Prof. Susan Solomon speaks with Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein about the Antarctic ozone hole. “’Ozone depletion starts LATER and takes LONGER to get to the maximum hole and the holes are typically shallower’ in September, which is the key month to look at ozone recovery, not October,” says Solomon.
Researchers in Prof. Kevin Esvelt’s lab are exploring the future of face masks in an effort to help better prepare for the next pandemic, reports Jacob Stern for The Atlantic. “Their goal, ultimately, is to ensure that the country can distribute completely protective masks to every essential worker,” writes Stern.
During his senior year of high school, MIT first-year student Daniel Larsen successfully proved a key theorem about Carmichael numbers, entities that mimic prime numbers, writes Jordana Cepelewicz for Quanta Magazine. “His proof is really quite advanced,” says Dartmouth Prof. Carl Pomerance. “It would be a paper that any mathematician would be really proud to have written.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School are investigating how exercise and high-fat diets can alter cells, genes and cellular pathways, reports Abby Patkin for Boston.com. “Their research could eventually help develop drugs that would mimic the effects of exercise and combat obesity,” explains Patkin.
Prof. Paulo Lozano speaks with Boston Globe reporter Travis Anderson about NASA’s recent asteroid test, which successfully shifted the orbit of a harmless asteroid. The mission had a “truly inspirational result,” says Lozano. “We’re getting closer to hav[ing] the ability to protect our planet from one of the most destructive forces in nature.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that U.S. senior citizens are more likely to live independently if there are more immigrants in an area, reports Stuart Anderson for Forbes. This study suggests that the supply of immigrant labor "affects caregiving arrangements, and allows more older Americans to age in the community,” write the researchers.
Researchers from MIT and the University of Southern California are “using large-scale mobility data to follow people's eating behaviors throughout the day, to understand how food choice is influenced by what’s accessible, available, and affordable,” reports Mike Branom for Daily Beast.
Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma spotlights Prof. Kevin Chen’s research creating flying lightning bug robots that could be used to pollinate crops in vertical farms or even in space. “If we think about the insect functions that animals can’t do,” says Chen, “that inspires us to think about what smaller, insect-scale robots can do, that larger robots cannot.”
MIT and Delta airlines are developing a plan to eliminate persistent contrails, reports Susan Tran for NBC Boston 10. “A possible solution here is to get rid of these clouds flying at different altitudes,” says Tran. “They [researchers] say that up to 90 percent of all contrails could be avoided by flying at different heights.”
Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have conducted a study to see how exercise and high-fat diets can impact cells, reports WCVB. The researchers “say the data could eventually be used to develop drugs that could help enhance or mimic the benefits of exercise,” writes WCVB.
MIT researchers have found that the number of species and the average interaction strength determine whether different ecosystems would be stable or chaotic, reports Gabriel Popkin for Science. The researchers “grew microbes together in plastic wells and increase and decrease the concentration of nutrients to manipulate how strongly the different species interacted with each other,” explains Popkin. “The more nutrients, the more the different species competed.”
Researchers at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Delta Air Lines are working together to find new ways to eliminate persistent contrails, the white clouds that trail behind airplanes, using an algorithm that predicts altitudes and locations where contrails are likely to form, reports Omose Ighodaro for Bloomberg. “The joint research group has already completed more than 40 testing flights and has plans for live experiment flights and simulations,” writes Ighodaro.
Researchers at MIT co-authored a study which found that two stars in a binary system 3,000 light years from Earth are orbiting each other so closely that one of the stars has burnt out, reports Will Dunham for Reuters. "Basically, they were bound together for 8 billion years in a binary orbit,” says postdoc Kevin Burdge, “And now, right before the second one could end its stellar life cycle and become a white dwarf in the way that stars normally do - by evolving into a type of star called a red giant - the leftover white dwarf remnant of the first star interrupted the end of the companion's lifecycle and started slowly consuming it."
A new study by researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School has helped identify the impact of exercise and high-fat diets on cells, reports Darren Botelho for NBC Boston 10. “Years from now, those researchers say the data could lead to a pill that would help not only with weight loss, but with the overall effect from exercise – a better wellbeing,” explains Botelho.
Writing for Times Higher Ed, Prof. Andres Sevtsuk explores how campus design can boost communication and exchange between researchers. “Low-rise, high-density buildings with interconnected walkways and shared public spaces are more likely to maximize encounters,” writes Sevtsuk. “In colder climates, having indoor walking paths between buildings can help ensure that encounters continue during colder parts of the year.”