In a column for Wired, Media Lab Director Joi Ito argues that we must find a better way to measure the impact of charitable giving. After working with philanthropists and investors for years, Ito admits that, “all of us have struggled to measure the effectiveness of grants and investments that seek to benefit the community, the environment, and so forth.”
In an article for Fortune, Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen argues that the Federal Reserve should not lower interest rates. “When the U.S. economy falls into the next recession, as it inevitably must, the Federal Reserve needs to respond by sharply lowering interest rates,” writes Pozen. “However, U.S. interest rates are now so low that the Fed has little dry powder in its arsenal.”
Aaron Schachter of WGBH’s On Campus Radio visits the Edgerton Center’s summer Engineering Design Workshop for high school students. [Doc Edgerton] “believed that it was a duty of engineers and scientists to communicate why we do what we do, the coolness of what we do, and the interestingness of what we do, to the general population, which includes students,” explains Ed Moriarty, who leads the workshop.
A new MIT study shows that “China’s move away from fossil fuels would mean 2,000 fewer premature deaths in the U.S. by 2030,” reports John Fialka for E&E News. "It reminds us that air pollution doesn't stop at national boundaries," said Prof. Valerie Karplus, a co-leader of the paper.
The New York Times’ Dennis Overbye reports on a paper from MIT, which shows that NASA’s planet hunting satellite TESS has discovered three new exoplanets in a system 73 light-years from Earth known as TOI-270. “TOI-270 is a true Disneyland for exoplanet science because it offers something for every research area,” says postdoc and lead author Maximilian Günther. “It is an exceptional laboratory for not one, but many reasons.”
TESS, an MIT-led NASA mission, has discovered two gaseous exoplanets and one rocky exoplanet within a system known as TOI-270, reports New Scientist. “TOI-270 will soon allow us to study this ‘missing link’ between rocky Earth-like planets and gas-dominant mini-Neptunes, because here all of these types formed in the same system,” says postdoc Maximilian Günther, lead author of a paper on the new system.
Postdoc Maximilian Günther is the lead author on a paper showing that NASA’s TESS satellite has discovered three new exoplanets. “The exoplanets are of a type that does not exist in our solar system, being between the Earth and Neptune in size,” writes Daniel Clery for Science. “That makes the closely packed system, known as TOI-270, a good bet for answering long-standing questions about how such ‘super-Earths’ or ‘mini-Neptunes’ form.”
A new MIT study shows that NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered three new exoplanets in a system known as TOI-270. “The newly discovered exoplanets are some of the smallest and closest ever found,” reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “All three planets are similar in size, which is very different from our own solar system filled with extremes.”
Martin Finucane reports for The Boston Globe on the latest findings of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, “a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center,” which hunts for exoplanets. TESS recently discovered a rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes in a system known as TOI-270.
Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder writes for US News & World Report about the planet hunting satellite TESS, which has recently discovered three new exoplanets. "The pace and productivity of TESS in its first year of operations has far exceeded our most optimistic hopes for the mission," said Senior Research Scientist George Ricker, TESS's principal investigator.
Profs. Daniel Rothman and Daniela Rus contributed to a Boston Globe piece exploring what the next big moonshot challenge should be. Rothman noted that, “We need to understand how the Earth system responds to environmental change,” while Rus expressed a desire to explore interspecies communication and the development of intelligent clothing.
Writing for Astronomy, Korey Haynes features Saydean Zeldin’s work at the MIT Instrumentation Lab designing software that allowed the Apollo astronauts to control the spacecraft engines. Haynes notes that Zeldin has had “a major hand in the way technology works today.”
A sensor developed by MIT researchers could make diagnosing sepsis easier, quicker and more affordable, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington explains that the sensor, which “employs microfluidics to detect the presence of key proteins in the blood,” could have “a huge potential impact, as sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospitals.”
Writing for STAT, Prof. Jonathan Gruber examines his research showing that while doctors have more information about different tests and treatments, they make decisions similar to their patients when receiving care. Gruber says this finding suggests that to improve health care decision-making, financial incentives and other approaches are needed that go beyond providing patients with more information.
Verge reporter James Vincent writes that researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab have developed an algorithm that can transform selfies into artistic portraits. The algorithm is “trained on 45,000 classical portraits to render your face in faux oil, watercolor, or ink, “Vincent explains.