MIT News

Associate professor of political science, Mai Hassan, discusses bureaucracy, public administration, and the power of people mobilizing against repressive dictatorships in Africa. They explore the perception vs reality of African states, the clash of idealism and dictatorship in Sudan, and the challenges of establishing democracy and civilian control over the military.

In this episode, MIT President Sally Kornbluth sits down with newly tenured associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, Desirée Plata. Her work focuses on making industrial processes more environmentally friendly, and removing methane (a key factor in global warming) from the air.Show notes and transcript:https://news.mit.edu/podcast/how-free-range-kid-maine-helping-green-industrial-practices-desiree-plataThe Curiosity Unbounded podcast brings you behind the scenes at MIT through conversations between MIT President Sally Kornbluth and the people working in its labs and in the field. Along the way, Sally and her guests discuss pressing issues, as well as what inspires the people running at the world’s toughest challenges at one of the most innovative institutions on the planet.

MIT researchers have made an open-source version of the “City Scanner” mobile pollution detector that lets people check air quality anywhere, cheaply. Pictured are some examples of the latest version of the device, called Flatburn, as well as a researcher attaching a prototype to a car. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2023/low-cost-device-can-measure-air-pollution-anywhere-0316

In a new study, MIT researchers have developed strategies for beneficial electric vehicle charging to reduce peak electricity demand and store solar energy. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2023/minimizing-electric-vehicles-impact-grid-0315

Predicting what it takes to push through sand, gravel, or other soft media can help engineers drive a rover over Martian soil, anchor a ship in rough seas, and walk a robot through sand and mud. But modeling the forces involved in such processes is a huge computational challenge that often takes days to weeks to solve. Now, engineers at MIT and Georgia Tech have found a faster and simpler way to model intrusion through any soft, flowable material. Their new method quickly maps the forces it would take to push, wiggle, and drill an object through granular material in real-time. The method can apply to objects and grains of any size and shape, and does not require complex computational tools as other methods do. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2023/soft-push-granular-intrusion-0119

By modeling the conditions of an entire wind farm rather than individual turbines, engineers can squeeze more power out of existing installations. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/wind-farm-optimization-energy-flow-0811

Piction Health, a startup founded by Susan Conover SM '15, lets doctors classify skin conditions with the snap of a picture. Their app uses machine learning to help physicians identify and manage skin diseases. Read the article on MIT News: https://news.mit.edu/2022/piction-health-skin-app-0706

Studying a powerful type of cyberattack, researchers identified a flaw in how it’s been analyzed before, then developed new techniques that stop it in its tracks. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/side-channel-attacks-detection-0609

What does a sunset sound like? With the Sonification Toolkit, almost anything can be transformed into sound that is aesthetically satisfying and analytically illuminating. The newly released prototype, a work in progress with cutting-edge capabilities, is a robust exploratory foray into possibilities for sonification. Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209

Using a new sonification toolkit, designed but MIT's Digital Humanities Lab, senior Moises Trejo was able to turn a sunrise and a sunset into sound. What the toolkit does is convert the annual times of sunrises and sunsets in a particular location and turns them into a simple soundwork. Depending on the settings it either becomes a two-voice melody (in a strange tuning) or a gradual modification of an evolving sound, or somewhere in between. In this piece the lower tone of the chord is the sunrise time, and the higher tone is the sunset time. The time course of the piece represents the days in the year, as sunrise and sunset gradually move further apart from each other (as the days get longer) and then move towards each other (as the days get shorter). Listen to the article: https://soundcloud.com/mitnewsoffice/audio-article-the-sound-of-a-sunset?si=76714eafe06742f698b283a79d713750&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209