Assaf Biderman ‘05, associate director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, discusses his startup Superpedestrian, a transportation robotics company that has developed electric scooters available in over 60 cities across the world. “I think we hit the holy grail of micromobility, which is detecting when you’re on the sidewalk every time and stopping or slowing the vehicle,” said Biderman.
Robert C. Hayden, a former MIT postdoc and staff member and a prolific author who “wanted people to learn about everyone who contributed to Black history, not just the celebrated figures,” died on Jan. 23, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “Mr. Hayden wrote more than 20 publications about Black history and culture, often highlighting previously overlooked achievements in scientific research, technology, and medicine,” writes Marquard.
Bloomberg reporter Chris Anstey spotlights a new study by MIT researchers that finds that during the Covid-19 pandemic people have been taking cues from their neighbors as to whether it is safe to resume social activities like dining in restaurants. “We felt that in [some] uncertain times, such information might be particularly valuable,” said Prof. Siqi Zheng. “If others think it’s safe to go out, then maybe I should feel safe. To be sure, we were also prepared for the opposite reaction, that people would hunker down and try to avoid crowds.”
WBUR On Point host Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Prof. Amy Glasmeier about defining poverty in the United States. “There is an ‘everybody has to make it on their own’ attitude and until that changes we’re going to be caught in this bind, but I think people themselves are evolving,” says Glasmeier.
Forbes has named Raya Ani ’94, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP PhD ’81, ’78, and former postdoc Shulamit Levenberg to their 50 Over 50 list, which highlights women from Europe, the Middle East and Asia who are leading the way, reports Maggie McGrath for Forbes. “Women around the world are proving that 50 and beyond is the new golden age,” writes McGrath.
National Geographic reporter Sadie Dingfelder writes that MIT scientists are using piezoelectric materials to develop a battery-free, underwater navigation system. “There are a lot of potential applications,” says Prof. Fadel Adib. “For instance, a scuba diver could use these sensors to figure out the exact place they took a particular picture.”
Forbes reporter Christ Westfall spotlights “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines,” a new book by Prof. David Autor, Prof. David Mindell and Research Scientist Elizabeth Reynolds that explores the future of work in America. “The US has allowed traditional channels of worker voice to atrophy without fostering new institutions or buttressing existing ones,” they write. “It has permitted the federal minimum wage to recede to near irrelevance.”
An international team of scholars, including MIT researchers, has published a new study exploring the history and use of letterlocking, reports William J. Broad for The New York Times. The researchers note that they hope their work prompts “novel kinds of archival research, and allows even very well-known artefacts to be examined anew.”
MIT startup Formlabs has announced a new pair of 3D printers featuring an exposure and printing speed increase that is up to 40% faster than previous models, reports Brian Heater for TechCrunch. “The Form 3+ is the next iteration designed to help users go from idea to part in hand as quickly and easily as possible,” says CEO Max Lobovsky MS ’11.
Forbes contributor Stephanie MacConnell spotlights the work of research affiliate Shriya Srinivasan PhD '20 in a roundup of women under the age of 30 who are transforming U.S. healthcare. Srinivasan is “working on technology that will enable patients to control and even ‘feel’ sensation through their prosthetic limb,” notes MacConnell.
Researchers from MIT and other institutions have successfully uncovered the letterlocking technique that Mary, Queen of Scots, used to seal her final letter, reports NPR’s Tien Le. “The spiral lock requires more than 30 steps and involves cutting out a ‘lock,’ often resembling a dagger or sword, out of the blank margin of the letter,” writes Le. “The lock acts as a needle and is sewn through the letter after folding it.”
An international team of researchers has found that Mary, Queen of Scots, used a complicated paper-folding technique called letterlocking to conceal the contents of her final letter, reports Alison Flood for The Guardian. MIT Libraries Conservator Jana Dambrogio explains that working on Mary's last letter “and figuring out its unique spiral lock was thrilling as a researcher – and a real a-ha! moment in the study of letterlocking.”
A new report by researchers from MIT’s Civic Data Design Lab, the Migration Policy Institute and the World Food Programme investigates the motivations and costs of migration from Central America, and finds that migrants spend $2.2 billion every year trying to reach the U.S., reports Catherine E. Shoichet for CNN. "That is an extreme amount of money," explains Prof. Sarah Williams. "That $2.2 billion is all paid for by the migrants themselves, so the risks, both in terms of debt and personal risk, is borne by the migrant."
CNN reporter Jacopo Prisco spotlights Prof. Carlo Ratti and architect Italo Rota on their eco-friendly design of Italy’s pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020. “One thing I do not like about temporary events – like various international exhibitions or the Olympic Games – is that a huge amount of waste ends up in landfills after just a few weeks or months,” says Ratti. “This is why we wanted the Italian Pavilion to address the temporary nature of the Dubai Expo 2020. Most architectural elements are recycled or recyclable, refused or reusable.”
Graduate student Rida Qadri writes for Wired about the National Database and Registration Authority, a kinship-based digital ID system used in Pakistan. “Pakistan’s experience with creating databases that encode kinship reveals important lessons about the complexities of building digital ID systems,” writes Qadri “Database design is not just computational. At every step, social, political, and technical decisions coalesce."