes that researchers from the MIT AgeLab are examining driver behavior in an effort to reduce distracted driving fatalities. The researcher developed an algorithm that can help predict crashes based on driver behavior, which could eventually be used to “build and then test products that are safe to use in the car.”
MIT alumni Noelle Marcus and Rachel Goor have created a housing app that matches graduate students looking for housing with homeowners looking for assistance with household chores, writes Colleen Flaherty for Inside Higher Ed. Marcus explains that the app could help the “aging population in the U.S. stay in their homes.”
In this New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Emeritus Noam Chomsky discusses the current state of American politics with George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University. Speaking about the weightiest issues facing humanity, Chomsky explained that in his view, “The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war.”
President L. Rafael Reif speaks with Bloomberg TV about Greater Boston’s world-renowned leadership in education for a segment aired during the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. “I say to everybody, you can live anywhere you want, but when you’re young spend four years in the Greater Boston area,” says Reif. “It’s going to change your life.”
In this Bloomberg TV video aired during the July 4th Spectacular, Profs. Sangeeta Bhatia and Robert Langer discuss the Greater Boston area’s prowess in medical research. Langer explains that for his research, which is focused on inventing, “new things in chemical engineering that can change people’s lives in medicine, there is no better place.”
NPR’s Shankar Vedantam reports on a study by Prof. Joseph Doyle that finds that second-born children, compared to their older siblings, are much more likely to end up in serious trouble. While only a minority of children end up getting into serious trouble, Doyle found that, “there appear to be sizable differences between first- and second-born brothers.”
FOX News reporter Grace Williams writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system to assist people with visual impairments in navigating their surroundings. “We wanted to primarily complement the white cane to allow users with visual impairments to quickly assess their environment in a contactless manner,” explains graduate student Robert Katzschmann.
Writing for STAT, Anna Spier, a senior policy associate for J-PAL, emphasizes the importance of relying on scientific evidence when policymakers determine which opioid addiction programs to fund. “As governments and philanthropists collaborate to learn what’s working to fight opioid addiction, establishing an infrastructure to share knowledge across local, state, and federal agencies will accelerate their collective work.”
MIT researchers have developed a laser sensing technique that can decipher the makeup of space debris orbiting around Earth, reports Alex Kingsbury for The Boston Globe. Knowing what material the debris is made of, “will allow for more precise calculations of momentum, velocity, and the danger they may pose to other objects aloft in orbit,” explains Kingsbury.
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that MIT researchers have simulated a tiny motor that can be powered by light. Hays explains that the researchers designed, “a particle that could be powered and manipulated by simple light sources,” adding that the technique could be applied in medicine, in addition to a number of other fields.
MIT researchers have developed a light-based computing system that could enhance deep learning, reports Jesse Dunietz for Scientific American. Future versions fabricated for deep learning, “could provide the same accuracy as the best conventional chips while slashing the energy consumption by orders of magnitude and offering 100 times the speed.”