Writing for The Hill, Prof. David Rand and research affiliate Ben Tappin examine their recent study that finds “Americans are more receptive to information that challenges their party leader’s position than we — and most others — had previously thought.” Rand and Tappin emphasize that “our identities, motivations and values are not (yet) reducible to party loyalty, and arguments and evidence can still change people’s minds — even if only a little bit at a time.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere published a paper exploring the abilities of language models and how they differ from those of humans, reports Will Knight for Wired. Prof. Josh Tenenbaum says “GPT-4 is remarkable but quite different from human intelligence in a number of ways,” writes Knight. “It lacks the kind of motivation that is crucial to the human mind.”
Quanta Magazine reporter Jordana Cepelewicz spotlights graduate students Ashwin Sah and Mehtaab Sawhney for their work proving the existence of special objects called “subspace designs.” Sah and Sawhney have “proved the existence of objects whose existence is not at all obvious,” said Prof. David Conlon of the California Institute of Technology. “They’re producing high-quality research at a rate where I can’t even blink.”
Virginia Norwood ’47, an aerospace pioneer who designed and championed the scanner used to map and study the earth from space, has died at 96, reports Dylan Loeb McClain for The New York Times. Using her invention, the Landsat Satellite program has been able to capture images of the planet that provide “powerful visual evidence of climate change, deforestation and other shifts affecting the planet’s well-being,” writes McClain.
Researchers from MIT and else have documented the destructive power of hand magnets, a technique used for identifying meteorites, reports Zack Savitsky for Science. “When brought within a few centimeters of a rock, the researchers found, the magnets overwrite vestigial fields contained in iron-based minerals such as magnetite and reset them to the higher strength and orientation of the magnet,” writes Savitsky.
Prof. Tanja Bosak speaks with Scientific American reporter Jonathan O’Callaghan about the possibility that the soil samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars could contain evidence of ancient Martian life.
NPR reporter Kaitlyn Radde spotlights the life and work of Virginia Norwood ’47, “a founding figure in satellite land imaging who developed technology to scan the surface of the moon for safe landing sites and map our planet from space.” Norwood was known as the "Mother of Landsat” for her work developing the Multispectral Scanner System that flew on the first Landsat satellite.
Al Jazeera spotlights a study co-authored by postdoctoral associate Qian Li that finds that rapidly melting Antarctic ice is slowing down the flow of water through the world’s oceans and “could have a disastrous effect on global climate.”
Virginia Norwood ’47, “a pioneering aerospace engineer who used design innovations, emerging technologies and seasoned intuition in projects that scanned the lunar surface for safe Apollo landing sites and mapped the Earth from space with digital imagery never before seen,” has died at 96, reports Brian Murphy for The Washington Post. “Over a four-decade career that began with slide rules and moved into the age of computer modeling, Ms. Norwood became known as a resourceful problem solver who often hit upon simple but effective solutions,” Murphy writes.
A study co-authored by postdoctoral associate Qian Li has found that “melting ice around Antarctica will cause a rapid slowdown of a major global deep ocean current by 2050 that could alter the world’s climate for centuries and accelerate sea level rise,” reports Graham Readfearn for The Guardian.
Researchers at the McGovern and Broad Institutes have developed a bacterial "nanosyringe" that can inject large proteins into specific cells in the body, which could lead to safer and more effective treatments for a variety of conditions, including cancer, reports Michael Le Page for New Scientist. “The fact that this can load a diversity of different payloads of different sizes makes it unique amongst protein delivery devices,” says graduate student Joseph Kreitz.
Ingrid Wickelgren at Scientific American highlights a new study from researchers at the McGovern and Broad Institutes, in which they used a bacterial ‘nanosyringe’ to inject large proteins into human cells. “The syringe technology also holds promise for treating cancer because it can be engineered to attach to receptors on certain cancer cells,” writes Wickelgren.
IEEE Pulse reporter Leslie Mertz spotlights Prof. Ed Boyden’s work on refining expansion microscopy. “My hope for expansion, looking 5 or 10 years out, is that it could help produce a map of molecules that is detailed enough to help us understand life itself,” says Boyden.
Prof. Li-Huei Tsai and Prof. Ed Boyden co-founded Cognito Therapeutics after their research found that gamma waves could help clear amyloid plaques, which are known to appear in Alzheimer’s patients, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. “It was the most surprising result I’ve ever got in my life,” says Tsai. “When we published our first paper, most people said, ‘I don’t believe it. This is too good to be true. How can something this simple have this kind of effect?’”
MIT has ranked first in 11 different academic fields in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.