MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 16, 2017
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

Scientists make huge dataset of nearby stars available to public

Users can search database of 1,600 stars to find signs of new exoplanets.

Chemical engineers boost bacteria’s productivity

New technique improves yield of useful chemicals.

Voice control everywhere

Low-power special-purpose chip could make speech recognition ubiquitous in electronics.

Featured video: Tackling science and technology together

MIT faculty reflect on why international collaboration benefits science, engineering, and technology for all.

Putting data in the hands of doctors

Computer scientist Regina Barzilay empowers cancer treatment with machine learning.

3 Questions: How philosophy can address the problem of climate change

MIT professor of philosophy Kieran Setiya explores how individuals and societies can think about and act on climate change.

Scientists estimate solar nebula’s lifetime

Study finds the swirling gas disk disappeared within the solar system’s first 4 million years.

In the Media

Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach writes that a committee co-chaired by Prof. Richard Hynes has presented a series of guidelines for applying CRISPR gene editing in humans. “We say proceed with all due caution, but we don’t prohibit germline, after considerable discussion and debate,” says Hynes. “We’re talking only about fixing diseases.”

The Atlantic’s Natalie Wolchover writes that MIT physicists have presented a demonstration of quantum entanglement, addressing a loophole in quantum theory. Prof. Andrew Friedman says his team will continue testing the loophole, explaining, “either we close the loophole more…or we see something that could point toward new physics.”

A study by MIT researchers provides evidence that gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn formed within the first 4 million years of the solar system’s development, reports Samantha Mathewson for Scientific American. "We obtained an accurate and precise age for the lifetime of our solar system's ancient [solar] nebula and the magnetic field," explains Prof. Benjamin Weiss.