In the Media

Boston Globe reporter Eryn Carlson writes about the recipients of the 2014 Guggenheim Fellowships, highlighting lecturer Elena Ruehr’s plans to use the award to help her write an opera.  

Professor Scott Aaronson discusses what might lie beyond quantum computing in a piece he wrote for PBS’ The Nature of Reality .

Writing in The New York Times, Laurie Goodstein reports that researchers from MIT, Columbia and Harvard have determined that a fragment of papyrus known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,” is likely a relic from an ancient manuscript and not a modern forgery.

Washington Post reporter Fred Barbash reports on new MIT research that shows the importance of covering up coughs and sneezes. Researchers found that droplets from coughs and sneezes form a gas cloud that can travel further than previously thought.

Jason Keyser of the Associated Press previews a speech by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, delivered at a forum hosted by MIT's Center for Advanced Urbanism, an interdisciplinary think tank that focuses on big-scale urban design problems.

As MIT prepares to mark the anniversary of Sean Collier's death, the Globe's Shelley Murphy reports that MIT will honor Collier’s character. Israel Ruiz explains: “We know that standing by our values, by our spirit . . . the things Sean exemplified and illustrated will make us move forward.”

The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman reports on Professor Erik Brynjolfsson’s presentation about how smart machines will soon be able to replace human workers in many fields at a conference hosted by M.I.T.’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

Professor Sara Seager talks to reporter Miriam Kramer about a new NASA project to develop a “starshade,” a spacecraft that could block the light of distant stars so that researchers can gather information about distant planets.

“Mechanical engineers from MIT have developed a digging robot that can burrow through soil while expending very little energy -- by mimicking the burrowing mechanism of a razor clam,” writes Katie Collins in Wired of the robotic clam developed by MIT researchers.

“Researchers found that a droplet just a millionth of a meter in size (100 micrometers) can travel five times farther than previously thought, and a droplet just 10 micrometers in size can travel 200 times farther than previously thought,” writes Huffington Post reporter Amanda Chan of new research on coughing and sneezing.

John Roach reports for NBC News that graduate student David Sengeh was selected as a recipient of the 2014 Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize Competition. Sengeh was selected for his work on an innovative socket that makes prosthetic limbs more comfortable and functional for amputees.

“A new study from MIT that could change the way building ventilation systems are designed found that the germs stay airborne in gas clouds, spreading the droplets throughout an entire room,” writes Boston Herald reporter Jordan Graham of the MIT study on coughing and sneezing.

Umair Irfan and ClimateWire report on new research that helps explain how lithium batteries operate. The findings could lead to new methods for optimizing battery performance.

In an article published on Nature, Clara Moskovitz reports on the discovery of gamma rays shining from the center of the Milky Way, which researchers believe might be the first indirect detection of the particles that cause dark matter.

“In a new study, published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, researchers report that coughs and sneezes have “associated gas clouds that keep their potentially infectious droplets aloft over much greater distances than previously realized”,” writes Boston Magazine reporter Melissa Malamut about a new MIT on how coughs and sneezes spread disease.