In the Media

Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu speaks to The Guardian’s Ian Sample about his team’s research discovering a black hole star, a cosmic object the size of the entire solar system. “They [black hole stars] may govern when stars are able to form and when they cease forming, setting the course for everything that follows from star formation: the birth of planets, the rise of life, the emergence of species that may one day piece together this entire history,” says Naidu.  

In an article about AI’s impact on the job market, The Guardian’s Varsha Bansal highlights Prof. Paul Osterman’s new book, “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment.” Bansal writes: “About 35% of the US workforce is already considered easily replaceable, according to his [Osterman’s] research. AI will only exacerbate this, he said. But not all jobs are in the same boat, and neither are their options for adapting, said MIT’s Osterman.” 

Dr. Joseph Sakran and Dr. Rebecca Stone, contributors to USA Today, highlight the Outsmart Ovarian Cancer initiative launched across cancer centers and institutions, including MIT. Outsmart Ovarian Cancer “has a single goal: making concurrent salpingectomy, the removal of the fallopian tubes during another planned post-reproductive operation, a routine and reimbursable part of care rather than an aspirational idea,” Sakran and Stone write.  

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), MIT researchers have discovered a black hole star, MoM-BH*‑1, the earliest example of a black hole in the universe, writes Mashable’s Elisha Sauers. “We argue that Black Hole Stars may be powering all of JWST's Little Red Dots that are found almost everywhere in the early Universe,” says Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu. “Which is to say, this channel of making massive black holes must be very common, to the point where every massive black hole (like the Milky Way's) may have gone through this phase.” 

Financial Times reporter Martin Wolf spotlights Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu’s latest book, “What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”, which he notes is "timely and thought-provoking,” and "an important call to arms.” In the book, Acemoglu explores his "grand idea of ‘working-class liberalism,’” writes Wolf. “This concept, he states, is built on experimentation and the freedoms of association and expression, is suspicious of excessive power, uses redistribution, allows the less fortunate to participate more fully, values growth, attempts to provide good jobs for everybody and values community, trust and the sharing of useful knowledge.”

Prof. Tristan Brown discovered that a tea label previously thought to be salvaged from the Boston Tea Party in 1773 actually dates back to the 19th century, writes Smithsonian Magazine’s Ryley Graham. “The artifact’s true origin came to light when Brown took a closer look at the Chinese text on the label...When read in Cantonese, Brown found that the phonetic characters yielded the words 'Smith, Archer,' a reference to Smith, Archer & Co, an American import-export company that shipped teas from East Asia to the United States in the 19th century, nearly a century after revolutionaries dumped British tea into Boston Harbor.” 

In an article by The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Emma Nelson, Prof. David Autor discusses low sentiment among middle-class Americans regarding the U.S. economy. “There’s a belief that if you follow the rules, if you go to school and pay your taxes and pay your bills and send your kids to college and whatever, that you’re supposed to do better than the generation before you,” says Autor. “When that does not happen is “part of when [people] feel like society’s not functioning well.” 

Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list spotlights four MIT faculty leading innovation in science and technology: Prof. Paula Hammond, dean of the MIT School of Engineering; Prof. Dina Katabi; Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science; and Aude Oliva, director of MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab. The 50 “science and technology standouts on this list are advancing how we use AI, fight osteoporosis and deploy clean energy.”  

Researchers from the Media Lab developed MemPal, a wearable camera that creates a real-time automated text diary of actions and conversations to help older adults locate objects and provide reminders, writes WBUR’s Mike Kalin. “A small study conducted last year by researchers at the MIT Media Lab confirmed improved performance of object finding among users and an overall positive perception of the system. Tools like MemPal could be essential as cases of dementia continue to proliferate,” writes Kalin.  

Prof. Paul Osterman speaks to Forbes’ Courtney Connley-Hampton about his new book “Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment,” and how AI may exacerbate the disposable worker trend. “Your only source of power in the labor market is your human capital, your skill,” says Osterman. “Get as much skill as you can. You may end up having to change jobs and move around, but if you have valuable skills, that protects you.” 

Ben Armstrong, executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center, speaks to The New York Times reporter Jack Ewing about humanoid robots being deployed to work in car factories. “Humanoids are a million-dollar solution to a one-hundred-dollar problem,” says Armstrong. “The prospect of humanoids to change the game in automotive is quite small.” 

Prof. Dennis Whyte and Prof. Andrew Lo have built a framework to mitigate the economic challenges of fusion power, writes Interesting Engineering’s Ameya Paleja. “While there are multiple approaches to building a nuclear fusion facility, Whyte and colleagues believe that at the end of the day, the facility should be in a position to generate more money that has gone in to building and operating it, otherwise it won’t last for long,” writes Paleja. 

MIT researchers have discovered space matter that has been ‘missing’ since the 1990s using Fast Radio Bursts, individual flashes of radio waves traveling through space and coming from the distant universe, reports WCVB 5’s Cindy Fitzgibbon. “The takeaway of the study is that by discovering the distribution of the missing matter around galaxies, we have found evidence for strong activities in galaxies,” says graduate student Haochen Wang, a co-author on the study. “In other words, galaxies are busier and messier than we thought.”