Prof. John Urschel speaks with Guardian reporter Rich Tenorio about his decision to call an audible and leave his career as a guard for the Baltimore Ravens to focus on his love for math as a student and then a professor at MIT. “I realized I was missing the academic environment,” he says. “I missed talking math with people, learning things, being around other people who like … math-related issues."
A study by Prof. Rebecca Saxe and her colleagues has found that the medial prefrontal cortex in infants is active when exposed to faces, reports Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon. “Maybe it’s not that [at] first babies do visual processing and only later are connected to social meaning,” says Saxe. “Maybe these brain regions are active because babies are responding to the social meaning of people and faces as early on as we can measure their brains.”
Prof. Christopher Knittel joins the Marketplace podcast “Make Me Smart” to discuss how the U.S. can be in the best position for global energy dominance. “The world is switching to electric vehicles, the world is switching to solar and wind,” says Knittel. “And the less we do domestically, the less capability we build domestically to provide those clean energy resources, the worse off our industries will be in the future.”
Writing for Foreign Affairs, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif makes the case that “on the battlefield of technology, Americans must both continue to do what they do best and find new ways to improve competitiveness.” Reif explores the United States’ rich history of creating foundational technologies, innovation that frequently stems from research universities. Reif emphasizes: “To avert scientific and technological stagnation, the United States must significantly increase public investments in university-based research, ensure that it capitalizes on discoveries that emerge from academia, and devise sensible immigration policies that allow the world’s best students to study and then work in the United States.”
MIT has joined with the American Association of Universities, American Council on Education, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and 12 other universities in filing suit to contest the National Science Foundation announcement that it will implement 15% caps on indirect costs for NSF research grants, reports Juliet Schulman-Hall for MassLive. The suit notes that: “If NSF’s policy is allowed to stand, it will badly undermine scientific research at America’s universities and erode our Nation’s enviable status as a global leader in scientific research and innovation.”
Researchers at MIT have successfully captured the first images of individual atoms interacting freely in space, reports Georgina Jedikovska for Interesting Engineering. “The images, which show interactions between free-range particles that had only been theorized until now, will reportedly allow the scientists to directly observe quantum phenomena in real space,” writes Jedikovska.
Prof. Canan Dagdeviren speaks with NBC Boston reporter Priscilla Casper about her work developing a wearable ultrasound scanner that can be used for early breast cancer detection, with the goal of empowering “women to monitor their own bodies, on their own time and in the comfort of their own home.” Dagdeviren explains that “our hope [is to] collect a lot of data and use AI to predict what will happen to breast tissue over time.”
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.”
On Tuesday, May 6, the MIT Museum is hosting “Seeing and Understanding the Unknown,” a panel discussion to celebrate the opening of their latest exhibit, “Monsters of the Deep,” reports Adelaide Parker for The Boston Globe. “MIT physicists and curators will guide you through centuries of scientists’ work picturing the unseen — from 16th-century zoologists exploring life underwater to modern physicists modeling black holes,” explains Parker.
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.”
Working with the List Visual Arts Center, MIT Visiting Scholar Wasalu Jaco (Lupe Fiasco) has created GHOTIING MIT: Public Art, “nine original compositions using ghotiing, a term of his own invention, which proves that rap is a reactive form of expression,” reports Candace McDuffie for The Boston Globe. “Ghotiing (pronounced “fishing”) encourages students to engross themselves in different art forms and environments to devise original work,” explains McDuffie. “According to Fiasco, inspiration is taken from appreciating the landscape and outdoor painting as opposed to a recording studio. The result is usually music that feels deeper and more organic.”
The Guardian reporter Veronica Esposito spotlights GHOTIING MIT: Public Art, a collection of raps inspired by seven of the Institute’s public artworks developed by MIT Visiting Scholar Wasalu Jaco (Lupe Fiasco) in collaboration with the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “The nine-track effort (seven of which are currently available) is a cohesive collection of music with a distinct jazz flavor that feels like a throwback to the Native Tongues era of hip-hop,” writes Espositio. For Jaco, “these tracks are an emanation of the environment that he fished them from.”
Writing for Forbes, Research Scientist Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, discusses the future of the crypto industry. “Crypto isn’t above the fundamental laws of economics. Like any startup, crypto projects need to target genuine utility first, then use tokens to speed up adoption or address market failures in their ecosystem,” writes Catalini. “In short, while economists may be eager to play engineer, their ideas shine most when a project already has some traction.”
Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights“Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum that offers “views of whales and related sea creatures, monstrous and otherwise, afforded by more than 40 maps and prints and books, some dating to the 16th century.” Feeney notes that the exhibit dives into the “conceptual and stimulating: a kind of case study in the nature of our knowledge about nature. In this particular case, that natural knowledge concerns whales.”
In an article for Foreign Affairs, Prof. Mai Hassan writes about the current state of the civil war in Sudan and hopes for a cease-fire or peace deal. “Because the conflict is overwhelmingly driven by a struggle over regional power and resources, rather than any larger political vision for the country,” writes Hassan, “it remains likely that alliances will keep shifting, militias will keep defecting, and breakaway groups will keep forming. Sadly, instead of either peace or partition, Sudan’s most likely future is more war.”