Future

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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,...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

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...

Read More

Professors Daniel Hastings and Maria Yang have been named associate deans of MIT’s School of Engineering. Their new roles took effect August 1. Hastings is the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a role which he will continue in addition to his associate dean appointment. He will focus on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the school and in collaboration with Nandi Bynoe, the School of Engineering’s Assistant Dean for Diversity,...

Read More

It is increasingly clear that the prolonged drought conditions, record-breaking heat, sustained wildfires, and frequent, more extreme storms experienced in recent years are a direct result of rising global temperatures brought on by humans’ addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. And a new MIT study on extreme climate events in Earth’s ancient history suggests that today’s planet may become more volatile as it continues to warm. The study, appearing today in Science Advances, examines the paleoclimate record of...

Read More

Much of our daily life requires us to make inferences about the world around us. As you think about which direction your tennis opponent will hit the ball, or try to figure out why your child is crying, your brain is searching for answers about possibilities that are not directly accessible through sensory experiences. MIT Associate Professor Mehrdad Jazayeri has devoted most of his career to exploring how the brain creates internal representations, or models, of the external world...

Read More

On Aug. 5, the White House announced that it seeks to ensure that 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles sold in the United States by 2030 are powered by electricity. The purpose of this target is to enable the U.S to remain competitive with China in the growing electric vehicle (EV) market and meet its international climate commitments. Setting ambitious EV sales targets and transitioning to zero-carbon power sources in the United States and other nations could lead to...

Read More

The spiderweb is an everyday architecture — non-monumental and easily overlooked. Yet artists and scientists are working to unlock the secret of its complex geometry, a mystery that could inspire everything from resilient new building materials to deeper understandings of the structure of the universe.    When artist Tomàs Saraceno first came to MIT in 2012, as the inaugural Center for Art, Science, & Technology (CAST) visiting artist, he had recently pioneered a new method of scanning 3D webs with...

Read More

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disease usually diagnosed in young boys, gradually weakens muscles across the body until the heart or lungs fail. Symptoms often show up by age 5; as the disease progresses, patients lose the ability to walk around age 12. Today, the average life expectancy for DMD patients hovers around 26. It was big news, then, when Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sarepta Therapeutics announced in 2019 a breakthrough drug that directly targets the mutated gene responsible...

Read More