In the Media

In a guest post for the Financial Times, DUSP research affiliate Ashley Nunes argues that airline customers should be willing to pay more for safety in the wake of the recent aviation disasters.

Prof. Kate Brown speaks with Kenneth Cukier on the Economist Radio podcast Babbage about her new book “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future.” “In many ways we all live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, or Chernobyl,” says Brown, “and that’s what I’d like us to be more conscious of as we talk about these issues now.”

A new working paper co-authored by Prof. Chris Knittel shows that millennials are still interested in owning cars rather than renting or sharing. “Not only are millennials as inclined to own cars as previous generations were, but also they drive their cars more than baby boomers did at the same stage of life,” writes Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg.

While examining the impact of aging societies on growth, The Economist cites a new study co-authored by Prof. Daron Acemoglu, which shows that “when young workers are sufficiently scarce, manufacturers invest in more automation, and experience faster productivity growth as a result.”

Researchers at MIT and Stanford have developed an algorithm that can predict the potential lifespan of a battery after just a handful of charges. “The algorithm doesn’t completely replace actually testing samples until they die,” writes Andrew Liszewski for Gizmodo, “but it could help engineers quickly ascertain if changes they’re testing have the potential for improvement.”

Ted Loos at The New York Times speaks with artist and MIT alumnus Tshan Hsu, whose work is about to be featured in three shows in Hong Kong. “These are my first-ever shows in Asia,” said Tsu, who was born in Boston to Chinese parents, “and it represents a kind of return, which is really interesting.”

Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero speaks with Gizmodo reporter Ryan Mandelbaum about his work showing that when twisted to the right angle, graphene can serve as an insulator or semiconductor. “This sort of field of ‘twistronics’ is something with great potential in terms of scientific discovery and intellectual interest,” Jarillo-Herrero explains.

MIT researchers have developed a new particle robotics system inspired by biological cells that can transport objects placed in their midst and squeeze through small gaps, reports Kaveh Waddell for Axios. “The particle robotics system is a departure from traditional robots, where a part failure generally breaks the entire thing,” Waddell explains.

Alumnus Tom Leighton, CEO and co-founder of Akamai, speaks with Forbes contributor Peter High about the company’s founding and his push towards making the company more focused on cybersecurity.

A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that a movie and texting campaign effectively encouraged people in Nigeria to report corruption, reports Yomi Kazeen for Quartz. “Given the popularity of the local movie industry and the prevalence of corruption in Nigeria,” writes Kazeen, “the researchers looked to study how Nigerians report corruption using high-profile actors to model behavior.”

Axios reporter Kaveh Waddell writes about a new study by MIT researchers that examines the potential impact of adversarial attacks on health care systems. “If someone sending in data for analysis has a different goal than the owner of the system doing the analysis, there's a potential for funny business,” Waddell explains.

MIT researchers have found that medical systems could be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, report Cade Matz and Craig Smith for The New York Times. AI systems could exacerbate the threat of “stakeholders bilking the system by subtly changing billing codes and other data in computer systems that track health care visits,” write Metz and Smith.

STAT reporter Sharon Begley spotlights the 10 bioscience images selected to be exhibited in the Koch Institute’s public galleries this year. The images “offer a peek into the living world as few have ever seen it,” writes Begley.

Writing for The Boston Globe Magazine, Andrew Nemethy chronicles the work of Prof. Maria Telkes, who was known as the “Sun Queen” and developed the first habitable building heated by the sun. Nemethy writes that “almost everything she did broke ground. As a prominent and outspoken female scientist, she defied stereotypes.”

Boston Globe reporters Ysabelle Kempe and Felice Freyer write that MIT is launching a new Down syndrome research center with a gift from the Alana Foundation. “I really want people with different conditions and different ability to feel they are not different, to feel that they belong, and to enhance their capability to interact and to enjoy life,” explains Prof. Li-Huei Tsai.