Danielle Geathers, president of the Undergraduate Association (UA), writes for Time about how her childhood helped inspire her to desire to advocate for change. “My activism was nurtured by my mother’s emphasis on cultural education,” writes Geathers. “I had early exposure to Alex Haley’s Kunta Kinte, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Maya Angelou. I was planted in solid ground with roots that stretched back generations.”
MIT researchers outfitted a Boston Dynamics robotic dog with contactless vital sign monitoring equipment to help clinicians care for patients with Covid-19 without risking exposure, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington writes that the system “has the potential to not only reduce the risk of exposure for medical personnel, but also drastically reduce use of personal protective equipment.”
Writing for The New Yorker, Bernard Avishai spotlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s work exploring the need for a revolution in financial engineering to help spur the development of vaccines, and how a vaccine megafund could have assisted in bringing the Covid-19 pandemic under control. “The more I studied this, the more I realized that finance actually plays a huge role in drug development,” says Lo, “in many cases, way too big a role.”
New Scientist spotlights “Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn,” a new book by Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning, and Luke Yoquinto, a research affiliate at the MIT AgeLab. The book explores how “scientific findings in wildly different fields are transforming the way we learn and teach.”
MIT researchers have developed an AI algorithm called MosAIc that “can spot connections between works from different cultures, artists and mediums,” writes Theresa Machemer for Smithsonian Magazine. “We hope this approach can be used as a tool to help art historians find new patterns in history and gather evidence to support their hypotheses,” says PhD student Mark Hamilton.
Researchers at MIT have determined why shaving causes everyday razors made of Martensitic stainless steel to wear down so quickly. “Now that researchers know why razors fail so quickly, they can start to develop steel without the same weaknesses,” notes Theresa Machemer for Smithsonian Magazine.
Researchers at MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality have created a deepfake video of President Richard Nixon discussing a failed moon landing. “[The video is] meant to serve as a warning of the coming wave of impressively realistic deepfake false videos about to hit us that use A.I. to convincingly reproduce the appearance and sound of real people,” write Aaron Pressman and David Z. Morris for Fortune.
Using a scanning electron microscope, MIT researchers observed how hair produces tiny chips in steel razor blades, reports Nell Greenfieldboyce for NPR. "For me, personally, it was both a scientific curiosity, of 'What's going on?' and also aiming to solve an important engineering problem," says Prof. C. Cem Tasan.
By observing and recording the cutting process, MIT researchers have found that human hairs chip razor blades during the shaving process, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist. “We expected that the failure of these materials should just be wear,” says Prof. C. Cem Tasan. “But this is not the case: the process of chipping is much faster.”
Wired reporter Eric Niiler writes that a new study by MIT researchers sheds light on why razor blades get dull so quickly. “We want to design new materials that are better and go longer,” says Prof. C. Cem Tasan. “This problem of the blade is an excellent example. We are so used to it, you don’t think about it. You use the razor for a few weeks and then move on.”
Prof. James Collins speaks with Molly Wood of Marketplace about his work developing a faster, cheaper and more accurate Covid-19 diagnostic. Collins explains that his research group is “using synthetic biology to create highly sensitive, low-cost diagnostics, some that are now approved for use in clinical diagnostics labs, and now we’re moving towards point-of-care diagnostics, as well as at-home diagnostics.”
Reporting for USA Today, Karen Weintraub spotlights how researchers from MIT and 3M are collaborating on a rapid, low-cost diagnostic test for Covid-19. "The world needs as many useful tests as possible as fast as possible," says Prof. Hadley Sikes.
Reporting for CNN, Scottie Andrew highlights how researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital developed the iMASC, a silicon mask that can be reused and sterilized multiple times. Andrew notes that the mask is “a promising step toward addressing the critical healthcare supply shortages.”
Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia and senior postdoctoral associate Leslie Chan discuss their work developing a synthetic biosensor to diagnose lung disease. Chan explains that “instead of relying on naturally occurring breath volatiles, we wanted to be able to engineer the breath signal that we could use to monitor lung disease.”
Fast Company reporter Kristin Toussaint writes that a study by MIT researchers finds shutdowns and lockdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic led to clearer skies and increased solar output in Delhi. “I think we’ve been able to get a glimpse of how the world can look like if we actually have clean air,” says research scientist Ian Marius Peters.