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Self-Replicating Living Robots Spur World-Wide Media Blitz

saa — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 18:11:20 +0000

A team of scientists — including ��̽̽ professor of computer science Josh Bongard and his former doctoral student Sam Kriegman — have discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction.

They applied their discovery to create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots, Xenobots. Their research, presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on November 29, led to a flood of global media attention and news stories.

Leading the coverage, USA Today published a story “Scientists made tiny xenobots out of frog cells. Now they say those robots can reproduce,” that included a ��̽̽-produced video. Reporter Katie Hunt at CNN quoted ��̽̽’s Bongard: "Most people think of robots as made of metals and ceramics but it's not so much what a robot is made from but what it does, which is act on its own on behalf of people.”

Science Friday, the widely syndicated program aired by radio stations across the country, spoke with Josh Bongard last year in a wide-ranging conversation about Xenobots. Host Ira Flatow invited him back for another interview about the new work.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also invited Bognard back for a second long interview with Bob McDonald for their flagship science program, Quirks & Quarks.

Other major news outlets covered the new research including NPR, Voice of America, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. National magazines picked up the story with pieces in Smithsonian, Forbes, People Magazine, and Fast Company.

Science media and magazines produced extensive coverage including stories in The Scientist, Science News, New Scientist, Engadget, Popular Science, Gizmodo, Inverse, and the very popular site: IFLScience.

Other outlets and newspapers covered the Xenobots including: New York Post, New Atlas, The Hill, Business Insider and The Daily Beast.

International coverage ranged over the whole world with stories in The Guardian, Radio Canada, Yahoo! News (UK), The Times of London, The Hindu, The Daily Mail, The Week (UK), Olhar Digital (Portugal), il Messaggero (Italy), Herald Sun (Australia), leBigData.fr (France), Heise.de (Germany), CHIP (Turkey), SindoNews.com (Indonesia), India Times, Engadget (Japan) and hundreds of other outlets.

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Audubon Magazine: One Professor’s Quest to Build Community Through Birding Takes Flight

saa — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 21:31:32 +0000

Trish O’Kane of ��̽̽’s Rubenstein School of the Environment and Natural Resources is doing incredible work through the experiential learning course "Birding to Change the World". She combines ornithology, social justice & mentorship to inspire young environmental stewards to catalyze change.

Read the article.

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HuffPost: "White parents still teach kids 'colorblindness.' That's a big problem"

saa — Fri, 14 May 2021 17:24:18 +0000

HuffPost digs into Professor Jamie Abaied's study that examines how white parents communicate with their children about race.

A study by developmental psychology professor Jamie Abaied indicates that a significant portion of white parents send mixed messages to their children about race when discussing the topic with them. Chief among those mixed messages: colorblind ideology, or the belief that one should "not see race" or that "race doesn't matter." HuffPost parenting reporter Catherine Pearson digs in to Abaied's reserach, published in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology journal, that found more than a third of sampled white parents sent mixed messages.

“I think parents should know: It can be a very good experience for kids to learn from a trusted caregiver that it’s OK to talk about things that make you feel uncomfortable, and that it’s OK to not understand something and then try to learn more,” Abaied said.

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Greenland Discovery Attracts Global Media Attention

saa — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:41:26 +0000

��̽̽ scientist Drew Christ was stunned to find not just rocks—but ancient plants—under his microscope when he was looking at a long-lost sample from the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet.

This surprise discovery started when a Cold-War-era ice core was rediscovered—after decades of being lost in a Danish freezer. This Hollywood-worthy story led Christ, and ��̽̽ professor Paul Bierman, to research showing that Greenland is much more sensitive to natural climate warming than previously understood. “And we already know that humanity’s out-of-control warming of the planet hugely exceeds the natural rate,” says Christ, who co-led the study published on March 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And the stunning discovery has led to a stunning array of U.S. and international news reporting—including a story that was highlighted on the front page of the Washington Post and filled page A3 on the print edition.

CNN science reporter Katie Hunt dug into the new findings as well, developing a piece that was on the top of CNN’s U.S. news feed and widely syndicated by many broadcast affiliates.

Wired Magazine’s story, “Fossils in a Forgotten Ice Core Rewrite Greenland’s Icy Past,” followed a news brief in Nature, a story in The Times of London (UK) and Le Monde’s piece (France) “La calotte glaciaire du Groenland a déjà fondu au moins une fois au cours du dernier million d’années.”

The New York Daily News’ story was syndicated by several outlets including MSN News. The Weather Channel also covered the findings.

