In an article for The Boston Globe Magazine about how the 2016 presidential election has been a source of anxiety for people around the country, James Sullivan highlights graduate student Maimuna Majumder’s research on post-election stress. “What we’re finding is that stress is not just limited to people that are liberal,” says Majumder. “It is all-encompassing.”
Stephanie Mlot reports for FOX News that MIT researchers have developed a new portable system that can monitor energy usage, and could be useful for both residential and military applications. The system could “not only generate major savings in fuel or power,” Mlot writes, “but it may also safeguard soldiers responsible for base resupply.”
New York Times reporter Paul Vitello writes that Prof. Emeritus Bruce Mazlish, a historian known for his psychoanalytical biographies of world leaders, died at age 93. Mazlish’s “experience teaching European history to young scientists and engineers inspired a lifelong interest in understanding the divide between science and the humanities.”
In this Atlantic video, Caleb Harper, a research scientist at the Media Lab, speaks about how farming will change as more people begin moving to cities. Harper explains that if individuals are enabled to grow fresh food, “then countries that import a lot of their own foods now can start to build up a capacity within their border.”
Research affiliate Moshe Alamaro hopes to reduce smog in Delhi using a jet engine, according to The Economist. By placing a jet engine next to one of India’s coal-fired power plants, Alamaro hopes to create a “‘virtual chimney’ which would carry the trapped pollution above it, so that it could be dispersed in the wider atmosphere.”
In an article for Popular Science, Kate Baggaley speaks with Prof. Timothy Lu and postdoc César de la Fuente about strategies they are developing to tackle antibiotic resistance. Lu explains that researchers are attempting to develop an arsenal of treatments to “be able to come at the problem from a variety of different ways.”
New Scientist reporter Victoria Turk writes that MIT researchers have developed a system that can predict the future based off of a still image. Turk writes that the system could enable “an AI assistant to recognize when someone is about to fall, or help a self-driving car foresee an accident.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Christopher Knittel finds that technological advances are needed to reduce the use of oil in the car industry, according to The Economist. The researchers found that “the price of batteries to power EVs would need to fall by a factor of three, and they would need to charge much faster.”
A new drug delivery system developed by MIT researchers may help eradicate malaria and could boost medication adherence, writes Rachel Zimmerman for WBUR’s Bostonomix. "People don't take their medicines and this might be a way, someday, for Alzheimer's patients to have much better treatments and people with mental health diseases to have much better treatments," says Prof. Langer.
Brian Sullivan writes for Bloomberg about research affiliate Judah Cohen’s “Siberian Snow Theory,” which is based on the concept that the amount of snow covering the ground in northern Eurasia can be used to predict how cold winter will be in the northern hemisphere. Sullivan writes that Cohen “spies all the makings of an early, cold winter,” this year.
Chris Bourg, director of the MIT Libraries, speaks with Carl Straumsheim of Inside Higher Ed about the MIT report on the future of libraries, which presents a “vision of the library as an ‘open global platform’.” Bourg notes that “providing access to credible information and the tools to assess, use, understand and exploit it…is more important than ever now.”
CNN’s Jessica Ravitz describes how MIT researchers are working with surgeons from Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital to outfit a patient with a prosthetic limb that can be controlled by the brain. The patient will have “wireless sensors implanted in his muscles, which will integrate with the robotic prosthetic being created for him.”
A study co-authored by Prof. David Autor shows that voters living in regions of the country that saw an increase in Chinese imports were more receptive to President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-free trade message, writes Bob Davis for The Wall Street Journal. The researchers found “import competition from China damaged local economies and undermined employment and wages.”
Wired reporter Brian Barrett writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that allows virtual reality headsets to operate wirelessly. The system uses “millimeter wave (mm wave) technology, a large band of spectrum whose potential has gone largely untapped,” Barrett explains.
Reuters reporter Yiming Woo highlights a new autonomous scooter developed by researchers from MIT, the National University of Singapore and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). The scooter should be able to help “improve mobility for all ages, cut down on the need for cars and also lower accident rates.”