David Koch, an MIT alumnus known for his philanthropic work, has died at age 79, reports Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Lindsay Fortado for the Financial Times. Koch, who was a basketball star at MIT, “donated or pledged more than $1.3bn in total to causes including cancer research, hospitals and education."
Prof. Kristin Forbes discusses monetary policy, currency wars and what she considers the biggest risk to the global economy with Daybreak Asia on Bloomberg TV. “For me, the biggest concern is what happens next on trade wars and especially the uncertainty around trade wars,” says Forbes.
Profs. Thomas Malone and Erik Brynjolfsson discuss the future impact of humanoid robots on society with Jason Margolis of PRI’s The World. “The next 10 years could be the best 10 years we've ever seen or the worst decade, and that depends less on the technology and more on the choices we make,” Brynjolfsson says.
Tara Roberts, a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, writes for National Geographic about her experience with Diving With Purpose, a nonprofit that funds “underwater archaeology advocates” who search for and document slave trade shipwrecks. “Fragments of these wooden ships are notoriously hard to find after centuries in the water, but such a small number of finds also points to a larger societal disinterest in their discovery.”
XiaoZhi Lim at The New York Times reports on a new study co-authored by researchers at MIT, which found that “by using a new class of electrolytes composed of ionic liquids, or salts that remain liquid at room temperature,” it may be possible for a supercapacitor to store as much energy as a lithium-ion battery.
MIT researchers have developed a new technique that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to create shape-shifting materials on-demand, reports Ewen Callaway for Nature. “The shape-shifting materials could be used to deliver drugs, and to create sentinels for almost any biological signal,” Callaway explains.
Prof. Kevin Esvelt describes the importance of community guidance for his work with Mice Against Ticks, a project that aims to use gene editing tackle Lyme disease. Even if we differ on whether to release engineered Lyme-resistant mice into the woods, ensuring that ecological engineering proposals start small and invite community guidance is a project everyone can support.
Writing for BBC News, Prof. Vipin Narang examines the potential implications of India re-evaluating its nuclear weapons policy. “The nuclear option will be on the table much quicker during a time of crisis,” writes Narang, “and Pakistan's peacetime posture may have to be prepared for more rapid use.”
MIT was named to CNBC’s list of the Top 5 colleges that pay off the most for business school students, reports Abigail Hess for CNBC.
Popular Mechanics reporter David Grossman writes that MIT researchers have designed a new experiment to help identify the rate at which oxygen in the universe is produced. Grossman explains that the study could “lead toward better being able to understand if a dying star will take on the form of a black hole or a neutron star.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that temperature increases caused by climate change could lead to a reduction in the energy produced by solar panels, reports Scott Snowden for Forbes. The researchers found that “on average, photovoltaic power output reduces by 0.45% for each degree increase in temperature.”
MIT researchers have developed a battery-free underwater sensor and communication system, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. The system could “allow for real-time sea temperature and marine life monitoring, without requiring regular equipment and power swaps,” explains Etherington.
CSAIL researchers have developed a system that delivers high-quality video streams to multiple devices simultaneously, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. The system “minimizes stutters due to buffering, and pixelation due to downgraded stream,” Etherington explains, and could have “huge potential benefits for streaming services like Netflix and Hulu that increasingly serve multiple members of a household at once.”
Five MOOCs offered by MIT were named to Class Central’s list of the “Top 100 Online Courses Of All Time,” reports Dhawal Shah for Class Central. MIT was one of only three universities to have five courses in the top 100.
Writing for the Financial Times, graduate student Daniel Aronoff examines the impact of the FedNow banking service, which aims to process and settle individual payments within seconds. FedNow will have a “revolutionary impact on the banking industry and monetary policy,” writes Aronoff. “When depositors are able to move funds costlessly and instantaneously between accounts, it will become feasible to arbitrage between banks in real time.”