Science Friday, the widely syndicated program aired by radio stations across the country, invited Drew Christ to be their guest in conversation with host Ira Flatow. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced a probing twelve-minute-long radio conversation with Christ for their flagship science program, Quirks & Quarks.

A host of magazines and science websites covered the study including Popular Science with their story: “How a top-secret nuclear project became a gold mine for data on Greenland’s ice.” Forbes, Atlas Obscura, Cosmos and Inside Climate News developed stories. As did BBC Science Focus, Esquire, with “We've Got New Bad Climate News Courtesy of Cold War Insanity,” and the iconoclast’s favorite: IFL Science.

A story by AFP, Agence France Press, the international news wire, was part of a wave of international coverage. Others included Le Parisien, The Daily Mail, MSN (India), Damals (Germany), The Independent and Nico Nico News in Japan.

An essay on the new climate science was written by Drew Christ and Paul Bierman and published on The Conversation, an international syndication service. It was picked up by hundreds of outlets, including this sampling: Associated Press, Public Radio International, Agenda (World Economic Forum), Houston Chronicle, Yahoo! News, Arctic Today, and the Albany Times Union.

Vermont media also covered the work, including interviews with WCAX-3 television and Vermont Public Radio.

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"Reply All" talks happiness and sadness with Peter Dodds

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 21:34:36 +0000

In episode #168 of popular podcast “Reply All,” co-hosts Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt take a look at the Hedonometer and speak with Peter Dodds, professor and co-director of the /cems/mathstat/profiles/peter_dodds, about our happiness — and sadness — over time. Recent data from the Hedonometer reveals that May 31, five days after the killing of George Floyd, was the saddest day ever recorded by the Hedonometer.

“Alex meets a scientist who has built a tool meant to do the impossible — measure the world's overall happiness and sadness. Plus, Alex volunteers for a risky and strange experiment,” reads the episode’s description. Dodds examined a new, specific datat set just for this episode. Listen for results: #168 Happiness Calculator vs. Alex Goldman from Reply All, Gimlet

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In this episode, “Alex meets a scientist (Peter Dodds) who has built a tool meant to do the impossible — measure the world's overall happiness and sadness. Plus, Alex volunteers for a risky and strange experiment.”

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��̽̽ Team Building Vermontilator Featured in The New Yorker Magazine

saa — Mon, 11 May 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Early in March, a team of scientists, engineers and doctors at ��̽̽ wondered if the Covid-19 epidemic might overwhelm the state’s hospitals—and, particularly, if there would be enough ventilators. So, they set out to design and build a working model for a simple, inexpensive, emergency ventilator. They’re succeeding.

Now their work is the centerpiece of a major feature story in The New Yorker, rolled out online on May 11—and published in the May 18 print edition of the magazine.

Journalist James Somers interviewed several ��̽̽ scientists and engineers, including ��̽̽ research engineers and machinists Jake Kittell and Carl Silver, who have been co-leading the new effort—and who are highlighted in the lead of the New Yorker story.

There are numerous corporations and other major universities that are now trying to develop emergency ventilators, but the ��̽̽ effort is distinctive, and perhaps unique, in at least two ways—as the magazine article makes clear. First, the team’s goal is to build a minimalist device that is truly low-cost and easy to manufacture—but is suitable for the kind of long-term use that many Covid patients require. Most commercial ventilators are extremely complex and cost upward of $25,000; the ��̽̽ effort sees a price point less than a tenth of that.

Second, the Vermontilator relies on an alternative mode of helping critically ill patients breathe. It’s called “airway pressure release ventilation” or APRV. To understand the science behind this approach, Somers also spoke extensively with University of Vermont lung expert Jason Bates who is leading the Vermont effort and is a world-regarded expert on the mechanics of lungs and APRV.

Fortunately, the epidemic in Vermont has, so far, not outstripped the capacity of the state’s hospitals and ventilator supply—and there is good reason to hope that the Vermontilator will never be needed in-state. Sadly, however, as the Covid-19 epidemic bumps from country to country over upcoming months, many people will need help from a mechanical ventilator. Even more difficult is that in many poorer parts of the world, there are not nearly enough ventilators to meet the expected demand, and the ventilators that may be available on the market will be far too expensive. The Vermontilator may help fill the gap.

Read the New Yorker story now.

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��̽̽ Nursing Student, Early Graduation Featured on NBC News

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 00:19:00 +0000

All 95 nursing students earning their degrees this spring from ��̽̽ opted to enter the workforce early and graduate on May 1, rather than the third week of May. The move was featured on NBC News Now on April 25.

NBC News' Dasha Burns spoke with ��̽̽ senior nursing major Kathryn Calisti about graduating early to provide support to overstressed healthcare workers.

