MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT researchers have developed an online interactive tool aimed at helping consumers quantify the costs of buying an electric or gas-powered vehicle. The tool demonstrates how electric vehicles may initially be more expensive, but are often cheaper in the long-run, reports Veronica Penny for The New York Times. Prof. Jessika Trancik notes that she hopes the tool will “help people learn about how those upfront costs are spread over the lifetime of the car.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about his book, “Why Nations Fail,” whether the attack on the U.S. Capitol signals difficulties for U.S. institutions, and how politicians can create more shared prosperity through a “good jobs” agenda. "We are still at a point where we can reverse things," Acemoglu says. "But I think if we paper over these issues, we will most likely see a huge deterioration in institutions. And it can happen very rapidly."

Graduate student Carmelo Ignaccolo speaks with New York Times reporter Emma Bubola about how young professionals are returning to Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Bubola spotlights Ignaccolo's efforts to help an organization map and identify small rural towns in Italy in which it would be possible to facilitate remote-working opportunities as a tool to revamp local economies.

Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto writes that MIT, Harvard, several research hospitals and life-sciences companies have selected a site for a new biologics manufacturing and innovation center. The project is aimed at expediting “discoveries for biotech treatments in university labs by allowing researchers to bypass the long waits that are common at contract manufacturers,” writesChesto. 

“Dealing with the present constitutional crisis requires more than removing Donald Trump from office," writes Professor Charles Stewart III. "It requires creating the conditions for electoral politics to marginalize opponents of constitutional government.”

New York Times reporter Steve Lohr spotlights Inrupt, an MIT startup founded by Prof. Tim Berners-Lee, which is aimed at providing people more control over their personal data. “Tim has become increasingly concerned as power in the digital world is weighted against the individual,” explains Daniel Weitzner, a principal research scientist at CSAIL. 

Senior research associate Jim Walsh speaks with Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd about national security following the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week.

Prof. Vipin Narang speaks with Washington Post reporter Elizabeth Saunders about the process by which the U.S. president can order a nuclear strike. “The president, and the president alone, possesses the sole authority to order a nuclear launch, and no one can legally stop him or her,” Narang explains. “Despite reports that Pelosi received assurances that there are safeguards in place in the event the president of the United States (POTUS) wants to launch a nuclear weapon, any such meaningful or effective safeguards would be illegal.”

Writing for STAT, Prof. Kevin Esvelt explores how we can stop the spread of the B-117, a variant of SARS-CoV-2. Going forward, Esvelt and his co-author argue that “over the next few years we must build a genomic monitoring system to detect evolutionary changes in viral, bacterial, and other pathogens that could require new measures to protect public health, and that could detect new pandemic pathogens of any provenance early enough to intervene.”

Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, writes for Forbes about the importance of including story-based planning when anticipating retirement. “Crafting a retirement story explains why we do certain things, helps us share and discuss with others what is important to us and why, and enables us to anticipate possible futures – both desired and undesired,” writes Coughlin.