To explain the longevity of a 1,900-year-old latrine, Scientific American’s Sam Macdonald highlights a study by Prof. Admir Masic that found the bright white chunks, or lime clasts, in Roman concrete may help preserve ancient structures. Masic explains that the findings strengthen “the idea that carbonates are more dynamic in these systems and play a fundamental role, not a marginal one.”
After analyzing data from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational wave detectors, MIT researchers have found that 14% of black holes may be second-generation, formed by the merger of two smaller black holes, writes Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The scientists “created an analytic model to capture the kind of wobble that would have emerged from second-generation black holes. Around 14% of merging black holes followed this pattern, and the second-generation black holes identified had a very specific range of masses, at around 20 solar masses or 40 solar masses and above,” Lee explains.
An article by ZME Science reporter Jordan Strickler showcases FAAV, the flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle, by Assistant Prof. Raphael Zufferey that can dive underwater and take flight like an aquatic bird in order to take underwater measurements and samples. “Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists, and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” says Zufferey.
NPR’s Ari Daniel features a new, winged robot by Assistant Prof. Raphael Zufferey that can swim and fly like a diving bird. "Thinking of a wing that could operate in both [air and water] somewhat efficiently seems implausible," Zufferey recalls thinking. He plans to use the robot for a range of applications, including monitoring harmful algal blooms, fish stocks, and coastal erosion.
Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian has developed a satellite equipped with specialized neutron detectors that he hopes will fill the gaps in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons in space without a way to verify satellites are not carrying them. “[I]f the concept proves to be practical enough to someone in charge, it could finally give us a way to verify that there really aren’t any nukes floating precariously over our heads,” writes Luis Prada for Vice.
Financial Times reporter Michael Peel features CubeSat, a proposed satellite sensor by Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian, able to identify hidden nuclear weapons in space. “If one state suspects another of placing a nuclear weapon in orbit, the absence of a verification mechanism makes the crisis harder to manage,” says Danagoulian. “If a bad-faith actor knows that their attempt will be discovered via inspection, they will be more likely to decide it's not worth pursuing.”
Gizmodo’s Ellyn Lapointe reports on a new paper from Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian, which offers a solution to verifying satellites aren’t carrying hidden nuclear weapons in space: an inspector satellite able to indicate the presence of uranium from neutron signals via sensor technology. Danagoulian’s proposal seeks to fill the gaps of The Outer Space Treaty (OST), established in 1967 and signed by 118 countries to ban nuclear weapons in space, which “has always lacked robust means of verification for space-based nuclear threats,” says Danagoulian.
In a new study, Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian proposes a satellite-based sensor that could monitor suspicious craft for signs of nuclear activity in space with 99% accuracy, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “You can fake intelligence, but you can’t fake physics,” says Danagoulian. “The goal right now is to get national labs to use this work for their own research, and to get policymakers to seriously consider this technology as a potential part of national technical means.”
Scientific American’s Adam Kovac highlights a paper by Associate Prof. Areg Danagoulian that proposes a satellite to detect and police hidden nuclear weapons in space by detecting spallation, the ejection of neutrons, from the bombardment of high energy protons, and uranium atoms. “If you detect those neutrons, that itself can be a telltale sign that there is an unusual amount of uranium on the satellite, and it’s most likely to be a nuclear weapon,” Danagoulian says.
Research Affiliates Mathilde Poyet and Mathieu Groussin are featured by The New York Times Magazine reporter Jeneen Interlandi for their comprehensive fieldwork collecting diverse, microbial samples from communities across the globe to understand how differences in diet, lifestyle and industrialization affect microbiome health. “Microbes don’t like antibiotics, for obvious reasons,” Groussin says. “They don’t like C-sections, which rob them of the opportunity to colonize new human territory. And they hate ultra processed diets. All three of those are more prevalent in an industrialized world.”
Prof. Paul Lozano and alumna Amelia Bruno PhD ‘25 join John Batchelor, host of the "Hotel Mars” podcast, to discuss their work developing a new propulsion system that could improve small satellite mobility. “This technology [electrospray thrusters] came from our own research on how to miniaturize propulsion for small satellites,” says Lozano. “There is a big need to actually provide these little satellites with mobility, so that we can actually explore space and use it more effectively.”
MIT researchers have developed a non-invasive, wearable pacemaker that stimulates the heart using ultrasound, writes Physics World reporter Tami Freeman. “For cardiac pacing, we envisage that the final goal of NUP [Non-Invasive Ultrasound Pacemaker] technology is to be a permanent alternative to a long-term implanted pacemaker,” says Prof. Xuanhe Zhao. “More broadly, we are interested in expanding ultrasound-enabled bioelectronic medicine beyond cardiac pacing toward other organs and therapeutic applications where non-invasive, spatially precise modulation could have clinical impact.”
A study by MIT researchers has found evidence that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared in 1957 in the upper tropical stratosphere, driven by carbon tetrachloride, an industrial chemical introduced in the 1930s and widely used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, writes Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe. “This finding underscores the importance of long-term atmospheric monitoring so that we can fully understand how it responds to chemical pollution,” Lapointe notes.
In a New York Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti examines the debate around Ferrari’s first electric vehicle (EV) and the future of EV self-driving technology. “The self-driving technology available in most EVs turns the car into something summoned on demand,” writes Ratti. “Our work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that autonomous driving could allow cities to operate with a small fraction of today’s vehicles while reducing parking demand by as much as 85 percent.”
The Economist’s “Bartleby Newsletter” spotlights a survey led by Prof. Danielle Li that found American employees were less likely to opt into training AI after learning how their data could be used. "In an experiment, the researchers offered to buy survey data from participants; those who had been shown a video on how data could be used to train AI were less willing to sell,” writes Andrew Palmer.