Prof. Nathaniel Hendren and Prof. Justin Steil speak with New York Times reporter Jason DeParle about the difficulty in building affordable housing in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. “A lot has changed in American life over the past 50 years, but the hostility to affordable housing has remained surprisingly durable,” Steil explains. “Where you grow up matters a great deal for shaping your life outcomes,” Hendren adds.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti addresses New York’s congestion pricing plan – an attempt to prevent traffic build up and improve public transportation – and ways Boston can develop a similar and more effective policy. “With congestion pricing, the city and state can combat the climate emergency, the cost of living crisis, and improve quality of life,” says Ratti. “If they don’t take action now, something even worse will come to pass: Boston will find itself outdone by New York.”
MIT has been named to the number two spot in Times Higher Education’s world reputation rankings, reports Times Higher Education. MIT is “dedicated to the teaching of science and technology. The sheer number of Nobel laureates affiliated with the institution – an impressive 101 – reveals the caliber of MIT graduates,” Times Higher Education notes. “Scientific discoveries and technological advances to come out of the college include the first chemical synthesis of penicillin, the development of radar, the discovery of quarks and the invention of magnetic core memory, which aided the development of digital computers.”
Researchers from the MIT Self-Assembly Lab have developed a 4D-knit dress that uses “heat-activated yarn that allows its shape and fit to be altered in an instant,” reports Rima Sabina Aouf for Dezeen. Prof. Skylar Tibbits notes that by having “one dress that can be customized for fit and style, it can be perfectly tailored to the individual while being more sustainable and adaptable to changes in season, style or inventory.”
Terreform One - a nonprofit art, architecture and urban design research group led by Mitchell Joachim PhD '06 - has designed a building made out of growing trees, reports Nate Berg for Fast Company. “We wanted to use the powers of computing and fabrication systems and other ideas about how we could prototype this to nudge nature or help train nature to do the things it does naturally, but shape it into usable structures and eventually homes,” says Joachim.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that while AI systems could help doctors come to the right diagnosis more often, the diagnostic gains aren’t always distributed evenly, with more improvements tied to patients with lighter skin, report Daniel Payne, Erin Schumaker, and Ruth Reader for Politico. “AI could be a powerful tool to improve care and potentially offer providers a check on their blindspots," they write. "But that doesn’t mean AI will reduce bias. In fact, the study suggests, AI could cause greater disparities in care.”
Joy Buolamwini PhD '22 speaks with MSNBC reporter Daniela Pierre-Bravo about her new book, Unmasking AI: My Mission To Protect What is Human in a World of Machines, which explores the intersection of AI development and the, “dangers of bias in its algorithmic systems.” Buolamwini emphasizes that: “We need legislation — at the federal level — because the legislation then puts in the guard rails for the tech companies. And also, we need to think about AI governance globally. I do think that all of our stories matter. When you share your experience with AI or your questions about it, you encourage other people to share their stories.”
Writing for Bloomberg, Prof. Carlo Ratti and Arianna Salazar-Miranda SM '16, PhD '23 explore the possibility and potential of developing 15-minute cities in America. “If implemented correctly, the 15-minute city can be an agent of freedom: freedom from traffic jams, freedom to live in a healthy environment and freedom to be outside,” they write. “It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but our research shows that almost every community in America could benefit from a few more well-placed amenities.”
Researchers from MIT have developed liquid metal printing, a new technique that can be used to quickly 3D print large-scale objects such as furniture, reports Designboom. The researchers say this technique can enable 3D printing, “ten times faster than a comparable metal additive manufacturing process, and the process of melting the metal may be more efficient than some other methods, given that metal is also more accessible with the abundance of scraps that can be recycled,” writes Designboom.
MIT researchers have developed a 3D printing technique called liquid metal printing (LMP) that capable of printing large aluminum parts at least 10 times faster than a comparable metal additive manufacturing process, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. LMP “utilizes a bed of 100-micron glass beads to create a structure into which molten aluminum is deposited — a process not entirely dissimilar from injection molding,” explains Heater. “The beads are capable of standing up to the intense temperature, while allowing the heat to quickly dissipate as the metal solidifies.”
Writing for Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti examines recent attempts to shorten journeys between major cities, such as a hyperloop system that would transport passengers via giant vacuum tubes from London to Paris in about 20 minutes. “Customers clearly prefer a smooth experience to maximum speed,” writes Ratti. “They might also be choosing the Eurostar for having a carbon footprint that is about 95 per cent less than that of aircraft. While the hyperloop might have emitted less per journey than a plane, and perhaps even a high-speed train, its construction would have had a huge environmental cost.”
Popular Mechanics reporter Jill Waldbieser spotlights Prof. Hugh Herr and his work developing prosthetic limbs that integrate with their human hosts using a surgical technique that preserves the sensation in artificial limbs. “In the future, on the order of five years or so, we’ll be so good at this, we’ll completely restore the signals from the prosthetic to the brain and from the brain to the prosthetic, like the limb was never amputated,” says Herr.
Lecturer James Aloisi and several students from his urban planning and policy course write for Commonwealth Beacon about their proposals for creating a better public transportation connection between Kendall Square and Logan Airport. “It should not be acceptable that, in greater Boston in the 21st Century, a traveler cannot easily and conveniently connect by transit from one of the nation’s most important innovation and academic centers to the international airport, a mere three miles away,” writes Aloisi. “We can do better, and we must do better if we want to do more than just pretend that we live in a livable, sustainable region.”
David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, speaks with Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace about how cars in the U.S. are getting heavier and larger, and the environmental and safety costs associated with larger vehicles. “For decades, people who buy enormous, very heavy cars have been creating societal costs that they aren’t paying for. That’s what’s called a market failure,” said Zipper. “So if you want the market for automobiles to succeed, we need to make sure that when people are shopping for their next car, they are considering the societal costs of their purchase.”
Prof. Canan Dagdeviren and her team have developed a wearable ultrasound patch that can be used to screen for breast cancer at home, reports Grace Browne for Wired. “Dagdeviren wants to give people the opportunity to know what’s happening inside their bodies every day, the same way we check the weather forecast,” writes Browne.