Prof. Charles Stewart III and Ben Adida PhD ’06 speak with Fast Company reporter Spenser Mestel about how to restore the public’s faith in voting technology. Adida discusses his work launching VotingWorks, a non-profit focused on building voting machines. VotingWorks is “unique among the legacy voting technology vendors," writes Mestel. “The group has disclosed everything, from its donors to the prices of its machines.”
Senior Lecturer Guadalupe Hayes-Mota writes for Forbes about the ways AI is reshaping drug development. “In the next three years, we can anticipate a more streamlined, efficient and cost-effective drug development process, ultimately leading to faster access to life-saving drugs for patients worldwide,” Hayes-Mota writes. “This is not just an evolution; it is a revolution in healthcare powered by the intelligence of machines.”
MIT scientists have found that an experimental treatment for Alzheimer's disease involving sounds and flickering lights appears to “ramp up the brain’s waste disposal networks, which boosts the clearance of beta-amyloid and other toxic proteins that contribute to memory and concentration problems,” reports Clare Wilson for New Scientist. “Once we understand the mechanism, we can probably figure out how to further optimize this whole concept and improve the efficacy,” explains Prof. Li-Huei Tsai.
A new study by MIT researchers finds that an experimental Alzheimer’s treatment involving sound and light stimulation at a frequency of 40 Hz is associated with, “an increase in activity of the brain's own cleanup crew; the glymphatic system,” reports Pandora Dewan for Newsweek. The findings offer an, “exciting, non-invasive potential treatment option for patients with neurological disorders in the future,” Dewan notes.
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Christopher Knittel and graduate student Kailin Graham emphasize the importance of ensuring the transition away from fossil fuels is an equitable process that provides support for vulnerable workers. “If we’re serious about achieving a truly just transition, far more federal policy action is needed,” they write.
Los Angeles Times reporter Gustavo Arellano spotlights Democratic Senator Alex Padilla ’94 and his political career in California. Padilla “realized the only way to make things better for the Valley’s growing Latino community, in an era of anti-immigrant sentiment across California, was to elect politicians who looked like them,” writes Arellano.
Prof. Feng Zhang has been named to STAT’s 2024 STATUS List, which highlights the leaders shaping the future of health and life sciences, reports Dialynn Dwyer for Boston.com. “Among the companies he’s co-founded is Editas Medicine, which as of late 2023 was now the official holder of patent rights to the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool used in the sickle cell therapy Casgevy, and Aera Therapeutics, which in February 2023 raised $193 million in venture funding to develop protein nanoparticles as a way of delivering gene editing,” Dwyer writes.
Prof. Abhijit Banerjee shares advice with Nature reporter Helen Pearson for those in science careers looking to find “satisfaction from their work – and make a difference to the world.” Banerjee attributes “his own career to a series of happy accidents,” writes Pearson. Banerjee says, “a lot of it is accidents that make us who we are…sometimes we learn something about ourselves as a result of them.”
Former postdoc Leah Ellis speaks with GBH All Things Considered host Arun Rath about Sublime Systems, an MIT startup she co-founded that aims to produce carbon-free cement to combat climate change. “Sublime Systems and this technology spun out of my postdoctoral work at MIT,” says Ellis. “My co-founder and I are both electric chemists, so we have experience with battery technologies and electrochemical systems. Our idea was thinking about how we might use renewable energy—which we know has become more abundant, inexpensive and available—to eliminate the CO2 emissions from cement.”
Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Science Friday guest host Sophie Bushwick about the importance of space law and the rules of space. “One of the things that is so helpful to think about when trying to define space law is the fact that space law, in many ways, happens at the national level and is negotiated at the international level, so we can say that the United States has both ratified and signed the outer space treaty which means it is also U.S law,” explains Wood. “I think that’s really key to keeping track of what it means for international law to be binding and I think that’s key to saying space law is meaningful especially because countries make it domestic law.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a machine-learning model that can identify which drugs should not be taken together, reports Politico. “The researchers built a model to measure how intestinal tissue absorbed certain commonly used drugs,” they write. “They then trained a machine-learning algorithm based on their new data and existing drug databases, teaching the new algorithm to predict which drugs would interact with which transporter proteins.”
Prof. Sherry Turkle speaks with New York Times reporter Carly Lewis about the psychological implications of receiving and sending voice memos as a method of communication. “Voice memos are essentially no risk,” says Turkle. “People are losing the capacity for empathetic conversations, which is how we connect with each other. We need to practice that. People are so worried about showing too much of themselves.”
David Zipper, Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, speaks with Washington Post reporter Trisha Thadani about the safety behind self-driving car companies, such as Google’s robotaxi service, Waymo. Zipper says there is a disparity that “the companies are saying the technology is supposed to be a godsend for urban life, and it’s pretty striking that the leaders of these urban areas don’t really want them.”
Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Science news intern Sean Cummings about how space exploration and research can benefit everyone. “It’s great to think about what it means for space to benefit everyone,” says Wood. “I think there are two dimensions to ask: I would first ask ‘how could I redesign space systems that were not designed for everyone but could be fixed to make them more effective?’ and the second would be ‘what about the new things we haven’t built yet?’”
Prof. Jon Gruber speaks with GBH hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about the impact of political corruption on economics worldwide. The United States “has an incredibly dedicated, professionalized civil government,” says Gruber. “People go into government and spend much of their careers serving really the public good.”