Research

Researchers from MIT have developed a new satellite observation technique that can help gauge the strength of ancient rivers on Mars and active liquid methane rivers on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “What’s exciting about Titan is that it’s active, and on Mars, it gives us a time machine, to take the rivers that are dead now and get a sense of what they were like when they were actively flowing,” says Prof. Taylor Perron. “With this technique, we have a method to make real predictions for a place where we won’t get more data for a long time.”

Using a new satellite observation technique, researchers from MIT and elsewhere have determined the flow of dried-up rivers on Mars and currently active liquid methane rivers on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. “Both kinds are of scientific interest because they could reveal the role rivers play in shaping the worlds’ environments,” reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo.

MIT researchers have found that lawyers prefer, and better understand, simplified texts, rather than legalese, reports Jesse Greenspan for Scientific American. “The researchers presented 105 U.S. attorneys with contract excerpts written in both “legalese” and plain English and tested their comprehension and recall for each,” explains Greenspan. “While the attorneys outperformed laypeople overall, they still found the legalese contracts harder to grasp than those written in plain English.”

Researchers at MIT have developed a soft robot that can be controlled by a weak magnetic field and travel through tiny spaces within the human body, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “Because of their soft materials and relatively simple manipulation, researchers believe such mechanisms could be used in biomedical situations, such as inching through human blood vessels to deliver a drug at a precise location,” explains Paul.

Writing for Forbes, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, makes the case that liquid neural networks “offer an elegant and efficient computational framework for training and inference in machine learning. With their compactness, adaptability, and streamlined computation, these networks have the potential to reshape the landscape of artificial intelligence and drive further breakthroughs in the field.”

Sublime Systems, a startup founded by Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang and former MIT postdoc Leah Ellis, is working to decarbonize cement making – a process which currently accounts for eight percent of global carbon emissions. “The world has a huge appetite for cement, and Sublime is working to scale its production to meet it,” writes Casey Crownhart for The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. 

MIT researchers have discovered an RNA-guided DNA-cutting enzyme in eukaryotes, reports Science. “The researchers speculate that eukaryotic cells may have gained the newly identified editing genes from transposable elements—so-called jumping genes—they received from bacteria,” writes Science.

Prof. Richard Young and his colleagues have discovered that many transcription factors can bind RNA, reports Christie Wilcox for Science. "The team decided to investigate after scattered reports suggested that at least some transcription factors are capable of binding RNA even though they lack traditional RNA binding domains,” writes Wilcox. 

A new study co-authored by MIT scientists finds that the Department of Justice’s China Initiative may have caused researchers of Chinese descent to leave the U.S. for China, reports Ryan Quinn for Inside Higher Ed. The study authors found that researchers of Chinese descent had “general feelings of fear and anxiety that lead them to consider leaving the United States and/or stop applying for federal grants. If the situation is not corrected, American science will likely suffer the loss of scientific talent to China and other countries.”

Professor Roberto Rigobon, Research Scientist Florian Berg and Research Affiliate Julian Kölbel write for the Financial Times about the pressing need for tougher scrutiny, regulation and reform of ESG rating agencies. “The solution is greater transparency about what a rating seeks to measure, and the methodology behind it,” they write. “Users should be able to scrutinize the way the data is collected and aggregated, and whether that is consistent with the rating’s objective.”

MIT researchers have identified a new biological editing system that could “potentially be even more precise than CRISPR gene editing,” reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. The new system, based on a protein called Fanzor, is “the first programmable RNA-guided system discovered in eukaryotes,” Baisas notes.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that new building codes put in place to combat climate change could impact home affordability in the greater Boston area, reports Paula Ebben for CBS Boston, “If widely adopted, [the codes] could add up to $23,000 to the cost of an average home, leaving an additional 33,000 Massachusetts residents priced out of the market,” writes Ebben.

Researchers from MIT and Duke have discovered that introducing weaker bonds into a material can produce stronger polymers, reports Norbert Sparrow for Plastics Today. “Side-chain cross-linked polymers are probably the most widely used type of polymer network,” says postdoc Shu Wang. “The concept [outlined] in our paper should work for all polymer networks that are side-chain cross linked.”

A study from MIT and elsewhere has found that a new building code in Massachusetts designed to promote “net zero” development, “would increase construction costs and potentially worsen the state’s housing crisis,” reports Greg Ryan for NBC Boston.

Researchers at MIT have developed an extra-absorbent hydrogel that can draw water from the air, reports Ross Cristantiello for Boston.com. The new hydrogel “could potentially help communities ravaged by drought and make air conditioners more energy-efficient,” writes Cristantiello.