“The field you’re going into is maybe more challenging now than it ever was—how does that make you feel,” Burns asks.

Calisti’s response: “Nurses are strong people and they’re resilient and show up when they’re called on so it’s a good reflection—I think—on what I am deciding what to do with my life.”

��̽̽ is among the first colleges in the country to allow nurses to graduate early. Calisti plans to work at ��̽̽ Medical Center following her graduation.

Watch the interview on NBC News Now.

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Living Robots Create Global Media Splash

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:53:04 +0000

New creatures, called “xenobots” were designed on a supercomputer at ��̽̽ by professor of computer science Joshua Bongard and his graduate student Sam Kriegman.

Then biologists at Tufts University took the ��̽̽ designs and assembled them out of frog cells. The result was “a new class of artifact,” says Bongard, “a living, programmable organism"—that led to a scientific study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 13.

And the other result was an avalanche of global media attention. Many hundreds (maybe thousands) of stories were published—from Boston to Beijing.

One of the biggest stories, “Meet the xenobot: world's first living, self-healing robots created from frog stem cells,” was published out of CNN’s international desk in Hong Kong and picked by TV stations around the country. This led to a broadcast appearance by ��̽̽’s Josh Bongard as a guest on Fredricka Whitfield’s Sunday interview show. After the interview, CNN featured a photo of a xenobot on its Instagram feed. It has 95,551 likes.

The BBC World Service also served up their expert interview work in a conversation with Bongard about computer-designed organisms.

Science Friday, the widely syndicated program aired by radio stations across the country, invited Josh Bongard to be their guest in a wide-ranging conversation with host Ira Flatow. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced an inviting nine-minute-long radio conversation with Bongard for their flagship science program, Quirks & Quarks.

Bloomberg News produced its own "QuickTake" video about the research and also tweeted the video. Sky News produced an online story and also interviewed Bongard for global television broadcast on their program, "The Sarah-Jane Mee Show."

Many of the nation’s leading science magazines covered this research including Scientific American, The Scientist, Cosmos, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum and a thoughtful story, “Meet Xenobot, an Eerie New Kind of Programmable Organism,” in Wired.

Other influential publications took up the xenobot story too, including Smithsonian, The Economist, The Week, Esquire, and Forbes.

Newspapers around the world reported the news, from The Boston Globe to the San Francisco Chronicle to the The Times (of London) and other British tabloids, including The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Guardian which republished a ��̽̽-produced video.

Other international coverage included the Irish Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, New Zealand Herald, L’Express (France), Der Tagesspiegel (Germany), and El Mundo (Spain).

The MIT Technology Review, reported a story, “These “xenobots” are living machines designed by an evolutionary algorithm,” and another one for their Chinese edition. And Inverse may get the best-but-most-misleading-headline award with its story, “Scientists develop ‘walking caviar’ to make the first-ever living machine.” Even the inimitable website IFLScience!, with its fifty million readers, covered the xenobot work.

Local and Vermont media also covered the work, including an interview with WCAX television.

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New England's most most fascinating museum shows for fall

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 14:28:49 +0000

The Boston Globe highlighted a remarkable exhibit at ��̽̽'s Fleming Museum: RESIST! INSIST! PERSIST! The Globe noted that this "show about activism in art that stretches from Francisco Goya to Kara Walker...feels in tune with the times, where everything is political and no one has the luxury of sitting it out."

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NPR names professor Emily Bernard’s book an “unputdownable” read of 2019

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 15:20:28 +0000

Book critic Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” rounds up her 10 favorite books of the year, including “Black Is the Body” by ��̽̽ professor of English and critical race and ethnic studies Emily Bernard.

“In this outstanding essay collection, Emily Bernard writes with depth, poetic intensity and humor about growing up in the South and living and teaching in the snow globe state of Vermont. Bernard's autobiographical writing about race never hews to safe or expected paths,” writes Corrigan. Revisit Corrigan’s full review of Bernard’s book upon its release.

“Black Is the Body” was also named to Kirkus Review’s best books of 2019 to fight racism and xenophobia list, which describes Bernard’s work as “a rare book of healing on multiple levels.”

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Self-Replicating Living Robots Spur World-Wide Media Blitz

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Audubon Magazine: One Professor’s Quest to Build Community Through Birding Takes Flight

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HuffPost: "White parents still teach kids 'colorblindness.' That's a big problem"

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Greenland Discovery Attracts Global Media Attention

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"Reply All" talks happiness and sadness with Peter Dodds

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����̽̽ Team Building Vermontilator Featured in The New Yorker Magazine

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