NPR’s Jason Beaubien speaks with Broad Institute Associate Director Nathan Yozwiak about the current outbreak of the Lassa virus in Nigeria. "What we could be seeing rather than an emerging disease is an emerging diagnosis,” said Yozwiak, explaining that the recent uptick could actually stem from increased awareness and reporting.
Brooks Hays for UPI highlights research led by postdoc Dheeraj Pasham from MIT's Kavli Institute, that has captured the rare occurrence of “radio signals produced by a black hole devouring a star.” “This is the first time we've seen a jet that's controlled by a feeding supermassive black hole,” explained Pasham.
Researchers from the Media Lab and Sloan found that humans are more likely than bots to be “responsible for the spread of fake news,” writes Paul Chadwick for The Guardian. “More openness by the social media giants and greater collaboration by them with suitably qualified partners in tackling the problem of fake news is essential.”
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Megan McArdle shares her thoughts on research from the Media Lab and Sloan that identifies “fake news” as traveling six times faster than factual news. “The difference between social media and ‘the media’ is that the gatekeeper model…does care more about the truth than ‘the narrative,’” McArdle writes.
Jordan Webber of The Guardian addresses the rise of “fake news”, citing research from the Media Lab and Sloan. “I believe that social media is a turning point in human communication,” said Sloan Prof. Sinan Aral. “I believe it is having dramatic effect on our democracies, our politics, even our health.”
Researchers have developed a microfluidic platform called “physiome on a chip”, which allows them to determine how certain drugs will affect up to 10 different organs. “Because the animal and human immune systems are different, [drug] testing is difficult in non-human trials,” writes Allen Cone for UPI, “but [this] system could help with that.”
Prof. Alan Lightman celebrates the life of Stephen Hawking in this opinion piece for The Washington Post. “The passing of Stephen Hawking gives us the opportunity to celebrate the best in ourselves, to reaffirm the power of the human mind and the majesty of our desire to know and to understand this strange universe we find ourselves in.”
Prof. Linda Griffith has created a “complex platform where researchers can put up to 10 organ tissues in separate compartments, regulating the flow of substances and medications between them in real time,” to determine how each organ will react, writes Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch. The scale of this model “represents a huge jump in the capabilities of this kind of system.”
Prof. Linda Griffith has developed ten miniature models of human organs “to create the closest we’ve come yet to a human-on-a-chip,” writes Jessica Hamzelou for New Scientist. “This is still only a minimal representation of a human,” said Griffith, but this kind of system could eventually eliminate the need for animal testing.
New research from visiting scientist Judah Cohen suggests that “severe winter weather in the United States is often tied to (relatively) high heat in the North Pole,” writes Eleanor Cummins for Popular Science. “If the Arctic is cold, that favors less severe winter in the eastern U.S.,”said Cohen. “When the Arctic is warm, it’s the opposite relationship.”
Matt Simon of Wired describes research led by visiting scientist Judah Cohen, which used the “Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index”, to reveal that warming in the arctic is associated with severe winter weather conditions. “[The researchers] looked at peaks in arctic temperatures and found that these anticipated severe weather by five days, which would suggest a link,” Simon writes.
A study from senior researcher Rolland Pellenq finds that grid-like cities retain more heat than those that are less-linear, due to the “Urban Heat Island” effect. “For new cities, or even neighborhoods, our findings can be used…in designing block layouts that would help optimize temperature,” Pellenq explains to Marlene Cimons of Popular Science.
A study led by graduate student Hilary Richardson provides evidence that by age 3, children “have begun developing brain networks used to understand the beliefs and feelings of others,” writes Laney Ruckstuhl for The Boston Globe. “Richardson said researchers previously believed the networks used in theory of mind reasoning were not developed until at least age 4,” explains Ruckstuhl.
Larry Greenemeier of Scientific American writes about a study from researchers at Sloan and the Media Lab that finds “false news” is “70% more likely to be retweeted than information that faithfully reports actual events.” “Although it is tempting to blame automated “bot” programs for this,” says Greenemeier, “human users are more at fault.”
Robin Young and Femi Oke of WBUR’s Here and Now highlight research from Sloan and the Media Lab that shows how quickly false news travels the internet. “We [also] found that false political news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than any other type of false news,” says Prof. Sinan Aral.