Symmetry Magazine reporter Sarah Charley writes that a new study co-authored by MIT postdoc Xiaojun Yao examines how quantum computing could advance our understanding of quantum processes. Yao explored how “the properties of a heavy particle could be impacted after it traversed through a quark-gluon plasma,” and after several months of testing was able to “demonstrate that these kinds of calculations are already feasible on today’s quantum computers.”
Prof. Ceasar McDowell speaks with Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson about the importance of designing for communities and not individuals in order to help create a more equitable future. "We're living in a system that really is unequal," says McDowell. "As long as we continue to design things so that they fit what's prominently on the market today, we're going to continue to support that inequality."
Forbes contributor Angelica Krystle Donati spotlights MIT startup Clockworks Analytics, which “leverages existing products installed in buildings such as thermostats, building automation devices, and other sensors and focuses on generating sophisticated analytics based on that data.”
Writing for Popular Mechanics, Leila Stein highlights how MIT researchers have created a perfect fluid and captured its sound. “To record the sound, the team of physicists sent a glissando of sound waves through a controlled gas of elementary particles called fermions,” Stein writes.
Prof. Martin Zwierlein speaks with Edgar Herwick III of GBH Radio about his work capturing the sound of a “perfect” fluid. "It was a beautiful sound," says Zwierlein. "It was a quantum sound. In a way it was the most long-lasting sound that you can imagine given the laws of quantum mechanics.”
Writing for Greentech Media, Jason Deign spotlights a new study by Prof. Jessika Trancik that examines the rising costs of new nuclear plants. The researchers found that “the main reason for spiraling nuclear plant construction bills is soft costs, the indirect expenses related to activities such as engineering design, purchasing, planning, scheduling and — ironically — estimating and cost control.”
Popular Mechanics reporter Courtney Linder spotlights how Prof. Alfredo Alexander-Katz is developing a “rapid antigen Covid-19 test that can accurately detect viral proteins in just minutes.”
Marc Zissman, associate division head at Lincoln Lab, speaks with New York Times reporter Jennifer Valentino-DeVries about the challenges associated with encouraging people to use coronavirus tracing apps.
Lecturer Malia Lazu speaks with Financial Times reporter Jennifer Williams-Alvarez about how employees are increasingly calling on companies to address environmental, social and governance problems. “Millennials are more interested in not only working for a place that has a ping-pong table, but working for a place that has a set of values, that attempts to live those values,” says Lazu.
Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with NBC 10 about mail-in voting during the 2020 presidential election and the impact of USPS delays. “It was really heartening to see not only the experiment going well, but everything it took to make it happen,” said Stewart. “Voters have taken a bite of the apple and many of them are going to continue voting by mail.”
Prof. Justin Reich speaks with NPR’s Anya Kamenetz about digital teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic and how children and teachers are adjusting to the new experience. "There's [approximately] 10% of people for whom it works better," Reich says. And for these students, "this is actually a better version of school."
Prof. James Fujimoto and research affiliate Eric Swanson have been named recipients of the Sanford and Sue Greenberg Prize to End Blindness, reports Sandrine Ceurstemont for National Geographic. “The winners were chosen based on the strength of their contributions to eliminate blindness, the ambitious aim set out by the prize organizers in 2012,” Ceurstemont explains.
Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, research scientist Ben Armstrong explores how “silent meetings” can help encourage to participate in virtual classes. “My case for silent meetings is that they can help educators examine the questions we find important while giving students more time to deliberate before they discuss,” writes Armstrong. “And they can help students who might otherwise feel excluded from conversations contribute new ideas in tandem with their classmates.”
Prof. Emerita Judith Jarvis Thomson, known for her work creating “new fields of inquiry in philosophy through her writings on abortion and a moral thought experiment that she named the ‘Trolley Problem’,” has died at age 91, reports Alex Taub for The New York Times. Taub notes that Thomson “wrote some of the most influential papers in contemporary American philosophy” and “made her imagination her most powerful intellectual tool.”
Prof. Giovanni Traverso has been highlighted by Wired as one of 32 innovators who are changing the world, writes Sanjana Varghese for Wired. Prof. Robert Langer notes that Traverso is “transforming how we interact with medications, for example through the development of pills that remain in the body for multiple weeks or months to address medication non-adherence, or the creation of small, swallowable devices enabling the delivery of biologics like insulin.”