Graduate student Crystal Lee speaks with Slate reporter Rebecca Onion about a new study that illustrates how social media users have used data visualizations to argue against public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic. “The biggest point of diversion is the focus on different metrics—on deaths, rather than cases,” says Lee. “They focus on a very small slice of the data. And even then, they contest metrics in ways I think are fundamentally misleading.”
Graduate student Caroline White-Nockleby discusses her new white paper that explores the regional impact of the decline in coal production. “Employment in the [coal] industry has decreased from around 3,800 jobs to around 2,800 direct jobs in the past five years,” says White-Nockleby .”They also have a big role in the tax base. Coal companies pay taxes on the value of the coal itself that’s underground, and they also pay property taxes.”
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, spotlights Prof. Ed Boyden’s work developing a new technology that “enables researchers for the first time to study an intact tissue sample and track genetic activity on the spot within a cell’s tiniest recesses, or microenvironments—areas that have been largely out of reach until now.”
Bloomberg reporters Georgina McKay and Tracy Alloway spotlight a new working paper on income inequality by MIT researchers that finds that highly-paying jobs are now more likely to be located within highly-paid companies. The findings suggest that “a government looking to reduce inequality might want to target sectors where bifurcation between ‘high-paying’ and ‘low-paying’ has been most extreme.”
Research scientist Andreas Mershin speaks with Noam Hassenfeld of Vox about his work developing a new AI system that could be used to detect disease using smell.
MIT scientists have demonstrated a plastic polymer cable that can transmit data 10 times as fast as USB, reports Payal Dhar for IEEE Spectrum. “For newer standards aiming at much higher data rates, we see the cables getting much thicker, more expensive, and commonly short [because of] technical challenges,” says Prof. Ruonan Han. “We hope this research could [enable] much higher speed for our needs.”
Researchers from MIT have developed a new kind of surgery that could offer amputees better control of their muscles and prosthetic limbs after surgery, reports Cara Murez for U.S. News & World Report. “In this new type of surgery — called agonist-antagonist myoneural interface, or AMI — surgeons reconnect those muscle pairs so they retain the push-pull relationship they've always had and improve sensory feedback,” writes Murez.
Smithsonian reporter Theresa Machemer writes that a new study by MIT researchers shows that C. elegans are able to sense and avoid the color blue.
Prof. Ruth Lehmann, director of the Whitehead Institute, speaks with STAT reporter Elizabeth Cooney about the importance of fundamental scientific research. “There are so many areas that are so important for science,” says Lehmann. “One is supporting fundamental research. But then there are other areas like diversity and disparities.”
New Yorker reporter Benjamin Wallace-Wells spotlights new research from the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, which shows “just telling people the accurate immunization rates in their country increased, by five per cent, the number who said that they would get the vaccine.”
Graduate student Ashley Beckwith speaks with BBC Radio 5 about her work developing a new concept for growing wood in the lab, as part of an effort to supplement traditional forestry methods. "We dedicate a lot of resources to growing whole plants, when all we use really is a very small portion of the plant,” says Beckwith. “So somehow we needed to figure out a more strategic way to reproduce materials that isn't so reliant on the land."
A new AI-powered system developed by researchers from MIT and other institutions can detect prostate cancer in urine samples as accurately as dogs can, reports Tanya Lewis and Prachi Patel for Scientific American. “We found we could repeat the training you use for dogs on the machines until we can’t tell the difference between the two,” says research scientist Andreas Mershin.
Prof. Kevin Chen speaks with NPR about his work developing a new microdrone inspired by how an insect flaps its wings. “Because our soft power robot is very robust, of course, we can do interesting maneuvers, such as doing a somersault, we can survive collisions, et cetera,” he explains.
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater are developing a new prototype for a robot that can transform from soft to hard. “Combining the two fields could go a ways toward building safer collaborative robots for interacting with human workers,” writes Heater.
Speaking with WHDH, Prof. Kevin Cheng explains how he was inspired by the agility of insects to create tiny new drones that are acrobatic and resilient. “Think about a scenario, for example, a building collapse with people trapped inside, and what we’re thinking of is sending a swarm of drones into this collapsed building to search for survivors,” says Chen. “That’s something very difficult for traditional drones.”