Cipher News editor Amy Harder spotlights the MIT Renewable Energy Clinic, a new course developed by Prof. Larry Susskind aimed at training students to be mediators in conflicts over clean energy projects. Harder notes that the course is focused on creating “collaboration that may slow down projects initially by incorporating more input but ultimately speed them up by avoiding later-stage conflicts.”
Milena Pagán '11 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kara Baskin about bringing her Providence-based bagel shop, Reblle, to Kendall Square. “We started the process to move a store to Cambridge about two years ago” says Pagán. “This has really been a long time in the making, to find the right space and to work out a deal. But we’re in a really cool building. We have tenants upstairs. There’s a park across the street that reminds me in a lot of ways of the neighborhood where Rebelle is right now. And being close to MIT is such a dream. That place has really good juju for me, so I’m really excited about it.
Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Yahoo! Finance Live host Julie Hyman about President Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence regulation. “This is big, it's bold, it's broad,” says Aral. “It has a number of provisions. It has provisions for safety, for privacy, for equity, for workers, for competition and innovation, and leadership abroad. And it really targets those foundation models, the big AI companies in terms of their safety and security standards.”
MIT was “more highly recommended by its students than any other school in the Northeast,” according to the Wall Street Journal / College Pulse 2024 Best Colleges in the U.S. “The Wall Street Journal commissioned a survey of more than 60,000 college students and recent graduates, conducted by College Pulse, to gather their views on the learning environment at their school,” writes The Wall Street Journal. “As part of that survey, respondents ranked how highly they would recommend their college.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Anna Stansbury finds that “as the share of graduates in the UK workforce has expanded over the past 25 years, the wage premium they command relative to non-graduates has fallen,” reports John Burn-Murdoch for Financial Times. “We can thus infer that in the aggregate, Britain’s supply of skilled workers is outstripping demand in the form of skilled jobs,” writes Burn-Murdoch.
Prof. Fiona Murray and her colleagues have found that female STEM PhD students are less likely than their male counterparts to receive mentorship from top inventor advisors, reports Women We Admire. The researchers “emphasize the importance of early intervention and encouragement for female PhD students aspiring to become inventors. Programs that actively support female professors in their patenting endeavors can indirectly lead to a surge in female inventor PhDs, thereby plugging the leaky pipeline.”
Ashley Smart, associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program, writes for Undark about the impact of commercialized genetic tests on research involving new genetic links. “Even among some researchers who are optimistic about using polygenic scores to screen for physical health conditions, there is one emerging application of polygenic scores that makes them uneasy: the prediction of risks for depression and other psychiatric conditions,” writes Smart.
Science News reporter James Riordon writes that by employing a new technology called frequency-dependent squeezing, LIGO detectors should now be able to identify about 60 more mergers between massive objects like black holes and neutron stars than before the upgrade. Senior research scientist Lisa Barsotti, who oversaw the development of this new technology, notes that even next-generation gravitational wave detectors will be able to benefit from quantum squeezing. “The beauty is you can do both. You can push the limit of what is possible from the technology of laser power and mirror [design],” Barsotti explains, “and then do squeezing on top of that.”
MIT researchers have developed a new programmable, shape-changing smart fiber called FibeRobo that can change its structure in response to hot or cold temperatures, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “FibeRobo is flexible and strong enough to use within traditional manufacturing methods like embroidery, weaving looms, and knitting machines,” writes Paul. “With an additional ability to combine with electrically conductive threads, a wearer could directly control their FibeRobo clothing or medical wearables like compression garments via wireless inputs from a controller or smartphone.”
MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound device that could help make breast cancer screening more accessible, reports Carrie Arnold for National Geographic. “Early detection is the key for survival,” says Prof. Canan Dagdeviren. “Our humble calculation shows that this technology has the potential to save 12 million lives per year globally.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard have found that an adult’s ability to “parse the early attempts of children to talk may also help the children learn how to speak properly faster,” reports Jess Thomson for Newsweek. “These adult listening abilities might help children communicate very early and highlight that speech is a good way to share information with others," says postdoctoral associate Stephan Meylan. "That said, there is a lot of diversity in how adults and children interact across the world, both within and across different social and cultural contexts. This means that there are very likely many pathways to understanding language."
Joy Buolamwini PhD '22 writes for The Boston Globe about her experience uncovering bias in artificial intelligence through her academic and professional career. “I critique AI from a place of having been enamored with its promise, as an engineer more eager to work with machines than with people at times, as an aspiring academic turned into an accidental advocate, and also as an artist awakened to the power of the personal when addressing the seemingly technical,” writes Buolamwini. “The option to say no, the option to halt a project, the option to admit to the creation of dangerous and harmful though well-intentioned tools must always be on the table.”
Graduate student Shayne Longpre speaks with Washington Post reporter Nitasha Tiku about the ethical and legal implications surrounding language model datasets. Longpre says “the lack of proper documentation is a community-wide problem that stems from modern machine-learning practices.”
President Biden has awarded Prof. Emeritus Subra Suresh ScD '81, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, the National Medal of Science for his “pioneering research across engineering, physical sciences, and life sciences,” reports Alexa Gagosz for The Boston Globe. Prof. James Fujimoto '79, SM '81, PhD '84, research affiliate Eric Swanson SM '84, and David Huang '85, SM '89, PhD '93 were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, “the nation’s highest award for technical achievement.”
DUSP Lecturer Bruno Verdini PhD ’15 speaks with Jenn Williams of Foreign Policy’s “The Negotiators” podcast to discuss the 2012 Colorado River agreement between the United States and Mexico, and his book, “Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook.” “If you are recognizing that the feedback loops in natural resource negotiations are going to be complex and unexpected as time goes by, you only have an ability to monitor, be flexible, and address new challenges if you’ve created a mechanism of trust, and in that mechanism implementation follows, even across different political perspectives,” says Verdini. “Because it is in your interest to keep complying.”