Prakash Govindan PhD '12 and Anurag Bajpayee SM '08 PhD '12 co-founded AlkaLi, a startup working to extract lithium from brine and process it for use in batteries, reports Amy Feldman for Forbes. AlkaLi uses resins and membranes to more easily extract the lithium from brine, then relies on its own technology to concentrate the mineral, which ultimately is precipitated into a solid for use in batteries,” writes Feldman.
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have developed a new technique that removes lead from water using repurposed beer yeast, reports Boston 25 News. The researchers “developed a hydrogel capsule to hold the yeast after it is cleaned, freeze-dried, and ground into a powder,” explains Boston 25. “Researchers said the yeast capsules could be modified to remove other dangerous contaminants from water, including PFAS and microplastics.”
Researchers from MIT have developed “sustainable, offshore, hydrodynamic,” artificial reef structures capable of dissipating “more than 95% of an incoming wave’s total energy,” reports Nick Warburton for Materials World. The design “comprises vertical cylinders with four rudder-like slats attached to them, so that water can flow through the structure to generate 'swirling masses of water' or large eddies,” explains Warburton.
Research Scientist Neil Thompson speaks with New York Times reporter Hank Sanders about the economic and social impact of AI technology in the fast-food industry. Thompson explains that “voice A.I. is inaccurate often enough that it requires some level of human oversight, which decreases cost savings,” writes Hank.
Wall Street Journal reporter Justin Lahart spotlights the work of Prof. David Autor, an economist whose “thinking helped change our understanding of the American labor market.” Harvard Prof. Lawrence Katz says Autor has “probably been the most insightful and influential scholar of the labor market” in decades. “To me, the labor market is the central institution of any society,” says Autor. “The fastest way to improve people’s welfare is to improve the labor market.”
MIT scientists have found that lakes and seas made of methane may have shaped Titan’s shores, writes Jess Thomson for Newsweek. “This discovery could allow astronomers to learn even more about the conditions on Titan,” writes Thomson. “Knowing that waves carved out the coast enables them to predict how fast and strong the winds on the moon are and from which direction they blow.”
Gizmodo reporter Passant Rabie spotlights new research by MIT geologists that finds waves of methane on Titan likely eroded and shaped the moon’s coastlines. “If we could stand at the edge of one of Titan’s seas, we might see waves of liquid methane and ethane lapping on the shore and crashing on the coasts during storms,” explains Prof. Taylor Perron. “And they would be capable of eroding the material that the coast is made of.”
Prof. Evelina Fedorenko has uncovered evidence that the human brain uses language for communicating, not reasoning, writes Carl Zimmer for The New York Times. “Other regions in the brain are working really hard when you’re doing all these forms of thinking, but it became clear that none of those things seem to engage language circuits,” she says.
Ronald Davis III '18, SM '22, PhD '24 speaks with Jason Groves of Las Cruces Sun-News about how his research at both MIT and an Army Department of Defense lab inspired his interest in applying AI technologies to improve wireless communications, work he is now using as the foundation of his startup VectorWave. "When I think of a student earning multiple degrees from a school such as MIT along with a Ph.D., I'm blown away that it could come from a small place like Las Cruces [New Mexico]," says Brandon Sprague, Davis’ former high school mathematics teacher.
MIT researchers have discovered “a new way to interfere with a certain bacterial enzyme that may lead to a new class of antibiotics,” reports Meryl Davids Landau for National Geographic.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have “outlined the costs and benefits of artificial intelligence in health care, education and the workforce,” reports Ruth Reader, Daniel Payne, and Carmen Paul for Politico. The researchers say “policymakers should study the real-world implications of the technology and consider using AI to inform policy,” writes Politico.
Researchers at MIT have discovered the composition of primordial black holes, “potentially discovering an entirely new type of exotic black hole in the process,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. “We were making use of Stephen Hawking’s famous calculations about black holes, especially his important result about the radiation that black holes emit,” says Prof. David Kaiser. “These exotic black holes emerge from trying to address the dark matter problem — they are a byproduct of explaining dark matter.”
MIT researchers have created an amber-like material that preserves DNA so it can store data, improving on current methods that use particles of silica or require freezing, reports Pandora Dewan for Newsweek. The team “demonstrated their material by embedding and subsequently removing a DNA sequence encoding the music for the Jurassic Park theme song,” Dewan explains. “Following this process, they sequenced the molecule and confirmed that no errors had been introduced into the DNA sequence.”
Researchers at MIT have “analyzed how primordial black holes with a trait known as color charge could have formed in the soup of particles that composed the early universe,” reports Leah Crane for New Scientist. “They’re not really colors,” explains Prof. David Kaiser. “If we zoomed in with a microscope we wouldn’t see colors with our eyes, but it’s a way of accounting for the fact that nature seems to only allow color-neutral combinations.”
MIT scientists have discovered that metals become harder when heated under certain conditions, reports Isabelle Dume for Physics World. In an interview, Prof. Christopher Schuch says by bombarding metals with tiny bits of sapphire small enough to avoid shock waves, “the result is a clean and quantitative set of data that clearly reveals the counterintuitive ‘hotter-is-stronger’ effect.”