Prof. John Hansman speaks with NPR reporter Joe Hernandez about staffing shortages and recent air travel disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport. "We run the system very conservatively and very safely," says Hansman. "If you get to this very extreme case we appear to be in, then you have secondary concerns about fatigue and stress, et cetera, that may degrade performance, but I don't think we've necessarily seen that at this point.”
Prof. Pulkit Agrawal speaks with Darian Woods and Geoff Brumfiel of NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money about his work developing a simulator that can be used to train robots. “The power of simulation is that you can collect, you know, very large amounts of data,” explains Agrawal. “For example, in three hours', you know, worth of simulation, we can collect 100 days' worth of data.”
New York Post reporter Marissa Matozzo cracks into a new study by MIT researchers that uncovers the best way to keep eggs from cracking. The researchers found that eggs dropped sideways are less likely to break than those dropped vertically. “It turns out the sides can take more of a beating than their pointy or rounded ends, and that could mean a lot for proper storage,” says Matozzo.
Prof. Carlos Portela and postdoc James Surjadi speaks with TechBriefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their work developing a new metamaterial that is both strong and stretchy. “We have demonstrated the concept with these polymeric materials and, from here, we see a couple of opportunities,” Surjadi explains. “One is extending this to more brittle material systems. The real dream will be to be able to do this with glasses, other ceramics, or even metals — things that normally we don't expect to deform a lot before they break. Brittle materials are the perfect candidates for us to try to make into woven-type architectures.”
Forbes reporter Amanda Kooser spotlights a new study by MIT scientists that has found eggs are less likely to crack when dropped on their side. “The researchers put eggs through their paces in two different tests,” explains Kooser. “One was a static compression test that applied increasing force to the eggs. The other was a drop test.”
Researchers at MIT have discovered that eggs dropped on their side are less likely to crack than those dropped on their tips, reports Doyle Rice for USA Today. The researchers conducted both a drop and compression test on the eggs, and the findings “suggest that future research could explore the application of these findings to engineering scenarios, such as how structures respond to dynamic loads,” writes Rice.
A study by MIT researchers has found that “dropping an egg horizontally is more likely to keep it intact than a vertical drop,” reports Ed Cara for Gizmodo. “People tend to have better intuition for stiffness and strength, which are important in statics,” explains Prof. Tal Cohen. “It is common that they refer intuitively to the redistribution of a load along the arch. However, when dynamics are involved, toughness is also an important quantity.”
MIT researchers have discovered that “eggs are less likely to crack when they fall on their side,” reports Adithi Ramakrishnan for the Associated Press. “It’s commonly thought that eggs are strongest at their ends — after all, it’s how they’re packaged in the carton,” explains Ramakrishnan. “The thinking is that the arc-shaped bottom of an egg redirects the force and softens the blow of impact. But when scientists squeezed eggs in both directions during a compression test, they cracked under the same amount of force.”
Researchers at MIT have found that eggs dropped on their sides and not their tips are more resilient and less likely to crack, reports Veronique Greenwood for The New York Times. The researchers found that “eggs dropped so they landed on their sides were substantially less likely to crack,” writes Greenwood. “When they hit, the shell was able to compress, absorbing some of the blow. Eggs dropped on their ends, where the shell is stiffer, did not show such flexibility.
MIT researchers have developed a superconducting circuit that can increase the speed of quantum processing, reports Aamir Khollam for Interesting Engineering. “This device is a superconducting circuit designed to produce extremely strong nonlinear interactions between particles of light (photons) and matter (qubits),” explains Khollam. “This breakthrough could make operations up to 10 times faster, bringing fault-tolerant, real-world quantum computing a major step closer.”
Researchers at MIT believe they have demonstrated the strongest non-linear light-matter coupling in a quantum system, reports Bill Bell for Quantum Campus. “Their novel superconducting circuit architecture showed coupling about an order of magnitude stronger than prior demonstrations,” writes Bill. “It could significantly improve the measurements and error corrections needed to increase the accuracy and reliability of quantum computers.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a “small, hopping robot designed to traverse challenging environments,” reports Emmett Smith for Mashable. “The robot utilizes a spring-loaded leg for propulsion and incorporates flapping wing modules for stability and control,” explains Smith. “This design enables movement across diverse surfaces and the ability to carry loads exceeding its own weight.”
Six MIT faculty members – Prof. Emerita Lotte Bailyn, Prof. Gareth McKinley, Prof. Nasser Rabbat, Prof. Susan Silbey, Prof. Anne Whiston Spirn, and Prof. Catherine Wolfram – have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, reports Sarah Mesdjian for The Boston Globe. “The academy aims to honor accomplished leaders in a wide array of fields and ‘cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people,’” explains Mesdjian.
Materials World reporter Sarah Morgan spotlights how MIT researchers have “combined the waterproof stickiness of mussel-inspired polymers with the germ-fighting properties of mucus-derived proteins, mucins, to form a cross-linking gel that strongly adheres to surfaces.” The new adhesive could be used to coat medical implants to prevent infection and bacteria build-up. Postdoc George Degen explains: “We demonstrate adhesion to wet tissue and metal-oxide surfaces, important substrates for biomedical applications. Moreover, our mucin-derived hydrogels discourage the formation of bacterial biofilms, raising the possibility of antifouling coatings.”
Prof. Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli speaks with The Atlantic reporter Matteo Wong about the current state of artificial intelligence technologies and how the technology might be used in medical care going forward. “Scientists use the tools that are out there for information processing and summarization,” says Gómez-Bombarelli. “Everybody does that; that’s an established win.”