MIT researchers have improved upon the diffusion models used in AI image generation, reports Alok Jha for The Economist. Working with electrically charged particles, the team created “Poisson flow generative models,” which “generate images of equal or better quality than state-of-the-art diffusion models, while being less error-prone and requiring between ten and 20 times fewer computational steps,” Jha explains.
MIT scientists have found that lakes and seas made of methane may have shaped Titan’s shores, writes Jess Thomson for Newsweek. “This discovery could allow astronomers to learn even more about the conditions on Titan,” writes Thomson. “Knowing that waves carved out the coast enables them to predict how fast and strong the winds on the moon are and from which direction they blow.”
Gizmodo reporter Passant Rabie spotlights new research by MIT geologists that finds waves of methane on Titan likely eroded and shaped the moon’s coastlines. “If we could stand at the edge of one of Titan’s seas, we might see waves of liquid methane and ethane lapping on the shore and crashing on the coasts during storms,” explains Prof. Taylor Perron. “And they would be capable of eroding the material that the coast is made of.”
Prof. Evelina Fedorenko has uncovered evidence that the human brain uses language for communicating, not reasoning, writes Carl Zimmer for The New York Times. “Other regions in the brain are working really hard when you’re doing all these forms of thinking, but it became clear that none of those things seem to engage language circuits,” she says.
Prof. Hugh Herr joins the BBC’s Shiona McCallum to discuss a program by the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics aimed at bringing prosthetics to those who suffered forced amputations during the Sierra Leone Civil War. “When we train a young person on how to construct an arm or leg prothesis we’ve impacted the country for solidly forty years,” Herr says. “That person’s going to be living in that country and contributing to their community for a very long time. That’s exciting.”
Researchers at MIT have discovered the composition of primordial black holes, “potentially discovering an entirely new type of exotic black hole in the process,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. “We were making use of Stephen Hawking’s famous calculations about black holes, especially his important result about the radiation that black holes emit,” says Prof. David Kaiser. “These exotic black holes emerge from trying to address the dark matter problem — they are a byproduct of explaining dark matter.”
Postdoctoral associate Adam Forrest Kay’s book “Escape From Shadow Physics: The Quest to End the Dark Ages of Quantum Theory,” is reviewed by Andrew Crumey for The Wall Street Journal. “Consistently interesting” and “energetically written,” the book, “eloquently explains the history behind hydrodynamic quantum analogs,” writes Crumey.
MIT researchers have created an amber-like material that preserves DNA so it can store data, improving on current methods that use particles of silica or require freezing, reports Pandora Dewan for Newsweek. The team “demonstrated their material by embedding and subsequently removing a DNA sequence encoding the music for the Jurassic Park theme song,” Dewan explains. “Following this process, they sequenced the molecule and confirmed that no errors had been introduced into the DNA sequence.”
Prof. Sara Seager, Prof. Robert Langer and Prof. Nancy Kanwisher have been awarded the 2024 Kavli Prize for their work in the three award categories: astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience, respectively, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. According to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, this award honors scientists with outstanding research “that has broadened our understanding of the big, the small and the complex,” writes Nietzel.
Harrison White '50, PhD '55, “a theoretical physicist-turned-sociologist who upended the study of human relations and society” has died at age 94, reports Michael Rosenwald for The New York Times. “With his background in physics, Professor White viewed humans as nodes within social networks,” writes Rosenwald. “Those networks operated in complex ways that shaped economic mobility, financial markets, language and other social phenomena.”
Prof. Brent Minchew speaks with Atlantic reporter Ross Anderson about his work developing new technology “that could slow down the cryosphere’s disintegration.” “I’m not going to be satisfied simply documenting the demise of these environments that I care about,” says Minchew.
Washington Post reporter Carolyn Johnson spotlights how Prof. Laura Schulz and her colleagues have been exploring why ChatGPT-4 performs well on conversation and cognitive tests, but flunks reasoning tests that are easy for young children. Schulz makes the case that to understand intelligence and create it, childhood learning processes should not be discounted. “That’s the kind of intelligence that really might give us a big picture,” Schulz explains. “The kind of intelligence that starts not as a blank slate, but with a lot of rich, structured knowledge — and goes on to not only understand everything we have ever understood, across the species, but everything we will ever understand.”
Prof. Netta Engelhardt talks to New Scientist’s Thomas Lawton about the possibility of singularities existing outside black holes. Theorists can now probe singularities from a deeper perspective, using insights into the possible quantum foundations of gravity. This new approach “flips the script” on how we think about singularities, says Engelhardt.
Prof. Susan Solomon speaks with Guardian reporter Killian Fox about her new book “Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again,” and her research addressing climate change. “For goodness sake, let’s not give up now, we’re right on the cusp of success,” says Solomon. “That’s the fundamental message of the book.”
MIT is the world’s No.1 university for the 13th year in a row, according to the latest global university rankings from publisher QS Top Universities.