A study by Prof. Daniel Rothman finds that if carbon emissions exceed a critical threshold, it could lead to a mass extinction, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. "We should limit carbon dioxide emissions,” says Rothman. “The carbon cycle is a non-linear system, and if you perturb it, surprising things may happen.”
TechCrunch reporter Darrell Etherington writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that can predict a perso's trajectory. The tool could allow “robots that typically freeze in the face of anything even vaguely resembling a person walking in their path to continue to operate and move around the flow of human foot traffic."
MIT researchers have developed a new system to 3-D print scaffolding for biological cultures, making it possible to grow uniform cells with specific functions, reports The Economist. “This discovery could help those trying to find ways of encouraging stem cells to generate tissue and organs for transplant.”
Inside Higher Ed reporter Lindsay McKenzie writes that a new AI system developed by MIT researchers to summarize the findings of technical scientific papers could “be used in the near future to tackle a long-standing problem for scientists -- how to keep up with the latest research.”
Bloomberg News reporter Carol Massar spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a robot that can identify and sort recyclables. “The system includes a soft Teflon hand that uses tactile sensors to detect the size of an object and the pressure needed to grasp it,” Massar reports. “From there it can determine if it’s made of metal, paper or plastic.”
Boston Globe reporter Laura Krantz visits MIT’s Haystack Observatory to learn more about the place where scientists played a key role in developing the first image of a black hole and created a supercomputer used to compile the image. Krantz notes that researchers at Haystack also study the Earth, not-far-away planets, and stars, and are creating devices to track the decay of icebergs.
Scientific American reporter Jeremy Hsu highlights how CSAIL researchers have developed a robot that can automatically sort recycling. The robot “uses soft Teflon ‘fingers,’ which have fingertip sensors to detect object size and stiffness,” Hsu explains.
Sky and Telescope editor Monica Young speaks with WBUR about how scientists from the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories, including MIT researchers, may have detected a black hole colliding with a neutron star. Young explains that upgrades made to both observatories should enable investigation of not only individual cosmic events, but also the study of neutron stars and black holes as populations.
Adrian Cho of Science magazine writes that the possible black hole-neutron star merger spotted by LIGO and Virgo would be a “gem for scientists,” but work remains to confirm the signal. Prof. Salvatore Vitale, a LIGO member from MIT, tells Cho: “If you ask me, ‘Would you bet a coffee, your car, or your house on this?’ I would say, ‘I’d bet your car.’”
Gizmodo reporter Ryan Mandelbaum explores the five potential gravitational wave detections made by the LIGO and Virgo observatories in the last month. Prof. Salvatore Vitale explained that the possible detection of a black hole colliding with a neutron star could provide scientists with a better way to measure how quickly the universe is expanding.
“LIGO/VIRGO has opened up its notification process to the public,” explains Ars Technica reporter John Zimmer. “In short, anyone who’s interested can find out what LIGO is seeing within a day of when the LIGO scientists themselves do.”
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have identified five new cosmic events since resuming operations last month, reports Sarah Lewin for Space.com. “The most exciting thing of the beginning of O3 [this third observation round] is that it's clear we are going from one event every few months to a few events every month," explains Prof. Salvatore Vitale.
MIT researchers have developed tiny robots powered by magnetic fields that can be used to bring drugs nanoparticles from the bloodstream into a tumor or disease site in the human body, reports the Xinhua news agency.
Inside Science reporter Yuen Yiu writes that MIT researchers have developed a new AI system that can summarize scientific research papers filled with technical terms. Yiu writes that the system “is a dramatic improvement from current programs, and could help scientists or science writers sift through large numbers of papers for the ones that catch their interest.”
Postdoctoral fellow Kazunori Akiyama speaks with Science News reporter Emily Conover about his work translating the data compiled from eight observatories around the world into the first image of a black hole. “I was really happy, really excited,” says Akiyama of his emotions after seeing the first rendering of a black hole.