MIT researchers have found that a small gelatinous structure, called the tectorial membrane, gives the human ear its extraordinary ability to detect faint sounds, reports the Xinhua news agency. The findings “could help devise ways to treat hearing impairment via medical interventions that alter the pores or the properties of the fluid in the membrane.”
HealthDay reporter Robert Preidt writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that long stays in space can cause spinal muscles to shrink and become fatty. “As NASA plans for future missions to Mars and beyond, these results can be used to guide future countermeasures,” says graduate student Katelyn Burkhart.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about his new research on employment trends in the U.S. showing that cities are no longer meccas of opportunity for workers without college degrees. “We need to carefully examine our assumptions that superstar cities are the land of opportunity for everyone,” says Autor.
Writing for the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff highlights Prof. David Autor’s research showing the bleak economic outlook for Americans without college degrees. Aronoff argues the most important less from this work is that, “the economic issue that matters most — maybe the only issue that really matters at all — is education.”
New York Times reporters Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui highlight Prof. David Autor’s new research that shows cities do not offer workers without college educations the same economic opportunities that they did in the past. Autor found that the declining urban wage premium has been caused by the “disappearance of ‘middle-skill jobs’ in production but also in clerical, administrative and sales work.”
Postdoctoral fellow Dheeraj Pasham speaks with Ira Flatow of Science Friday about his research calculating that a supermassive black hole 300 million light years from Earth is spinning at half the speed of light. Pasham explains that a black hole's spin rate provides information about the “channel through which it grew, all the way from a couple of years after the Big Bang until now.”
Space.com reporter Mike Wall writes that researchers have calculated a supermassive black hole’s rotation rate by analyzing the X-rays it emitted after consuming a nearby star. The researchers found that “the huge black hole, known as ASASSN-14li, is spinning at least 50 percent the speed of light.”
New York Times columnist David Leonhardt highlights Prof. Emeritus Olivier Blanchard’s address to the American Economic Association, in which he argued that governments are overly concerned with debt. “Blanchard’s case revolves around the fact that economic growth rates in modern times are usually higher than interest rates. This pattern means that governments can often repay their debts more easily than people expect,” Leonhardt explains.
Gizmodo reporter Ryan Mandelbaum writes that researchers determined how fast a supermassive black hole spins by measuring a star being swallowed by the black hole. Postdoctoral fellow Dheeraj Pasham explains that, “this measurement is different in the sense that we were able to measure the spin of a black hole that was dormant.”
Astronomers from MIT have detected echoes in X-ray flares emitted by a black hole consuming stellar material, writes Charles Q. Choi for Space.com. The findings “might shed light on how matter behaves not just as it falls into stellar-mass black holes,” writes Choi, “but also supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun.”
TechCrunch reporter Devin Coldewey writes that a team of researchers, including MIT scientists, have detected fast radio bursts (FRB) coming from a distant galaxy. Coldewey explains that the researchers used the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment radio telescope, which “points at the whole sky and chooses where to ‘look’ using software,” to identify 13 new FRBs.
MIT researchers have developed an inhalable form of messenger RNA that could be used to help treat patients with lung disease, reports Christopher Intagliata for Scientific American. Intagliata explains that researchers hope to one day “use this technique to help cystic fibrosis patients.”
Nature reporter Alexandra Witze highlights the TESS satellite’s success in uncovering new exoplanets outside our solar system. Senior research scientist George Ricker feels, “TESS works better than team members had dared to dream,” Witze writes, adding that “its four cameras can see objects 20% fainter, and focus more sharply, than originally expected.”
The Economist spotlights Prof. David Autor and graduate student Juliette Fournier’s research examining the economic prospects for Americans without college degrees. Autor and Fournier found that, “the earnings of workers without a college education have scarcely risen in 50 years, after adjusting for inflation; for men they have fallen. This stagnation coincided with tectonic changes in American employment.”
NASA’s MIT-led TESS mission has discovered a new exoplanet orbiting a star 53 light years from Earth, reports Mike Wall for Space.com. The “sub-Neptune” planet is “about three times bigger than Earth, which means it's likely gaseous rather than rocky,” writes Wall.