Guardian reporter Nicola Davis spotlights Prof. Hugh Herr’s development of an autonomous exoskeleton device that could reduce the amount of energy humans use to walk. “We are taking a first principle approach, and joint by joint understanding deeply what has to be done scientifically and technologically to augment a human,” Herr explains.
In this piece for The New Yorker, Michael Specter writes about Prof. Kevin Esvelt’s idea to use gene-editing technology to eradicate Lyme disease. “This is an ecological problem,” Esvelt explains. “And we want to enact an ecological solution so that we break the transmission cycle that keeps ticks in the environment infected with these pathogens.”
Scientific American reporter Veronique Greenwood highlights a study by MIT researchers examining why some people seem to have an aptitude for languages. The researchers explored the structure of neuron fibers in white matter in beginning Mandarin students and found that students “who had more spatially aligned fibers in their right hemisphere had higher test scores after four weeks of classes.”
Graduate students Mohammad Ghassemi and Tuka Al Hanai write for Salon about an app they developed aimed at connecting people from different backgrounds. Ghassemi and Al Hanai note that about a third of the app’s users “report having made a lasting friend, someone they keep in touch with regularly.”
Writing for Wired, Juan Enriquez highlights the MIT Center for Extreme Bionics, which was launched in an effort to develop technologies that augment human performance and could help eliminate disabilities. Enriquez writes that the center’s “long-term ambitions are breathtaking.”
Wired reporter Kathryn Nave speaks with research scientist Sheperd Doeleman about the Event Horizon Telescope project, which is aimed at imaging a black hole using telescopes stationed around the world. "We have good evidence there are black holes at the center of galaxies just from the orbits of stars around them, but we've never actually seen one," Doeleman explains.
Research by Prof. Erik Demaine looks to find the best method for wrapping spherical objects, writes Sophie Bushwick for Popular Science. By examining how an Austrian candy maker wraps round candies, Demaine found that foil is the best material as “it makes lots of little tiny crinkles, or folds.”
The writers and editors of Science named the successful detection of gravitational waves by researchers from MIT, Caltech and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration as their top breakthrough of 2016. Science reporter Adrian Cho writes that “physicists are eagerly anticipating what may come next, because gravitational waves promise an entirely new way to peer into the cosmos.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Kristin Bergmann finds that nacre or mother-of-pearl can provide information about historical ocean temperatures, writes Kavya Balaraman for Scientific American. The researchers found that the layers of mother-of-pearl “provide a good estimation of the temperatures they grow in.”
Robert Gebelhoff writes for The Washington Post about a study by Prof. Tavneet Suri that shows mobile-money services helped reduce poverty in Kenya. The study “offers good evidence that having a place to put money that’s safe and easily accessible can make the lives of poor people considerably more efficient than cash-reliant economies,” Gebelhoff explains.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Sacha Pfeiffer highlights how MIT has partnered with Google, the City of Cambridge, Boston Properties, Alexandria Real Estate Equities and several other organizations to provide free high-speed Wi-Fi in Kendall Square and at the Newtowne Court and Washington Elms public housing developments.
Dean of admissions Stu Schmill spoke with Olga Khazan of The Atlantic about de-emphasizing the role of personal achievement in admissions decisions. “We’re trying to allow students to be themselves, to explore their interests more deeply, and not have to contort that or change that to fit the college-admissions process,” said Schmill.
KQED reporter Queena Sook Kim highlights Code Next, a program created by researchers from the Media Lab and Google aimed at encouraging high school students to learn to code through the process of making. “Coding is also making, and it takes the same problem-solving skills as making stuff in real life,” Kim explains.
TIME reporter Alice Park writes about a study by Prof. John Gabrieli that shows that the difficulty people with dyslexia experience when reading could be caused by reduced plasticity in the brain. “We need to figure out a curriculum or approach that matches the differences they have,” explains Gabrieli.
A new study co-authored by Prof. John Gabrieli shows that the brains of people with dyslexia respond differently not only to words, but also objects and faces, reports Felice Freyer for The Boston Globe. The findings point to “the core biological difference in the brains of people with dyslexia,” explains Prof. John Gabrieli.