Postdoctoral fellow Steve Ramirez speaks with Bob Seay, host of WGBH’s Morning Edition, about his work with memory manipulation, which could be helpful for patients with PTSD or Alzheimer’s. Ramirex explains that his research shows the proof of principle “that we can go in and isolate one memory in the brain.”
Erica Klarreich writes for Quanta Magazine about how researchers have solved a 50-year-old math problem posed by MIT Prof. Emeritus Isadore Singer and his colleague Prof. Richard Kadison. The Kadison-Singer problem asked “how much it is possible to learn about a 'state' of a quantum system if you have complete information about that state in a special subsystem.”
Prof. Noelle Selin discusses the impact on air pollution caused by Volkwagen’s cheating on vehicle emissions tests in an episode of Inside Higher Education’s Academic Minute radio program. Selin explains that, “pollution from U.S. cars and power plants causes substantial damages every day. This remains a problem to be solved.”
MIT researchers have determined that the Earth’s geomagnetic field will not flip in the near future, reports Felicia Gans for The Boston Globe. While the intensity of the Earth’s geomagnetic field is decreasing, the current level is “double the planet’s average intensity over the past 5 million years.”
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about the MRI Prof. Rebecca Saxe’s created of herself and her infant son. “Art does many things, but certainly one of them is to give us images that confront us with shards of the strange experience of being human,” writes Levenson. “Science, an artful craft, can do the same — as it does here.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Robin Wilson of The Chronicle of Higher Education for a piece about what it’s like to be a female astronomer. Seager explains that MIT is one of few places where she isn’t treated differently because she’s female. "I don’t think about my gender while I’m here,” she says.
Prof. Rebecca Saxe writes for Smithsonian about an MRI she created of herself and her infant son. Saxe writes that while maternal values are "venerated, they are usually viewed in opposition to other values: inquiry and intellect, progress and power. But I am a neuroscientist, and I worked to create this image; and I am also the mother in it.”
An Earth-like planet 39 light-years away from Earth could provide researchers with an opportunity to study another planet’s atmosphere, reports Chukwuma Muanya for The Guardian. “Because it is so close, the air and clouds above GJ 1132b could be studied in detail using space and ground-based telescopes,” Muanya explains.
Prof. John Gabrieli speaks with WGBH’s Arun Rath about the effectiveness of standardized testing in the U.S. Gabrieli explains that researchers have, “consistently found academic achievement tests of the kind given by states in the United States correlate considerably with other independent measures of cognitive ability.”
MIT researchers have devised a technique for desalinating water, reports Nina Godlewski for Boston.com. “The process, called shock electrodialysis, filters water through a material made of small glass particles,” writes Godlewski. “When an electric current is introduced to the system, the water divides into areas of high or low salt concentration.”
Jonathan Amos reports for BBC News on the discovery of a nearby exoplanet that is orbiting a red dwarf star. Amos explains that researchers are interested in studying Earth-sized exoplanets as “it may be their best bet of establishing whether or not life exists beyond our Solar System.”
Huffington Post reporter Nitya Rajan writes that the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet by MIT researchers could be an important step in the search for extraterrestrial life. The planet is “close enough for experts to better understand the different types of atmospheres that could support life.”
The discovery of a new exoplanet will provide researchers an opportunity to explore the atmosphere of a galactic neighbor, reports Joshua Sokol for New Scientist. “There’s this huge forest out there of worlds like this one,” explains MIT postdoc Zachory Berta-Thompson. “But we’ve never had the opportunity to look at any one of those trees.”
Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach writes that researchers have discovered a new Earth-sized exoplanet. “It was very hard to find, and just barely at the limit of our detection, but it gives us finally a chance to really study a rocky planet around another star in an unprecedented level of detail,” explains MIT postdoc Zachory Berta-Thompson.
Deborah Netburn of The Los Angeles Times reports on the discovery of an exoplanet 39 light-years away. "The discovery of this planet gives us the opportunity to switch our focus from imagining what is out there to testing our theories observationally,” says MIT postdoc Zachory Berta-Thompson.