Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan writes about MIT’s groundbreaking ceremony for 314 Main Street, which will serve as a “new front door” for the Institute. Steve Marsh, managing director of real estate, explains that in Kendall Square, MIT aims “to create an environment where people solve problems. That will help us all.”
Prof. Marcia Bartusiak speaks with Radio Boston’s Evan Horowitz about her book, “Dispatches from Planet 3.” Bartusiak explains that she was inspired to “take a new exciting finding and provide the backstory. All of these essays are taking something new - a new idea, a new discovery - and showing that it had an origin or a seed in the past.”
Natasha Frost of Quartz speaks with graduate student Mostafa Mohsenvand about his work developing a new wearable device that could one day be used to help people with memory loss. Frost writes the device may help those suffering with Alzheimer’s by “making memories instantly accessible externally for those who may otherwise be unable to recall them.”
A new report from MIT researchers finds a correlation between climate change and an increase in mental health issues, writes Nicole Karlis for Salon. Research scientist Nick Obradovich explains that the study shows, “policymakers should be very actively considering how to increase societal resilience to our changing climate.”
TechCrunch reporter Kate Clark spotlights Prof. Tim Berners-Lee’s quest to decentralize the web and provide people with power over their personal data through his new startup inrupt. Clark explains that inrupt is expanding the platform Berners-Lee developed that allows users to “keep their data wherever they choose, rather than being forced to store it on centralized servers.”
MIT researchers have created an AI system that allows users to automatically erase people and objects from photos, writes Mark Wilson for Fast Company. Wilson writes that the researchers have “built a remarkably simple front-end interface to control [the system]. In one column, you select what you’d like to remove from your photos, and in the right column, you select your source material.”
During the Barclays Asia Forum, Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson urged companies to prioritize cybersecurity in order to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the growing digital economy, reports Saheli Roy Choudhury for CNBC. Brynjolfsson noted that the threat of cyberattacks "can be addressed much more effectively than it has been. I think we're just not taking it seriously enough."
A team of researchers led by Prof. J. Christopher Love has developed a system to produce on-demand clinical-grade vaccines and drugs, writes Dr. Francis Collins on the NIH Director’s Blog. In addition to allowing on site production for hospitals the systems could also “produce biologic treatments specially tailored to attack the cancer of a particular individual,” suggests Collins.
Researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology are part of a team that developed a potential treatment for drug-resistant malaria, which is expected to be publicly available within the next decade. The research “could lead to other drugs against cancer and infectious diseases such as dengue and tuberculosis,” writes Casandra Wong for Yahoo! News.
Prof. Joi Ito, director of the Media Lab, writes for Wired about what he calls the Great Digitization Event (GDE), during which the internet is quickly killing off systems, but also allowing new organizations to emerge. “I see the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements also using new versions of the same methods to begin the long path to ending centuries of patriarchal power,” Ito writes.
Adam Vaccaro of The Boston Globe writes that Prof. Joi Ito’s opening keynote address at HUBweek’s Change Maker Conference focused on how society adapts to major changes. “You can try to get companies to behave carefully by changing regulations, but you’re not going to fundamentally change the outcome unless you change the goals,” explains Ito.
MIT alumnus William Nordaus has been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work studying the interaction between climate change and the economy, reports Dave Keyton and Jim Heintz for the AP. Nordhaus shared the award with Paul Romer, who also conducted graduate work at MIT.
Postdoctoral associates Tyler Clites, Cesar de la Fuente-Nunez and Amye Kirtane were named to STAT’s 2018 Wunderkinds list, which spotlights researchers that are “blazing new trails as they attempt to answer some of the biggest questions in science and medicine.”
CNN reporter Susan Scutti writes that MIT researchers have found that climate change could cause an increase in mental health issues. During a 30-day period, exposure to hotter temperatures and higher rates of precipitation “produced increases in the probability that people were going to report some mental health problem in that period,” explains research scientist Nick Obradovich.
MIT researchers find that hotter and more extreme weather can negatively impact a person’s mental health, reports Karen Kaplan for The Los Angeles Times. The researchers explain that, “given the vital role that sound mental health plays in personal, social, and economic well-being, our findings provide added evidence that climatic changes pose substantial risks to human systems.”