Financial Times correspondent Rana Foroohar spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson’s new book, “Power and Progress,” which “explores several moments over the last millennium when technology led to the opposite of shared prosperity.” In the book, Acemoglu and Johnson “take a different approach to the productivity gains of technology and how they get distributed compared with most of their peers.”
As part of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program, researchers at MIT are developing “nearly silent electroaerodynamic thrusters that would be used for vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, for both passengers and cargo,” reports Passant Rabie for Gizmodo.
Researchers from MIT and else have documented the destructive power of hand magnets, a technique used for identifying meteorites, reports Zack Savitsky for Science. “When brought within a few centimeters of a rock, the researchers found, the magnets overwrite vestigial fields contained in iron-based minerals such as magnetite and reset them to the higher strength and orientation of the magnet,” writes Savitsky.
Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi speaks with WBUR reporter Geoff Brumfiel about her research studying the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare. “When you take state-of-the-art machine learning methods and systems and then evaluate them on different patient groups, they do not perform equally,” says Ghassemi.
Prof. Emeritus Nelson Kiang, a scientist and educator who pioneered research into how humans hear, has died at 93, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “Kiang’s research ultimately helped form some of the foundation for other research into hearing, including the design and refinement of hearing aids and cochlear implants,” writes Marquard.
Callie Gade and Nate Bonham of CNN’s Discovery Daily Podcast spotlight how researchers from MIT developed a 3D printed replica of the human heart that can help doctors customize treatments for patients before conducting open heart surgery or other intrusive procedures. “These more patient-specific heart replicas can help future researchers develop and identify treatments for people with unique health problems,” says Gade.
Research scientist Erez Yoeli speaks with Knowable Magazine reporter Bob Holmes about the impact financial incentives have on encouraging cooperation. “Financial rewards kind of muddy the water about people’s motivations,” says Yoeli. “That undermines any reputational benefit from doing the deed.”
MIT researchers have developed Robust MADER, an updated version of a previous system developed in 2020 to help drones avoid in-air collisions, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The new version adds in a delay before setting out on a new trajectory,” explains Heater. “That added time will allow it to receive and process information from fellow drones and adjust as needed.”
Al Jazeera spotlights a study co-authored by postdoctoral associate Qian Li that finds that rapidly melting Antarctic ice is slowing down the flow of water through the world’s oceans and “could have a disastrous effect on global climate.”
Principal Research Scientist Leo Anthony Celi co-authored a study that found “a lack of racial and gender diversity could be hindering the efforts of researchers working to improve the fairness of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in health care,” reports Carissa Wong for Nature.
A study co-authored by postdoctoral associate Qian Li has found that “melting ice around Antarctica will cause a rapid slowdown of a major global deep ocean current by 2050 that could alter the world’s climate for centuries and accelerate sea level rise,” reports Graham Readfearn for The Guardian.
Researchers at the McGovern and Broad Institutes have developed a bacterial "nanosyringe" that can inject large proteins into specific cells in the body, which could lead to safer and more effective treatments for a variety of conditions, including cancer, reports Michael Le Page for New Scientist. “The fact that this can load a diversity of different payloads of different sizes makes it unique amongst protein delivery devices,” says graduate student Joseph Kreitz.
Researchers at MIT have co-authored a paper in which they used honeybees to study the microbiome of cities. Since bees “tend to forage within a mile radius of their hives in urban areas, there’s valuable information about a city or even a neighborhood in the honey they produce, on their bodies and in the debris that lies at the bottom of hives,” writes Linda Poon for Bloomberg.
Ingrid Wickelgren at Scientific American highlights a new study from researchers at the McGovern and Broad Institutes, in which they used a bacterial ‘nanosyringe’ to inject large proteins into human cells. “The syringe technology also holds promise for treating cancer because it can be engineered to attach to receptors on certain cancer cells,” writes Wickelgren.
IEEE Pulse reporter Leslie Mertz spotlights Prof. Ed Boyden’s work on refining expansion microscopy. “My hope for expansion, looking 5 or 10 years out, is that it could help produce a map of molecules that is detailed enough to help us understand life itself,” says Boyden.