Researchers at MIT have designed “a wearable ultrasound scanner that could be used at home to detect breast tumors earlier,” reports Simon Makin for Scientific American. “The researchers incorporated the scanner into a flexible, honeycombed 3-D-printed patch that can be fixed into a bra,” explains Makin. “The wearer moves the scanner among six different positions on the breast, where it snaps into place with magnets, allowing reproducible scanning of the whole breast.”
Prof. Emeritus Frank Levy and Louisiana State Prof. Scott Abrahams have published a working paper titled “The Revival of U.S. Populism: How 39 Years of Manufacturing Losses and Educational Gains Reshaped the Electoral Map,” reports Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times. The paper makes “the case that polarization and institutional gridlock have roots dating back more than four decades,” explains Edsall.
Professor Emerita Evelyn Fox Keller, a MacArthur genius grant recipient, “theoretical physicist, philosopher and writer who viewed science through a feminist lens,” has died at 87, reports Georgina Ferry for The Guardian. Keller’s work explored “how the practice of science had come to be perceived as intrinsically masculine, and to think about what a gender-neutral science might look like,” writes Ferry.
Institute Prof. Robert Langer speaks with Freakonomics host Stephen Dubner about his approach to failure and perseverance in his professional career. Langer recalls how despite early failures with developing new drug delivery methods, “I really believed that if we could do this, it would make a big difference in science, and I hoped a big difference in medicine.”
Prof. Simon Johnson and Prof. Catherine Wolfram write for The Washington Post about how to prevent petrostates from benefitting from war. “We need to break the cycle of petrostates benefitting from fomenting violence,” write Johnson and Wolfram. “And when we punish one petrostate, we need to be careful not to reward another.”
Holly Metcalf, head coach for the MIT women’s openweight rowing team, speaks with Esteban Bustillos of GBH News about the Survivor Rowing Network, a program aimed at introducing the sport of rowing to cancer survivors. Metcalf is coaching two boats from the Survivor Rowing in the 2023 Head of the Charles Regatta. “What I love about being here is students are visionary. And big world problems, they want to solve them. So maybe here at MIT one of my students may have an answer to getting rid of cancer,” she said. “That’s here. It’s all about finding answers through collaboration and that’s what rowing is, it’s a collaboration of mind, of body.”
Writing for The Atlantic, Prof. Deb Roy makes the case that “new kinds of social networks can be designed for constructive communication—for listening, dialogue, deliberation, and mediation—and they can actually work.” Roy adds: “We can and should create social networks designed for public discourse that prioritize inclusion, where underheard voices and perspectives can flourish, and where people take and offer disagreement in good faith.”
MIT researchers have found that users of a tool developed to fight misinformation on X were “much more likely to fact-check posts expressing political views that differ from their own,” reports Victoria Elliott and David Gilbert for Wired. Prof. David Rand explains, “while around 80 percent of the tweets that users chose to annotate were, in fact, misleading, users overwhelmingly tended to priorities political content.”
Tom Davenport, a visiting scholar at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, writes for Forbes about how organizations are approaching generative AI. “If organizations are to succeed with generative AI, they need to increase the focus on data preparation for it, which is a primary prerequisite for success,” writes Davenport.
MIT's Women's Rowing Coach Holly Metcalf speaks with CBS Boston about the Survivors Rowing Network, a team of breast cancer survivors who are rowing in the Head of the Charles Regatta. Metcalf, who is serving as the team’s coach, says that: "I am here to cheer them on. To see the strength and the trust that comes back for people who are surviving cancer. Trust in their bodies.”
Graduate student Kaylee Cunningham speaks with CBS Boston about her work using social media to help educate and inform the public about nuclear energy. Cunningham, who is known as Ms. Nuclear Energy on TikTok, recalls how as a child she was involved in musical theater, a talent she has now combined with her research interests as an engineer. She adds that she also hopes her platform inspires more women to pursue STEM careers. “You don't have to look like the stereotypical engineer,” Cunningham emphasizes.
Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with Matter of Fact host Soledad O’Brien to explain the role and history of the Speaker of the House. “In a nation of people who are naysayers and distrusting of authority, distrusting of institutions and political parties, the American Congress remains the most capable parliamentary institution on this planet,” says Stewart.
Prof. Moungi Bawendi, recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, speaks with CBC Quirks & Quacks host Bob McDonald about his work in quantum dots and nanotechnology. “I really want to stress that the beginning of this field, we were interested in this because it was a brand new material, it was a size region that no one had investigated before,” says Bawendi. “This was before people talked about nanoscience and nanotechnology, we were just very curious how the properties evolved from the molecular properties… to the bulk properties.”
WBUR reporter Daniel Ackerman spotlights Sublime Systems, an MIT startup working to develop “construction-ready, emissions-free cement.” Ackerman explains that: “Sublime’s new approach uses electricity instead of heat. That means the process can be powered with renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. The method also prevents carbon dioxide from escaping the carbon-rich limestone during combustion.”