Popular Science reporter Rob Verger writes that MIT researchers have identified a way to prevent the body from developing scar tissue around medical implants. The “discovery involves using drugs to affect the behavior of a type of immune system cell called a macrophage in a way that prevents the buildup of scar tissue.”
Prof. Canan Dagdeviren and her “Comfortable Decoders” group are developing a new device aimed at deciphering the body’s vital signs and delivering medication, writes Hilary Brueck for Forbes. The device will use “body movement as a powerhouse to monitor and record what's happening inside us,” explains Brueck.
Calla Cofield writes for Scientific American that a grant will allow the HERA team to search for light from the universe’s first generation of stars. Prof. Jacqueline Hewitt, who is leading the grant, says it’s “remarkable we're designing instruments so we can detect what was happening 13 billion years ago.”
MIT researchers have observed a black hole devouring a star almost 300 million light years away, writes Andy Rosen for The Boston Globe. “We are actually mapping out in real time what is happening as the star is getting ripped [apart] and it’s falling onto the black hole,” says postdoctoral fellow Dheeraj Pasham.
Alan Yuhas of The Guardian reports that Prof. Ernest Moniz, who recently returned to MIT, finds the current administration’s “anti-scientific” comments worrying. “If we’re not going to have fact-based discussions it’s very, very difficult to have an informed electorate and informed opinions,” says Prof. Moniz.
After serving as the U.S. Energy Secretary for nearly four years, Prof. Ernest Moniz has returned to MIT as a part time physics professor and special adviser to President L. Rafael Reif, reports the Associated Press.
John Authers of the Financial Times writes about Prof. Stephen Ross, best known for the arbitrage pricing model, who died at age 73. Ross was "one of the world’s most respected financial economists,” writes Authers. “Exceptionally versatile, he had at least three insights each deserving of a Nobel citation.”
Two teams from MIT received a 2017 Wellcome Image Award, “which celebrates colourful and captivating scientific images - from photography and illustration, to super-resolution microscopy and medical scans,” writes the BBC.
Brooks Hays writes for UPI about a new study showing that supermassive black holes consume stellar debris in bursts. "What we're seeing is, this stellar material is not just continuously being fed onto the black hole, but it's interacting with itself," explains Dheeraj Pasham, a researcher at MIT's Kavli Institute and co-author of the paper.
Dan Kennedy of WGBH News writes about a new study from researchers at the MIT Center for Civic Media and Harvard that examined social-media sharing patterns among conservative and liberal individuals.
Bloomberg View reporter Noah Smith spotlights the research of Prof. David Autor, who has been “pioneering ways to make the economics discipline both more credible and more relevant.” To mitigate the impacts of trade, Smith writes that Autor believes the “U.S. government should focus attention on manufacturing industries, and even use industrial policy to bolster the sector.”
MIT’s School of Architecture + Planning has been named the world’s top architecture school by QS University Rankings for the third year in a row, reports Madeline Billis of Boston Magazine. MIT received a total of 98 points when judged on categories including academic and employer reputations and research citations from the previous year.
Two MIT research teams from the Department of Biological Engineering and IMES were recipients of the 2017 Wellcome Image Awards, which “reward and showcase the best in science image making,” reports Nicola Davis and Eric Hilaire for The Guardian.
Deborah Levine and Terry Howard remember the mentorship between the late Prof. Michael Held and astronaut and PhD candidate Ronald McNair. “They remind us of the value of mentorship, the beauty of friendship, the productivity of collaboration and the impact of reaching across cultural lines,” says Levine.
Prof. Daniela Rus speaks to the BBC’s Gareth Mitchell about the robots developed by CSAIL that can modify their behavior based on brain waves detected by a human operator. “We imagine operating prosthetic devices, a wheelchair, even autonomous vehicles,” says Prof. Rus.