The Boston Globe Editorial Board spotlights The Educational Justice Institute at MIT (TEJI), which offers educational opportunities to incarcerated individuals. “The two worlds of corrections and education really don’t understand each other well,” says Lee Perlman, co-director of TEJI and a lecturer at MIT. “There’s a real culture clash between them.”
MIT researchers have identified a new biological editing system that could “potentially be even more precise than CRISPR gene editing,” reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. The new system, based on a protein called Fanzor, is “the first programmable RNA-guided system discovered in eukaryotes,” Baisas notes.
Lynette Seow MBA ’23 co-founded Safe Space Singapore, a B2B2C platform aimed at strengthening “mental resilience by providing tele-therapy care and prevention education,” reports Matt Symonds for Forbes. “Ultimately, I figured that if I wanted to build a Safe Space for people to come to, I had to be one to the people I met,” shares Seow. “If improving mental health is my mission, and a disproportionate percentage of LGBTQ+ people experience mental health struggles, how could I ignore drawing attention to this cause even if it meant being a bit more public about my personal life?"
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that new building codes put in place to combat climate change could impact home affordability in the greater Boston area, reports Paula Ebben for CBS Boston, “If widely adopted, [the codes] could add up to $23,000 to the cost of an average home, leaving an additional 33,000 Massachusetts residents priced out of the market,” writes Ebben.
MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher discusses how artificial intelligence has impacted print media at the Aspen Ideas Festival, reports John Frank for Axios. “Most of us grew up in a world where the word print was something that was authoritative,” says Huttenlocher, of how people will need to be on the lookout for misinformation.
Prof. John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work developing the lithium-ion battery, has died at age 100, reports Jim Vertuno for the AP. Goodenough “began his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research laid the groundwork for development of random-access memory for the digital computer.”
Randolph Kirchain and Hessam AzariJafari of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub speak with Washington Post reporter Sharon Osaka about the importance of reducing the emissions produced during the cement manufacturing process. Kirchain noted there is a way to cut carbon emissions significantly and ensure safety at the same time. “The things that concrete goes into are things that we need to last,” he said.
Researchers from MIT and Duke have discovered that introducing weaker bonds into a material can produce stronger polymers, reports Norbert Sparrow for Plastics Today. “Side-chain cross-linked polymers are probably the most widely used type of polymer network,” says postdoc Shu Wang. “The concept [outlined] in our paper should work for all polymer networks that are side-chain cross linked.”
Washington Post reporter Brian Murphy memorializes the life and work of Prof. John Goodenough, who worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for over 20 years. Goodenough was “an American scientist who shared a Nobel Prize for helping create the lithium-ion battery that powered the mobile tech revolution and provides the juice for electric cars, but who later raised worries about a design that relies on scarce natural resources,” writes Murphy.
Researchers from MIT and BU developed the Cleana toilet seat, which is aimed at addressing poor toilet etiquette, reports Katie Thompson for WCVB. “One toilet seat lifts and stays in the up position after the seat is placed down is designed for a more high-traffic commercial space,” writes Thompson. “The residential version, meanwhile, includes a seat and lid that are both designed to automatically lower after use, helping protect the open toilet bowl from small children and pets — as well as creating a better aesthetic look.”
A study from MIT and elsewhere has found that a new building code in Massachusetts designed to promote “net zero” development, “would increase construction costs and potentially worsen the state’s housing crisis,” reports Greg Ryan for NBC Boston.
MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher speaks at the Aspen Ideas Festival on how to regulate AI while maximizing its positive impact, reports NBC. “I think when we think about regulation [of artificial intelligence] we need to think about this in the ways we’ve traditionally thought about things – risk, reward, tradeoffs – and that tends to be domain specific,” says Huttenlocher. “It’s hard to have sort of an abstract notion of this new technology and what the risk [and] reward is across all domains.”
New York Times reporter Robert D. McFadden highlights the work of Prof. John Goodenough, a scientist who worked at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory for over 20 years and played a “crucial role in developing the revolutionary lithium-ion battery” has died at age 100. “At MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in the 1950s and ’60s, he was a member of teams that helped lay the groundwork for random access memory (RAM) in computers and developed plans for the nation’s first air defense system,” writes McFadden.
Prof. Deb Roy speaks with CNBC reporter Deirdre Bosa about “the relationship between machine-leaning technology and humans.”