Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray writes that MIT researchers have used an AI system to identify a potential new Covid-19 vaccine that may be effective against both current and future variants of the virus. “The new vaccine targets a portion of the COVID virus that is much less prone to evolve,” writes Bray. “That could potentially make it effective against many different versions of the virus, eliminating the need for routine booster shots.”
Bloomberg reporters Alex Tanzi and Mackenzie Hawkins spotlight a paper by graduate student Evan J. Soltas and his colleague Gopi Shah Goda discussing Covid-19’s impact on the labor market. The researchers “found that workers who miss a full week because of COVID are about 7 percentage points less likely to be employed a year later,” writes Tanzi and Hawkins.
MIT researchers have developed a new approach to vaccines that uses “a machine learning twist [that] could put an end to boosters and seasonal variant shots,” reports Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch.
Researchers at MIT have predicted that without improvements in hardware efficiency, energy consumption and emissions from autonomous vehicles could be “comparable to that of data centers today,” reports Sarah Wells for Popular Mechanics. “In order to reduce the future carbon footprint of AVs, scientists will need to make the computing systems of AVs, including smart sensors, far more efficient,” writes Wells.
Researchers from MIT have found that wildfire smoke can activate chlorine-containing molecules that destroy the ozone layer, writes Donna Lu for The Guardian. “The question in my mind is: is the man-made chlorine going to get … diluted and destroyed out of the atmosphere faster than global climate change is going to increase the frequency and intensity of this kind of fire?” says Prof. Susan Solomon. “I think it’s going to be a race.”
Axios reporter Jacob Knutson highlights a new study by MIT researchers that finds the smoke released by major wildfires likely reactive chlorine-containing molecules in the atmosphere, delaying the recovery of the hole in the ozone layer. The researchers developed a model that found smoke released by Australian wildfires “chemically depleted between 3% to 5% of the total ozone column in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes in June and July of 2020.”
New Scientist reporter James Dinneen writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds the smoke from Australian wildfires “may have enabled hydrochloric acid to dissolve at higher temperatures, generating more of the reactive chlorine molecules that destroy ozone.” Research scientist Kane Stone explains that “satellite observations showed chemistry that has never been seen before.”
MIT scientists have found that the Australian wildfires in 2019 and 2020 unleashed remnants of chlorine-containing molecules in the stratosphere, expanding the ozone hole and suggesting that more frequent wildfires could threaten the ozone hole’s recovery, reports Dyani Lewis for Nature. “It’s like a race,” says Prof. Susan Solomon. “Does the chlorine decay out of the stratosphere fast enough in the next, say, 40–50 years that the likely increase in intense and frequent wildfires doesn’t end up prolonging the ozone hole?”
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Yossi Sheffi examines several strategies companies could use to help improve supply chain sustainability, including redesigning last-mile deliveries, influencing consumer choices and incentivizing returnable containers. “Supply chains can be designed to reduce emissions from operations and to reorient their buying behavior in support of carbon emissions reductions,” writes Sheffi.
Researchers at MIT developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to help predict future risk of developing breast cancer, reports Poppy Harlow for CNN. What this work does “is identifies risk. It can tell a woman that you’re at high risk for developing breast cancer before you develop breast cancer,” says Larry Norton, medical director of the Lauder Breast Center at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Prof. Deborah Ancona speaks with Forbes reporter Tima Bansal about her research into X-teams, a specific type of team structure used in business environments.
Mashable visits CSAIL graduate student Gregory Xie to learn about his work with Auxbots, a system of untethered modular robots. “Together in a large assembly,” Xie explains, “we can get very interesting large scale motions of the assembly. These robots are more modular because they’re untethered and the actuation is completely electromechanical.”
Prof. Ritu Raman speaks with Scientific American about her work “building machines that we call bio-hybrid because they're part biological and part made out of synthetic materials. The biological robots that we're building are powered by muscle tissue so that every time the muscle contracts, you could get something that looks like movement.”
New research by Prof. David Autor explores how the wage gap narrowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. Lahart writes that the findings suggest that “even as the pandemic fades, competition for low-wage workers will be more intense than before the pandemic. That could lead to further reductions in income inequality, raise labor costs at firms that employ low-wage workers, and reshape the U.S. business landscape.”
Writing for Fast Company, Visiting Scientist Priya Donti examines how “scientists are increasingly looking to AI to help us predict the weather, and some of the most promising approaches come from blending AI with existing scientific knowledge.” Donti notes that a “combination of innovative technology and human wisdom is the best way to harness AI to help us tackle the challenges of the future, especially climate change.”