Research

Profs. Ruonan Han and Qing Hu speak with Popular Science reporter Rahul Rao about their work with terahertz waves. “There’s a laundry list of potential applications,” says Hu of the promise of terahertz waves.

Lecturer Eric Robsky Huntley has found that eviction rates for communities of color in Massachusetts were nearly twice as high as eviction rates for predominately white neighborhoods, reports Katie Johnson for The Boston Globe. “In neighborhoods made up predominately of people of color, landlords filed 30 evictions for every 1,000 renters, while majority-white neighborhoods had 18.5 evictions filed for every 1,000 renters,” writes Johnson.

A new analysis by lecturer Eric Robsky Huntley finds that communities of color were hit harder by new eviction filings than white residents after Massachusetts’s eviction moratorium ended in October 2020, reports Adam Reilly for GBH. “Huntley also found that there were nearly twice as many eviction filings per renter in predominately nonwhite communities as in predominantly white ones – and, in certain municipalities, the disparity was even greater,” writes Reilly.

MIT engineers have developed a new contactless method to clean solar panels that could save billions of gallons of water, reports Anuradha Varanasi for Popular Science. “I was amazed at the sheer amount of pure water that is required for cleaning solar panels,” says Prof. Kripa Varanasi. “The water footprint of the solar industry is only going to grow in the future. We need to figure out how to make solar farms more sustainable.”

Prof. Sara Seager has been awarded one of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) awards, which will help fund her project aimed at sending an orbiter that deploys an inflatable probe to Venus, as part of an effort to search for habitability or signs of life, reports Ramin Skibba for Wired. “This search for signs of life on Venus has been around for a long time, and now the stars are aligned to start taking it seriously,” says Seager.

Daily Beast reporter Miriam Fauzia writes that MIT researchers have developed a new way to create carbon fibers that are stronger and lighter than steel, using leftover waste from crude oil processing. “The new findings could usher in an age of heavy-duty cars that consume less fuel thanks to their decreased weight,” writes Fauzia.

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Edward Scolnick and La Jolla Institute for Immunology Prof. Erica Ollmann Saphire share their insights on the future and potential challenges in developing a universal Covid-19 vaccine. “Success will require two principles that the world has not yet sufficiently grasped in fighting this virus: a focus on the long term over the short term, and a sustainable structure and support for collaboration,” write Scolnick and Saphire.

Hill reporters Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin spotlight how MIT researchers have developed a way to make lightweight fibers for possible use in the bodies of cars out of the waste material from the refining of petroleum. “The ‘heavy, gloppy’ leftovers from the petroleum refining process could become a key ingredient in making electric vehicles lighter, less expensive and more efficient,” they write.

Researchers from MIT and MIT spinoff Quaise Energy speak with Boston Globe reporter David Abel about their work developing a new way to drill as deep as 12 miles into the Earth’s crust, using a special laser, which could provide a way to tap the geothermal energy in the rocks. “This is game-changing,” Woskov said. “We now have the potential to exploit an energy source that . . . could unleash the virtually limitless supply of energy beneath our feet.”

Prof. Kripa Varanasi, graduate student Sreedath Panath, and a team of researchers are developing a water-free way to clear dust off of solar panels, reports Billy Hurley and Ed Brown for Tech Briefs. “Water is such a precious commodity, and people need to be careful about how to make use of this resource that we have,” says Varanasi. “The solar industry really needs to keep this in mind; we don’t want to be solving one problem and creating another.”

Professor Linda Griffith speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about her research on endometriosis. The dream is “that we get diagnosis at the start, and you get your therapy at the start, and you don’t even develop the disease,” says Griffith.

Boston Globe reporter Kevin Lewis spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that explores why it is often so difficult to comprehend the language in legal contracts. “In other words, what sets lawyers apart from laypeople is not necessarily their greater familiarity with legal concepts,” writes Lewis. “It’s that they’ve been trained in how to handle such esoteric language.”

Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with WHDH about his team’s work developing an acoustic fabric that can listen to and record sound, a development inspired by the human ear. "The fabric can be inserted into clothes to monitor heart rate and respiration. It can even help with monitoring unborn babies during pregnancy."

Prof. Susan Solomon speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Nidhi Subbaraman about her research and another recent study that provides evidence wildfire smoke poses a threat to the ozone layer. “It’s fair to say that, at least for a few months, these wildfires canceled out the last decade of all the efforts that we put in over the Montreal Protocol,” says Solomon. “I think there’s every reason to believe this is going to happen more often, and it’s going to act to slow down the recovery of the ozone depletion.”

Bloomberg News spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new material that works like a microphone, converting sounds into vibrations and then electrical signals. “The development means the possibility of clothes that act as hearing aids, clothes that answer phone calls, and garments that track heart and breathing rates,” writes Bloomberg News.