Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks New York Times reporter Karen Weise about workplace automation at Amazon. “Nobody else has the same incentive as Amazon to find the way to automate,” Acemoglu. “Once they work out how to do this profitably, it will spread to others, too.”
George Smoot '66, PhD '70, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, has died at the age of 80, reports Katrina Miller for The New York Times. Smoot’s work as a physicist “helped elucidate the story of cosmic creation, providing evidence of what he called the primordial seeds that grew into galaxies and galaxy clusters,” writes Miller.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Kay Lazar about his recent study examining how Americans are preparing for their later years. “I’m hoping this is a kick-start moment, to start having people realize that it’s more than money,” says Coughlin. “It is more than my blood pressure and my cholesterol level, and that I need to start thinking about other dimensions.”
Writing for Forbes, Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab spotlights how researchers from the MIT AgeLab and John Hancock developed a new longevity index. The Index aims to change “how we measure, teach, discuss and think about the future of aging,” explains Coughlin. “The Index measures preparedness across eight critical domains that research shows are fundamental to quality of life in older age: health, finance, care, home, daily activities, social connection, community, and life transitions.
Fox Business reporters Daniella Genovese and Eric Revell spotlight a new longevity index developed by researchers from the MIT AgeLab and John Hancock that shows how “U.S. adults are largely underprepared to live well as they age.” Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, explains that the findings “underscore that taking some small but intentional steps — such as planning for a new hobby, starting a fitness routine or having a conversation about care — can lead to a better future and make a big impact on how we spend our later years."
Researchers at MIT have uncovered remnants of “proto Earth,” which existed before a Mars-sized meteorite slammed into the Earth billions of years ago, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The researchers “found an odd imbalance of potassium isotopes in ancient rock samples,” explains Lee. “Chemical analyses revealed the anomaly couldn’t have emerged from any known geological processes on modern Earth.”
Prof. Paulo Lozano has received funding from NASA’s University SmallSat Technology Partnership (USTP) to “explore integration of tiny electronic thrusters – a propulsion system using electrical power to propel spacecraft – onto satellites, reports Robin Roenker for USA Today. “We have many ideas (for application),” says Lozano. “One is to send tens or even hundreds of these small satellites to the asteroid belt to help study and characterize the asteroids’ surface structures.”
Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Carlo Ratti explores how street configuration and design can help reduce traffic speeds. “In studies we have conducted at our Senseable City Lab, we found that the posted speed limits often have little effect on how fast people drive,” writes Ratti. “Instead, the policies that work involve the design of the street itself.”
A new study by researchers at MIT suggests that “the biggest and most computationally intensive AI models may soon offer diminishing returns compared to smaller models,” reports Will Knight for Wired. “By mapping scaling laws against continued improvements in model efficiency, the researchers found that it could become harder to wring leaps in performance from giant models whereas efficiency gains could make models running on more modest hardware increasingly capable over the next decade.”
Graduate student Chung-Tao (Josh) Chou speaks with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about his work developing a magnetic transistor that could lead to more energy-efficient circuits. “People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics,” says Chou. “We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new method that can predict how plasma will behave in a tokamak reactor given a set of initial conditions, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The findings “may have lowered one of the major barriers to achieving large-scale nuclear fusion,” explains Lee.
Using molecular evidence buried in rocks, researchers at MIT suggest that some of the Earth’s first living creatures are ancestors of the modern sea sponge, reports Ashley Fike for Vice. “The discovery suggests the earliest animals were simple, filter-feeding organisms that slowly cleaned the seas while the rest of the evolution was still figuring itself out,” says Fike. “These early sponges likely had no skeletons, nerves, or eyes – just porous bodies that absorbed water and nutrients. Yet they paved the way for everything that came next, from insects to mammals to us.”
Researchers at MIT have developed electron-conducting carbon concrete, a new kind of cement “that can store and release electricity like batteries,” reports Matthew Burgos for Design Boom. “MIT’s concrete battery shows a future where the material can be embedded into roads or parking areas to charge electric vehicles directly, or for off-grid homes that do not need external power,” Burgos explains.
Researchers at MIT have studied how chatbots perceived the political environment leading up to the 2024 election and its impact on automatically generated election-related responses, reports Patrick Kulp for Tech Brew. The researchers “fed a dozen leading LLMs 12,000 election-related questions on a nearly daily basis, collecting more than 16 million total responses through the contest in November,” explains Kulp.
Writing for the Financial Times, Principal Research Scientist Florian Berg explores “reasons to be hopeful about the resilience of efforts to tackle environmental issues at the corporate level.” Berg explains: “When looking at reporting on carbon emissions, ESG data and money invested in sustainable investment strategies, we can see big increases in recent years.”