Alexander Sludds, a graduate student in MIT’s Research Lab for Electronics, joins Megan Cantwell on the Science magazine podcast to discuss his team’s new method for processing data on edge devices, which are devices that connect two networks together.
Prof. Fadel Adib speaks with CBC Radio about his lab’s work developing a wireless, battery-free underwater camera that runs on sound waves. "We want to be able to use them to monitor, for example, underwater currents, because these are highly related to what impacts the climate," says Adib. "Or even underwater corals, seeing how they are being impacted by climate change and how potentially intervention to mitigate climate change is helping them recover."
Prof. Jack Wisdom and his colleagues have found that Saturn’s rings are comprised of debris from its former moon, reports Marina Koren for The Atlantic. “The researchers say the moon’s demise was mostly Titan’s fault. The big moon jostled the smaller one, putting the object on a very elongated track around Saturn,” writes Koren.
Prof. Jack Wisdom and his colleagues have found that “Saturn’s rings are a result of a moon that was torn apart by the planet’s tidal forces about 160 million years ago,” reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “Wisdom and his co-researchers have dubbed the moon Chrysalis after the process of Chrysalis transforming into a butterfly,” writes Carter.
Reuters reporter Will Dunham writes that scientists from MIT and other institutions have found that the destruction of a large moon, called Chrysalis, that “strayed too close to Saturn would account both for the birth of the gas giant planet's magnificent rings and its unusual orbital tilt of about 27 degrees.” Prof. Jack Wisdom explained that "as a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis, the rings of Saturn emerged from the primordial satellite Chrysalis.”
A new study co-authored by MIT scientists proposes that Saturn’s rings could have been created when a lost moon of Saturn’s became unstable and crashed into the planet, reports Katie Hunt for CNN. “While the gas giant likely swallowed 99% of the moon, the remainder became suspended in orbit, breaking into small icy chunks that ultimately formed the planet’s rings,” writes Hunt.
Prof. Jack Wisdom and his colleagues have found that Saturn may have acquired its tilt and rings from a lost moon that was destroyed, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist. “Simulations using data from the Cassini spacecraft shows that an additional moon between Titan and Iapetus, destroyed between 100 million and 200 million years ago, could explain both of these long-standing mysteries,” explains Crane.
Prof. Jack Wisdom is the lead author of a new study that proposes “Saturn and Neptune’s gravity may have once been in sync, but Saturn has since escaped Neptune’s pull due to a missing moon,” reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science.
Prof. Edward Boyden has developed a new imaging technique called expansion-revealing microscopy that can reveal tiny protein structures in tissues, reports The Economist. “Already his team at MIT has used it to reveal detail in synapses, the nanometer-sized junctions between nerve cells, and also to shed light on the mechanisms at play in Alzheimer’s disease, revealing occasional spirals of amyloid-beta protein around axons, which are the threadlike parts of nerve cells that carry electrical impulses.”
Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma writes about how Prof. Dina Katabi and her colleagues developed a new AI tool that could be used to help detect early signs of Parkinson’s by analyzing a patient’s breathing patterns. For diseases like Parkinson’s “one of the biggest challenges is that we need to get to [it] very early on, before the damage has mostly happened in the brain,” said Katabi. “So being able to detect Parkinson’s early is essential.”
NBC News reporter Kimmy Yam notes that months after having all charges he faced under the “China Initiative” dismissed, Prof. Gang Chen and his colleagues have discovered a new material that can perform better than silicon. "The discovery could have far-reaching effects, as silicon is currently among the most widely used semiconductors, making up the foundation of modern technology from computer chips to smartphones," writes Yam.
Forbes contributor Jennifer Kite-Powell spotlights how MIT researchers created a new AI system that analyzes radio waves bouncing off a person while they sleep to monitor breathing patterns and help identify Parkinson’s disease. “The device can also measure how bad the disease has become and could be used to track Parkinson's progression over time,” writes Kite-Powell.
A new tool for diagnosing Parkinson’s disease developed by MIT researchers uses an AI system to monitor a person’s breathing patterns during sleep, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “The system is capable of detecting the chest movements of a sleeping person, even if they’re under a blanket or lying on their side,” writes Bray. “It uses software to filter out all other extraneous information, until only the breathing data remains. Using it for just one night provides enough data for a diagnosis.”
Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray speaks with Radio Boston host Tiziana Dearing about how MIT researchers developed an artificial intelligence model that uses a person’s breathing patterns to detect Parkinson’s Disease. The researchers “hope to continue doing this for other diseases like Alzheimer’s and potentially other neurological diseases,” says Bray.
Researchers at MIT have discovered that pictures of food appear to stimulate strong reactions among specific sets of neurons in the human brain, a trait that could have evolved due to the importance of food for humans, reports Sascha Pare for The Guardian. “The researchers posit these neurons have gone undetected because they are spread across the other specialized cluster for faces, places, bodies and words, rather than concentrated in one region,” writes Pare.