Los Angeles Times reporter Amina Khan explores the new findings that appear to confirm MIT Professor Alan Guth’s theory of cosmic inflation. “Guth's inflation theory became a cornerstone of our understanding of the early universe — but scientists had thought it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove,” writes Khan.
“A team of biologists and engineers want to turn plants into chemical warfare detectors that can sniff out sarin gas or explosives. For now, though, they've succeeded in turning the flowering Arabidopsis thaliana into a pollutant detector using carbon nanotubes,” writes Wired reporter Liat Clark of the new bionic plants developed at MIT.
New York Times reporter Dennis Overbye profiles Professor Alan Guth, one of the first physicists to set forth the theory of cosmic inflation. This week astronomers presented evidence that could confirm Guth’s work.
The Washington Post features the new soft robotic fish developed by MIT researchers. The fish echoes the movements of a real fish and is safe for humans to work with as it is made of soft materials, writes reporter Fred Barbash.
“Researchers at MIT are giving plants super powers by placing tiny carbon nanotubes deep within their cells,” writes Deborah Netburn in a Los Angeles Times piece on bionic plants developed by MIT researchers.
Alan Neuhasuser reporting for U.S. News & World Report examines how MIT researchers have embedded carbon nanotubes in plants, helping them collect more sunlight. The bionic plants could be used to detect explosives, chemical weapons and more, Neuhasuser reports.
CNN reports on a new invention designed by researchers from MIT and Harvard that allows people to send specific scents to another person’s cell phone via text messaging.
Boston Magazine’s Steve Annear reports on the “‘Sesame Ring,’ a piece of wearable technology that has a CharlieCard’s RFID chip embedded inside.” The ring was designed by a team of MIT undergraduate students and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Nature reporter Ron Cowen explores Professor Alan Guth’s theory of cosmic inflation, which scientists may have confirmed by searching for gravitational waves from the seconds after the Universe’s formation. “Guth’s idea was that the cosmos expanded at an exponential rate for a few tens of trillionths of trillionths of trillionths of seconds after the Big Bang, ballooning from subatomic to football size.”
New Scientist’s Catherine Brahic reports on new bionic plants developed at MIT. The plants, which have an increased ability to photosynthesise thanks to nanomaterials embedded in their cells, could be used to create self-powering and self-repairing materials, new types of fuel cells and more, Brahic reports.
Writing for Scientific American, David Biello reports on a team of MIT researchers who are giving plants and the photosynthesis process an extra boost thanks to carbon nanotubes the team embedded deep within the plant’s leaves.
“Chocolate sustainability is not the career path of your typical MBA graduate, but I use what I learned at business school every day,” writes Shayna Harris, the cocoa sustainability manager for Mars Global Chocolate of her experience as an MBA student at Sloan.
In an article for Science examining the latest research on surface tension, Elizabeth Pennisi highlights work by Professor Lydia Bourouiba to understand how airborne pathogens take flight. Through her work, Bourouiba hopes to find new ways to curb the spread of disease.
A new project from the MIT Media Lab attempts to quantify a person’s fame, writes Dwight Garner in The New York Times Magazine. “For now, you are legitimately famous, the M.I.T. team has decided, if a Wikipedia page under your name exists in more than 25 languages,” Garner reports.
“A team of engineers at the university's Distributed Robotics Laboratory has developed a soft robot fish, which is not only capable of taking evasive manoeuvres at remarkable speed, but is also entirely self-contained and autonomous,” writes Wired’s Nicholas Tufnell of a new soft robotic fish developed at MIT.