Fast Company reporter Adele Peters writes that researchers from MIT and other institutions have found that a technique employed by ancient Romans for manufacturing concrete contains self-healing properties and could be used to help reduce concrete’s global carbon footprint. The ancient concrete method could open the “opportunity to build infrastructure that is self-healing infrastructure,” explains Prof. Admir Masic.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found that using ancient Roman techniques for creating concrete could be used to create buildings with longer lifespans, reports Nicola Davis for The Guardian. “Roman-inspired approaches, based for example on hot mixing, might be a cost-effective way to make our infrastructure last longer through the self-healing mechanisms we illustrate in this study,” says Prof. Admir Masic.
Researchers at MIT have found that applying ancient Roman techniques for developing concrete could be used to reduce concrete manufacturing emissions, reports Saul Elbein for The Hill. “Researchers said blocks treated with the method — in which concrete was mixed with reactive quicklime under continuous heat — knit themselves back together within a few weeks after being fractured,” writes Elbein.
Prof. Diana Henderson, Prof. Daniel Jackson, Prof. David Kaiser, Prof. S.P Kothari, and Prof. Sanjay Sarma have released a new white paper “summarizing their ideas for a new type of undergraduate institution,” writes David Rosowsky for Forbes. “The authors have done a commendable job identifying and assembling some of the proven high-impact practices each of these types of higher educational institutions can offer,” writes Rosowsky.
Chancellor Melissa Nobles spoke at the launch of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, a digital resource co-authored by Nobles and Northeastern Prof. Margaret Burnham aimed at identifying and documenting anti-Black killings in the mid-century South, reports Jessica Taylor Price for News @ Northeastern. “The archive seeks to right an egregious wrong in American history – the mass coverup of cases of lynching during the Jim Crow era," writes Price.
Prof. David Kaiser discussed the significance of Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger’s research conducting experiments concerning quantum entanglement, for which they were honored with the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. “Clauser got a lot of pushback from scientists who didn’t think this was even part of science,” said Kaiser. “He had to have a lot of stick-to-itiveness to publish his result.”
The new MIT Museum opens to the public this weekend in its new location in Kendall Square, which is “quite significant because this is the heart of innovation,” notes GBH’s Jared Bowen. Museum visitors will not only get a sense of MIT’s long history of innovation, but also get a sense of the scientific process, with exhibits featuring “part of the machinery that was used to help sequence the human genome, [and] the star shade petal that allowed NASA to photograph exoplanets,” Bowen explains.
Lecturer Mikael Jakobsson, Rosa Colón Guerra (a resident at MIT’s Visiting Artists program), and graduate student Aziria Rodríguez Arce have created a new board game, called Promesa, that more accurately reflects the reality of Puerto Rico’s history and people, reports Maria Parazo Rose for Popular Science. “The game is based on the real-life PROMESA act, which was established by the US government in 2016 in response to the island’s debt crisis, putting American lawmakers in charge of the country’s finances,” explains Rose. “To win, you must settle Puerto Rico’s bills and build up the country’s infrastructure, education, and social services.”
Prof. Craig Steven Wilder is a featured expert in a new documentary titled “Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America,” reports WBUR. “For me, the term ‘driving while black’ isn’t just a slogan, it isn’t just a part of our political rhetoric, it’s not just something we say to remind ourselves of the persistence of racism in the United States. It’s a very personal experience of remembering, in fact, the anxiety, the fear,” says Wilder.
Prof. Emily Richmond Pollock weighs in on how interpretations of the 1812 Overture, a common Fourth of July prelude, has changed over time, reports Javier C. Hernández for The New York Times. “It has been used for different purposes throughout history,” says Pollock. “In 2022, with ambivalence about Russian power, it has come to mean something different. And it could mean something different again in the future.”
Prof. Emeritus Leo Marx - "a pioneering student and then teacher of American studies” - died on March 8 at the age of 102, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Marquard notes that Marx was “a professor so thoroughly engaged with his students that he took delight when, on occasion, one nudged him aside to offer an alternative view.”
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Emily Richmond Pollock and University of Michigan Prof. Kira Thurman explore how the idea that performing or listening to classical music is an apolitical act flourished in the wake of World War II due to the process of denazification. “In moments of war and violence, it can be tempting to either downplay classical music’s involvement in global events or emphasize music’s power only when it is used as a force for what a given observer perceives as good,” they write.
Forbes contributor Rick Miller spotlights “In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio: The Stories, Voices, and Key Insights of the Pioneers Who Shaped the Way We Invest,” a new book by Prof. Andrew Lo and Prof. Stephen Foerster of the University of Western Ontario. The book “provides historical perspective on the development of modern investment theory and practice,” writes Miller.
Prof. Emily Richmond Pollock speaks with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker about how some Western institutions have cancelled performances by Russian artists following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Some of the discussion of these issues has fallen into some old patterns of thinking that we as musicologists are alert to,” says Pollock, “and want to warn against, which includes reacting to these kinds of bans by insisting that music is apolitical, or that there’s something fundamentally and inherently apolitical about music, which is a really problematic and untrue statement, and a knee-jerk response.”
Prof. Emeritus Leo Marx, “a cultural historian whose landmark book exploring the pervasive intrusion of technology on nature helped define the field of American studies,” has died at age 102, reports John Motyka for The New York Times. Motyka writes that Marx was a “pioneer in an eclectic and still evolving quest to determine an American national identity.”