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.
“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.
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.”
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.
Washington Post reporter Paige Winfield Cunningham spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new way to estimate the impact of Covid-19. The researchers “developed a way to compare and merge more than two dozen different models from universities and analytics groups around the country.”
Research affiliate Fei Chen and his colleagues have developed a new method that could be used to uncover the organization and sequence of DNA inside intact cells, reports Nature. The new method could be used to “help to reveal how genome organization changes with disease.”
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.”
Prof. Sinan Aral speaks with Fortune reporter Danielle Abril about how social media companies can more effectively respond to misinformation and hate speech, following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. “This has been a steady momentum build of reaction by social media platforms,” says Aral. “This is a culmination of an understanding of social media companies that they need to do more [and] that the laissez-faire attitude isn’t going to cut it.”
Professor Sinan Aral discusses the role of social media during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Aral notes that social media companies “have a responsibility to make sure that any information that is advocating violence, supporting violence, advocating the violent overthrow of the government, and so on, be stemmed," says Aral. "This is a content moderation decision.”
TechCrunch reporter Jonathan Shieber spotlights Senti Biosciences, an MIT startup, which is developing cancer therapies using a new programmable biology platform. “The company’s technology uses new computational biological techniques to manufacture cell and gene therapies that can more precisely target specific cells in the body,” Shieber explains.
Professor Christopher Capozzola, head of MIT History, reflects on yesterday’s violent events in Washington: “What made us think that this could never happen in the United States? ... This is going to be a moment of soul-searching for America.”
In a new white paper, senior lecturer Steve Spear examines how the U.S. can prepare to better handle the next pandemic, reports Carey Goldberg for WBUR. Spear and his co-author are “calling for a system that would be better at amplifying pandemic lessons learned locally, to be sure the best known methods are shared and scaled up.”
In a letter to the editor that appeared in The New York Times, senior lecturer Jonathan Byrnes advocates for a continuous flow of vaccinations to quickly protect the population against Covid-19. “We need two things: 1) a core of highly experienced supply chain managers supplementing the public health professionals; and 2) a management structure, probably under the Defense Production Act, to coordinate, organize and manage the supply chain,” Byrnes writes.
Fortune reporters Jeremy Kahn and Jonathan Vanian highlight MIT startup Macro-Eyes, which is focused on using AI to improve health care in low and middle-income countries.