Vice President for Open Learning Sanjay Sarma speaks with Politico’s Cogan Schneier about MITili, a new initiative aimed at fostering education research. “A defining feature of [MIT] is that when you create a challenge, everyone attacks it in different ways,” explains Sarma. “The integrated approach seems to unleash a lot here.”
In an article for Scientific American, Charles Schmidt writes that MIT scientists have measured the energy of a chemical reaction’s transition state. Schmidt explains that, “better knowledge of transition states in fuel-combustion reactions could allow scientists to engineer cars with better gas mileage.”
Wired reporter Emily Reynolds writes that researchers from MIT CSAIL have developed a new communication system that is designed to help humans and robots work together in emergency situations. The new system reduces the needs for communication by 60 percent, reducing the potential for information overload.
MIT researchers have found that two types of turbulence within plasma could explain the heat loss that takes place in fusion reactors, reports Thomas Tamblyn for The Huffington Post. “With the mystery solved, researchers can now better understand how the plasma reacts and then in turn start working on fundamental ways to combat it.”
Prof. Neri Oxman’s work will be featured at the Beauty – Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial exhibit. Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Battaglia writes that Oxman’s work, “materialized through 3-D printing, the theoretical body aid is part of a project that calls on ideas culled from robotics.”
Prof. Matthew Evans speaks with Joshua Sokol of New Scientist about the LIGO findings. “Until this detection, there was a question about the existence of binary black hole systems,” Evans explains. “So it is a pleasant surprise for us to have detected them.”
DAWN profiles Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, highlighting her work on LIGO, and what inspired her interest in physics and the hunt for gravitational waves. “Even when Nergis was a freshman, she struck me as fearless, with a refreshing can-do attitude,” says Robert Berg, a professor of physics at Wellesley College.
Profs. Rainer Weiss and Nergis Mavalvala speak with Tom Ashbrook, host of NPR’s On Point, about the detection of gravitational waves. “We fully expect, as with every revolution in astronomy, that when you open a new way of looking at it [the universe] you will learn things that I can’t even tell you yet,” says Weiss.
Joshua Sokol writes for New Scientist that the detection of gravitational waves will allow researchers to explore the universe’s most exotic objects. “Imagine you’re playing the movie of the universe. This is going to be the end of the silent movie era in astronomy because you have just added sound,” says Senior Research Scientist Erik Katsavounidis.
WBUR's Bruce Gellerman speaks with Prof. Nergis Mavalvala about what the detection of gravitational waves means for the future of astronomy. “The discovery itself is spectacular, but it’s the potential for what comes next that’s even bigger,” says Mavalvala. “We are really witnessing the opening of a new way of doing astronomy.”
Kendra Pierre-Louis writes for Motherboard about the work behind the LIGO team's detection of gravitational waves. Pierre-Louis explains that in the 1960s, Prof. Rainer Weiss was teaching a class on gravitational physics and “devised a method that he felt was theoretically more rigorous, using a clock and laser beams” to detect gravitational waves.
Wired reporter Emily Reynolds writes that MIT neuroscientists have identified the region of the brain that generates a feeling of loneliness. The researchers found that the “DRN, near the back of the brain, hosts a cluster of cells that the team say is responsible for generating increased sociability after periods of isolation.”
MIT researchers used high-speed cameras to examine how sneezes travel, reports Gillian Mohney for ABC News. The researchers found that “instead of a uniform cloud of droplets, a single sneeze would fragment in the air similar to paint being flung onto a canvas.”
In an article for Sky & Telescope, Robert Naeye writes about how the first detection of gravitational waves unleashes new possibilities for observing additional events in the universe. "This is the end of the silent-movie era in astronomy,” explains Senior Research Scientist Erik Katsavounidis.
Professors Matthew Evans and Nergis Mavalvala speak with CBS Boston about the LIGO Scientific Collaboration’s findings. “We heard, essentially, the largest thing that nature could produce and that means we are only barely not deaf. We’re just starting to detect things,” says Evans.