Future

The MIT Libraries celebrated the outstanding contributions of its employees in June with its 2021 Infinite Mile Awards ceremony. The online ceremony had a summer camp theme and featured an art and crafts showcase, funny pet photos, and recorded performances by the libraries’ band, The Dust Jackets.  Awards were presented to individuals and teams in the categories listed below; recipients are listed along with excerpts from the award presentations. Bringing out the best Serving as interim music librarian while...

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Squirting a jet of water through a drop of liquid may sound like idle fun, but if done precisely, and understood thoroughly, the splashy exercise could help scientists identify ways to inject fluids such as vaccines through skin without using needles. That’s the motivation behind a new study by engineers at MIT and the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The study involves firing small jets of water through many kinds of droplets, hundreds of times over, using high-speed...

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Emissions from shipping activities around the world account for nearly 3 percent of total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and could increase by up to 50 percent by 2050, making them an important and often overlooked target for global climate mitigation. At the same time, shipping-related emissions of additional pollutants, particularly nitrogen and sulfur oxides, pose a significant threat to global health, as they degrade air quality enough to cause premature deaths. The main source of shipping emissions is the...

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Work on MIT’s Strategic Action Plan for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion started last fall, and the plan’s first draft was released in late March 2020. Powered by inputs and feedback from three dozen community engagement sessions and a steady stream of email responses from students, staff, faculty, postdocs, alumni, and others, the plan is being revised and updated over the summer with hopes for a fall release. The development of the strategic plan is being led by Institute Community...

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If you gave students around the world the power to study and manipulate genes in a test tube, what would they do with it? MiniPCR bio first began selling its portable, inexpensive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines in 2013. The machines allow users to multiply specific strands of DNA in minutes, following along with experiments through a phone app. Since then, the founders have been amazed at the amount of learning and research that has come from the devices....

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The transition toward a more sustainable, environmentally sound electrical grid has driven an upsurge in renewables like solar and wind. But something as simple as cloud cover can cause grid instability, and wind power is inherently unpredictable. This intermittent nature of renewables has invigorated the competitive landscape for energy storage companies looking to enhance power system flexibility while enabling the integration of renewables. “Impact is what drives PolyJoule more than anything else,” says CEO Eli Paster. “We see impact...

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The urgent need to cut carbon emissions is prompting a rapid move toward electrified mobility and expanded deployment of solar and wind on the electric grid. If those trends escalate as expected, the need for better methods of storing electrical energy will intensify. “We need all the strategies we can get to address the threat of climate change,” says Elsa Olivetti PhD ’07, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering. “Obviously, developing technologies for grid-based...

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For the more than 5 million people in the world who have undergone an upper-limb amputation, prosthetics have come a long way. Beyond traditional mannequin-like appendages, there is a growing number of commercial neuroprosthetics — highly articulated bionic limbs, engineered to sense a user’s residual muscle signals and robotically mimic their intended motions. But this high-tech dexterity comes at a price. Neuroprosthetics can cost tens of thousands of dollars and are built around metal skeletons, with electrical motors that...

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Future Now, The IFTF Blog RSS Feed http://www.iftf.org/ News from the Future #60 https://mailchi.mp/iftf/news-from-the-future-issue-1479117 https://mailchi.mp/iftf/news-from-the-future-issue-1479117 <p dir=”ltr”><strong id=”docs-internal-guid-ee42e5b7-7fff-2069-a3d4-0ef41b8a18ba”><a href=”https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iftf-fast-futures-foresight-for-beginners-in-90-minutes-tickets-162485443335?aff=IFTFNewsletter0713%C2%A0″>Fast Futures</a></strong><br><strong id=”docs-internal-guid-ee42e5b7-7fff-2069-a3d4-0ef41b8a18ba”>Tuesday, August 10 | 10–11:30am PDT</strong></p> <p dir=”ltr”>Not sure how to start your futures-thinking journey?&nbsp;Want to get your colleagues or team members into futures thinking? Fast Futures is a 90-minute $99, introductory-level online learning experience that teaches participants to initiate their own creative foresight.</p> <p><a href=”https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iftf-fast-futures-foresight-for-beginners-in-90-minutes-tickets-162485443335?aff=IFTFNewsletter0713%C2%A0″>Register here. &gt;&gt;</a></p> <h4 class=”null” dir=”ltr”><br><strong>IFTF FORESIGHT TALK</strong></h4> <p dir=”ltr”><strong id=”docs-internal-guid-9269392e-7fff-ef66-e2b7-6a153a23e65b”>Freedom Dreaming in the...

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Right now, Rodrigo Ochigame is reading Russian science fiction, Yugoslav art history, Indian philosophy, and Afro-Caribbean political theory. They are listening to Belgian electroacoustic music, Mongolian experimental rock, and Ethiopian jazz. Occasionally, the PhD student in the Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) even throws dice to select a new MBTA stop to explore. More often, they apply this practice on the MIT campus, randomly attending departmental seminars on topics ranging from astrophysics to macroeconomics...

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Lawrence Frishkopf, MIT professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer science, died on June 25, one day before his 91st birthday. An area chair in the department, Frishkopf was affiliated with both the Communications Biophysics group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, where his research focused on the biophysics of auditory systems. Born in Philadelphia in 1930, he developed an interest in science as a young child, telling his Polish...

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What’s the best way to get K-12 students across the U.S. to bounce back from the pandemic? MIT’s Justin Reich has an idea: Ask them. Reich, an associate professor in MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing and director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, has co-authored a new report on the return to the classroom in the 2021-22 school year, based on interviews with over 250 educators and 4,000 students, in addition to 10 charrettes involving students, teachers, parents,...

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Open windows and a good heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system are starting points for keeping classrooms safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. But they are not the last word, according to a new study from researchers at MIT. The study shows how specific classroom configurations may affect air quality and necessitate additional measures, beyond HVAC use or open windows, to reduce the spread of aerosols — those tiny, potentially Covid-carrying particles that can stay suspended in the air...

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When you’re frying something in a skillet and some droplets of water fall into the pan, you may have noticed those droplets skittering around on top of the film of hot oil. Now, that seemingly trivial phenomenon has been analyzed and understood for the first time by researchers at MIT — and may have important implications for microfluidic devices, heat transfer systems, and other useful functions. A droplet of boiling water on a hot surface will sometimes levitate on...

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After three years of hard work, the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team took first place at the 2021 American Solar Challenge (ASC) on August 7 in the Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) category. During the five-day race, their solar car, Nimbus — designed and built entirely by students — beat eight other SOVs from schools across the country, traversing 1,109 miles and maintaining an average speed of 38.4 miles per hour. Held every two years, the ASC has traditionally been...

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