Soledad O’Brien spotlights how researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital developed a new artificial intelligence tool, called Sybil, that an accurately predict a patient’s risk of developing lung cancer. “Sybil predicted with 86 to 94 percent accuracy whether a patient would develop lung cancer within a year,” says O’Brien.
Astronomers from MIT and elsewhere have become the first to witness a star consume an entire planet, reports Elisha Sauers for Mashable. “The new study confirms that when a sun-like star nears the end of its life, it expands into a red giant, 100 to 1,000 times its original size, eventually overtaking nearby planets,” explains Sauers. “Such events are thought to be rare, occurring only a few times each year throughout the galaxy.”
Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson make the case that the development of artificial intelligence should be shifted “toward a focus on ‘machine usefulness,’ the idea that computers should primarily enhance human capabilities. But this needs to be combined with an explicit recognition that any resulting productivity gains must be shared with workers, in terms of higher incomes and better working conditions.”
Researchers at MIT are developing a new way to use electric thrusters, reports Freethink. “Electric propulsion actually has the benefit of maximizing the amount of room that you have on a spacecraft so you can use it for this useful payload as opposed to just propellant,” says Prof. Paulo Lozano.
MIT researchers have developed SoftZoo, “an open framework platform that simulated a variety of 3D model animals performing specific tasks in multiple environmental settings,” reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “This computational approach to co-designing the soft robot bodies and their brains (that is, their controllers) opens the door to rapidly creating customized machines that are designed for a specific task,” says CSAIL director, Prof. Daniela Rus.
A team of astronomers, including researchers from MIT, witnessed a star swallowing up an entire planet for the first time, reports Margaret Osborne for Smithsonian Magazine. “For decades, scientists have only been able to witness the before and after of such planetary engulfment,” writes Osborne.
Boston Globe reporter Robert Weisman spotlights Integrated Biosciences, a startup co-founded by MIT researchers that is using artificial intelligence to identify anti-aging drug candidates. “We’re trying to go after aging and aging-associated disorders,” says postdoc Felix Wong. “We all know loved ones who have suffered from some of these conditions.”
Researchers at MIT have developed “SoftZoo,” a platform designed to “study the physics, look and locomotion and other aspects of different soft robot models,” reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “Dragonflies can perform very agile maneuvers that other flying creatures cannot complete because they have special structures on their wings that change their center of mass when they fly,” says graduate student Tsun-Hsuan Wang. “Our platform optimizes locomotion the same way a dragonfly is naturally more adept at working through its surroundings.”
Astronomers from MIT, Harvard, Caltech and other institutions have, for the first time, captured the moment when a star swallows a nearby planet, reports Ian Sample for The Guardian. “Like a lot of discoveries in science, this happened to be an accidental discovery that really opened our eyes to a new type of phenomenon,” explains postdoctoral scholar Kishalay De. “This is going to be the final fate of Earth.”
AP reporter Marcia Dunn writes that scientists from MIT, Harvard, Caltech and elsewhere have “caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet — not just a nibble or bite, but one big gulp.” Dunn explains that: “Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kishalay De spotted the luminous outburst in 2020 while reviewing sky scans taken by the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory. It took additional observations and data-crunching to unravel the mystery: Instead of a star gobbling up its companion star, this one had devoured its planet.”
A team of astronomers from MIT and other institutions have detected a “sun-like star gobbling up a planet and belching out a blast of light and energy,” reports Leah Crane for New Scientist. “In the past, all of the evidence that we’ve had of stars eating planets is from looking at stars that have done that hundreds of thousands of years ago,” says postdoc Kishalay De. “But we have never caught a star red-handed eating a planet.”
New York Times reporter Becky Ferreira spotlights how astronomers from MIT, Harvard, Caltech and elsewhere have spotted a dying star swallowing a large planet, “offering the first direct glimpse of a gnarly process called planetary engulfment that most likely awaits Earth in the deep future.” Postdoc Kishalay De explains that: “Finding an event like this really puts all of the theories that have been out there to the most stringent tests possible. It really opens up this entire new field of research.”
Postdoc Kishalay De speaks with NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce about how he and his colleagues have observed, for the first time, a sun-like star consuming an orbiting planet. "We weren't quite looking for this. We were looking for similar things, but not quite this," says De. "Like a lot of discoveries in science, this happened to be an accidental discovery that really opened our eyes to a new type of phenomenon."
Researchers from MIT, Harvard, Caltech and elsewhere have spotted a hot, Jupiter-sized world being ingested by a sun-like star, reports Kasha Patel for The Washington Post. “The hope is that we would actually be able to use this entire new suite of instruments to try to find every single planet being engulfed in our galaxy in real time,” explains postdoc Kishalay De. “That’s only going to become possible now because of this discovery and together with the availability of instrumentation.”
Reuters reporter Will Dunham writes that scientists from MIT and elsewhere have “observed a star, bloated in its old age, swallowing a Jupiter-like planet, then expelling some material into space in an energetic belch.” Postdoc Kishalay De notes that "this planet doesn't go out without a fight. Even before it is engulfed whole, our data provides evidence that the planet tries to rip out the star's surface layers with its own gravity. But the star happens to be a thousand times more massive so the planet can't do much and eventually makes the plunge.”