MIT News Newsletter

	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 27, 2017
MIT News: top stories
A weekly digest of the Institute’s research and innovation

MIT students fortify concrete by adding recycled plastic

Adding bits of irradiated plastic water bottles could cut cement industry’s carbon emissions.

MIT neuroscientists build case for new theory of memory formation

Existence of “silent engrams” suggests that existing models of memory formation should be revised.

Gene circuit switches on inside cancer cells, triggers immune attack

Advance may open new pathways for cancer immunotherapy.

Noelle Selin: Tracing toxins around the world

Atmospheric chemist takes on pollutants and the global treaties written to control them.

Scientists detect comets outside our solar system

Team of professional and citizen scientists identifies tails of comets streaking past a distant star.

Let your car tell you what it needs

MIT team develops software that can tell if tires need air, spark plugs are bad, or air filter needs replacing.

In the Media

MIT scientists have developed a technique that could potentially be used one day to treat diseases of the brain, muscles, liver and kidneys by using CRISPR to edit RNA, writes Melissa Healy for The Los Angeles Times. Making edits to the chemical message of RNA, “doesn’t effect a permanent change in a cell’s architectural plan; rather, it essentially alters the implementation of that plan,” explains Healy.

Wall Street Journal reporter Eric Felten writes about Prof. Kieran Setiya’s new book on midlife crises. Felten notes that Setiya, “hopes to lift sufferers out of this dip and help them flourish by conveying the insights of modern philosophy.”

Prof. Mitchel Resnick speaks to Radio Boston’s Meghna Chakrabarti about his research with the Lifelong Kindergarten group and what makes the kindergarten teaching method ideal. Children in kindergarten, “spend a lot of time playfully creating things in collaboration with one another,” Resnick explains, adding that “they’re really developing as creative thinkers.”

UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that an international team of astronomers, including MIT Prof. Saul Rappaport, has detected comets outside the Milky Way. “The distant ice balls, roughly the size of Halley's Comet, were spotted orbiting a small star 800 light-years from Earth. They were documented using transit photometry,” Hays explains.