Prof. Michael Strano joins “Somewhere on Earth” podcast host Gareth Mitchell to discuss how he and his colleagues developed tiny batteries that could be used to power cell-sized robots. Roughly the thickness of a human hair, the new battery can create a current by capturing oxygen. “I would say we're making the LEGOs, the building blocks that go into robots,” Strano says. “We’re building the parts and it's an exciting time for the field.”

Prof. Asegun Henry has been named a 2024 Grist honoree for his work developing a “sun in a box,” a new cost-effective system for storing renewable energy, reports Grist. Based on his research, Prof. Henry has founded Fourth Power, a startup working to build a prototype system that will hopefully “allow us to decarbonize electricity,” says Henry. 

A Nature editorial discusses the live music industry’s increasing commitment to sustainability, going beyond actions such as bottle recycling to addressing band travel, equipment shipping and set construction. Researchers from MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative have “undertaken a project co-funded by the Warner Music Group, Live Nation and Coldplay to analyze the carbon footprint of the live music industry, initially in the United Kingdom and United States, and suggest practical mitigating measures.”

Writing for Project Syndicate, Research Scientist Christian Catalini contributes to a Project Syndicate opinion piece makes the case for implementing cryptocurrency regulation that favors “builders over speculators.” Catalini and his co-authors write: “At the end of the day, policymakers in Washington must come together and draft new rules, rather than trying to squeeze crypto use cases into laws from nearly a century ago. And the industry, for its part, needs to tackle the many problems that traditional financial services and crypto leaders have long ignored.” They add: “The upside, much like in the early days of the internet, is a technology that can restore competition to sectors that haven’t seen it in decades.” 

During an interview with Lisa Mullins of WBUR’s Here & Now, graduate student Emelie Eldracher '22 shares the excitement she felt after winning the 2024 Paralympics silver medal win in the mixed-four crew and delves into her research at MIT focused on developing a low-cost system to gather biomechanical feedback for athletes and help improve their performance. “I really hope to contribute to the sphere and hopefully we can use AI in a way that influences athletes to help them get that one-hundredth of a second, as our coach likes to say,” Eldracher explains. “Because if you add up all the one-hundredths of a second in a race, that could be the difference between a medal or not.” 

Since meeting as undergraduates at MIT, graduate student Ashwin Sah '20 and Mehtaab Sawhney PhD '24 have “written a mind-boggling 57 math proofs together, many of them profound advances in various fields,” writes Leila Sloman for Quanta Magazine. Now, in what is being praised as a “huge achievement” and “phenomenally impressive” by fellow mathematicians, Sah and Sawhney have “obtained a long-sought improvement on an estimate of how big sets of integers can get before they must contain sequences of evenly spaced numbers." 

Rollerama, a pop-up roller skating rink at Kendall Common, has become a “corner of liveliness” this summer, providing the public with free fun and art in the form of a new mural by Massiel Grullon, reports Izzy Bryars for The Boston Globe. “We thought it could help people do something fun together, and start to give people a sense of what the Kendall Common build out will be like,” says Sarah Gallop, director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations. 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu is a guest on the Financial Times podcast, “The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes," detailing his research on the economics of AI and implications for workers. He says AI could help the current workforce communicate better and control its own data, while opening up possibilities for the geographically or economically disadvantaged, if the right policies are put in place. “I think having this conversation, and really making it a central part of the public debate that there is a technically feasible and socially beneficial different direction of technology, would have a transformative effect on the tech sector,” he explains.

Scientists from MIT and elsewhere are using submersible structures to harness the power of ocean waves and make sand accumulate in specific regions to protect islands and potentially grow new ones, reports Amy Gunia for CNN. “With each field experiment, the group says it is advancing its understanding of what materials, configurations, and construction techniques can make sand accumulate in the simplest, most cost-effective, sustainable, long-lasting and scalable way,” explains Gunia. 

Prof. Jeff Gore speaks with Caity Weaver of The New York Times about the future of the U.S. penny and his belief that the penny should be retired. “People think that because it exists and is used, it means that it’s useful,” Gore notes. “We’re taking something that is actually a valuable commodity, something that has actual value, and then we’re converting it into something that people just throw away.”