Donald McNeil writes for The New York Times about a commentary coauthored by Professor Kenneth Oye on advances that could make it possible to produce morphine using genetically modified yeast. Oye argues for “locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let drug cartels reproduce them.”
The Associated Press writes about Professor Kenneth Oye’s commentary on a paper by researchers at U.C. Berkeley that shows how morphine and other painkillers can be manufactured without opium poppies. Oye calls for regulation in order to prevent abuses.
Kenneth Chang of The New York Times writes about a paper by Professors Oliver Jagoutz and Leigh Royden that suggests the Indian Subcontinent collided with an island arc before reaching Asia: “In the Nature Geoscience paper, Dr. Royden and Dr. Jagoutz show that the island arc could explain the swiftness of India’s travels.”
Sarah Lewin writes for Wired about research by Professor Pedro Reis and a team of MIT mathematicians on the formation of wrinkles in materials. “What’s beautiful about this work is the collaboration between experimentalists and theorists,” says Reis. “We challenged them with results we didn’t understand, and they went somewhere new.”
Boston.com reporter Bill Griffith writes that MIT and the New England Motor Press Association are holding their fifth technology conference on May 21 at the Media Lab. During the event, MIT alumnus Chris Brewer will receive the “Winter Vehicle of New England” on behalf of Ford.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Brian Potts highlights the MIT Energy Initiative’s (MITEI) report on the future of solar energy. Potts writes that solar subsidies should be reconsidered, citing the MITEI report’s findings that “net metering is inefficient and should be redesigned.”
“MIT scientists have cracked the science behind the dress that went viral on the Internet after some saw it as black and blue while others perceived it to be gold and white,” The Huffington Post reports. The researchers found that a person’s visual perception was influenced by light sources.
Tina Rosenberg writes for The New York Times about a study by J-PAL researchers examining the effectiveness of a poverty intervention program. Researchers found that participants in the program, “ate more, were more certain about access to food, held more assets, had more income and savings, spent more time working, and enjoyed better mental and physical health.”
Researchers from the MIT Media Lab are studying Twitter use in the small Spanish town of Jun, Fox News Latino reports. “It’s believed to be the first town to adopt the social network as the dominant method of communication.”
Eleanor Goldberg writes for The Huffington Post that a team of MIT researchers has developed a solar-powered desalination system that could help bring clean drinking water to rural areas. The researchers hope to eventually release a model that could provide clean drinking water for an entire village, Goldberg reports.
Guardian reporter Ian Sample writes about research by Bevil Conway, a principal research scientist at MIT, examining why people had different opinions about the color of a dress. Conway found that “our brains devise strategies for working out the true colours of objects in different situations. But because we have different experiences, our brain models differ too.”
Washington Post reporter Joey LoMonaco writes about incoming freshman Jake Stein’s decision to matriculate at MIT, where he will be playing on the lacrosse team.
Federico Guerrini of Forbes writes that a team of researchers involved with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) is developing a 3-D microfluidic cell culture device to detect cancer. The device is a thick disk “in which the team has designed some ‘channels’ to study how the cells move inside the blood vessels and interact with each other.”
Team Raptor Maps received the top prize in MIT’s annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. Founded by three MIT students, Raptor Maps “proposes to use camera-carrying drones to survey farmland and pinpoint damage before pests and diseases can decimate crops.”
A new study by MIT researchers has found that anti-poverty intervention methods can be effective, reports Carolyn Johnson for The Boston Globe. Interventions resulted in “fewer skipped meals, more income from livestock and farming, and a durable, though small, increase in how much they consume each day.”