Profs. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo speak with PBS NewsHour’s Paul Solman about their use of randomized control trials to address global poverty. “[T]hat's what the Duflo/Banerjee research is all about, trying to reduce the guesswork of economic development policy by seeing what seems to work, and what doesn't, at least in its current form,” explains Solman.
Writing for the Financial Times, James Crabtree spotlights “Good Economics for Hard Times,” a new book by Profs. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Crabtree writes that Banerjee and Duflo make the case that, “cutting-edge economic research can help fix thorny problems, from aiding communities recovering from trade shocks to setting ideal immigration levels.”
MIT researchers have developed a new way to optimize how soft robots perform certain tasks. It "shrinks drastically the amount of computational overhead required to get good movement results out of soft robots,” writes Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch, “which is a key ingredient in helping make them partial to actually use in real-life applications.”
New York Times reporter Kathleen Massara explores the process of creating origami sculptures, spotlighting the work of Prof. Erik Demaine and lecturer Jason Ku. “I want the result to be complex, but I want to simplify the process it takes to get there,” says Ku. “It reminds me of the quote in ‘Amadeus’: ‘There are simply too many notes.’”
Fast Company reporter Mark Wilson writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that smartphone data could be used to help predict and prevent the spread of epidemics across cities. “By coupling cellphone movement data with typical dengue infection rates, scientists were able to create a simulation of a dengue epidemic,” Wilson explains.
R. David Edelman, director of MIT’s Project on Technology, the Economy and National Security, speaks with IEEE Spectrum reporter Mark Anderson about how AI might impact the future of work. “We’re at the vanguard of a revolution in teaching technology how to play nice with humans,” says Edelman. “But that’s gonna be a lot of work. Because it’s got a lot to learn.”
Forbes contributor Ariel Cohen writes that MIT researchers have developed a new battery-like device that can remove carbo dioxide from the air. “The real game-changer here is that the technology can be retrofitted for smaller devices and does not require a high density concentration of carbon to be efficient,” writes Cohen. “This is nothing short of a breakthrough step in carbon capture technology.”
The Boston Globe Spotlight Team examines rush-hour congestion in Greater Boston. MIT’s commuter benefits program, which “borrowed concepts from behavioral economics to create meaningful incentives to leave the car behind,” is described by the Globe as a model for others: “No other major Boston-area employers surveyed by Spotlight offer commuter incentives with the scale and sophistication of MIT’s.”
Writing for Forbes, Prof. David Mindell commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 12 moon landing, noting that Apollo 12 demonstrated “the power of precision in human-machine collaboration.” Mindell notes that “Apollo 12’s precision feat meant that the later missions could land in ever more hairy — and geologically interesting — terrain.”
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, highlights how MIT researchers have identified a metabolic pathway that appears to play a key role in small cell lung cancer. Collins notes that “the new findings show the promise of gene-editing technology as a research tool for uncovering elusive cancer targets.”
Joanna Moody, a research program manager at MIT’s Energy Initiative, speaks with Bob Oakes of WBUR’s Morning Edition about a new MITEI study on the future of transportation. “We need to be looking at alternatives to the car paradigm,” says Moody.
Financial Times reporter Sarah Murray spotlights the Sloan School of Management’s focus on community projects in their executive MBA program. “There is degree of complexity that arises when there is a social mission to the project,” explains senior lecturer Bridget Akinc. “The factors you include and the stakeholders you talk to are very different.”
CSAIL researchers have developed a new system that can predict how selfless or selfish a driver’s behavior might be, writes Charles Towers-Clark for Forbes. “Predicting how humans might behave, and adjusting an algorithm’s reasoning based on how selfish or selfless their behavior might be, could dramatically reduce accidents between AI-enabled vehicles and humans,” Towers-Clark notes.
CSAIL researchers have developed a new system that can predict how selfless or selfish a driver’s behavior might be, writes Charles Towers-Clark for Forbes. “Predicting how humans might behave, and adjusting an algorithm’s reasoning based on how selfish or selfless their behavior might be, could dramatically reduce accidents between AI-enabled vehicles and humans,” Towers-Clark notes.
MIT researchers have developed microparticles that could be used to fortify foods with essential nutrients, reports Tim McDonnell for NPR. The microparticles “could be added into flour, salt, dehydrated soup stock cubes or any mass-produced, granular food as it's being processed in a factory. Each might contain up to four different kinds of nutrients.”