Prof. Parag Pathak, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, speaks to The Wall Street Journal’s Michelle Hackman about his research on school choice. “What I sometimes find frustrating in conversations about student achievement is they often get sidetracked from the issue of school quality,” Pathak says. “Our job as researchers is exploring the nuances and subtleties.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum finds that learning a new language should start before age 10 to achieve a native-like grasp of the grammar, reports BBC News. People remain highly skilled language learners until about 17 or 18, but then fall off, which Tenenbaum says could be due to “a biological change” or “something social or cultural.”
Led by graduate student Adam Haar Horowitz, researchers at the Media Lab have developed a device, known as Dormio, which aims to understand how humans can control the “semi-lucid” phase before sleep, called “hypnagogia,” reports Laura Yan for Popular Mechanics. "I have no doubt that Hypnagogia holds applications for augmenting memory, learning, and creativity,” says Haar Horowitz.
The Boston Globe highlights some of the notable speakers who will deliver remarks at commencements across New England in the coming weeks, including Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, who will speak at MIT’s ceremony.
Greg Epstein speaks with Rachel Kraus of Mashable about serving as the Institute’s first humanist chaplain, and offers a “sample required reading list” for “humanists in and around the world of technology which will shape our future.”
The Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group has developed a device “to influence and extend the semi-lucid sleep state called hypnagogia,” writes Jesus Diaz of Co.Design. Called Dormio, the system is a “first step towards creating interfaces that allow us to interact with our subconscious the same way we interact with our conscious mind,” explains Diaz.
Research by Prof. Susumu Tonegawa suggests that a specific region of the hippocampus plays a role in how memories can trigger a physical stress response, writes Fiona McMillan for Forbes. The findings, McMillan notes, are “providing new insight into the complex interplay between emotion, stress and memory.”
60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker sits down with Prof. Feng Zhang, “a scientist at the center of the CRISPR craze,” to help explain how the gene-editing tool works and its potential. “There are about 6,000 or more diseases that are caused by faulty genes,” says Zhang. “The hope is that we will be able to address most if not all of them.”
Writing for Slate, Sloan alumna Kate Krontiris highlights the issues facing women who breastfeed and previews a hackathon taking place this weekend at the MIT Media Lab. “We are convening hundreds of engineers and designers, doulas and doctors, midwives and mamas to make the breast pump not suck as well as hack other barriers to breastfeeding."
Researchers at the Tangible Media Group have developed “programmable droplets” of water that can be used to communicate words. “One potential application is a mirror that, when steamed, allows someone to display a message from a smartphone” writes Jesus Diaz for Co.Design. “The larger idea is to provoke surprise and delight, the way only the natural world can.”
In an opinion piece for The Boston Globe, two Sloan students and their co-authors argue that “business school leaders, instructors, and students must bring workers’ perspectives into the MBA curriculum.” They caution that, “an economy that delivers gains only to the top will suffer ills far worse than inefficiency.”
Graduate student Maher Damak is a winner of the 2018 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for creating an additive that makes pesticide droplets stick to crops rather than runoff into drinking water, writes John Converse Townsend of Fast Company. The mixture is also “FDA-approved, and since they’re made from plant and animal extracts, they’re also biodegradable–and safe to eat,” notes Townsend.
NASA’s recently launched Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) “will spend the next two years scanning 200,000 stars looking for any exoplanets orbiting them,” explains New Scientist. In about two months, once the satellite is in orbit and its cameras are tested, “there’ll just be a flood of information,” says MIT’s George Ricker, the principal investigator on TESS.
Writing for The Verge, Angela Chen highlights advances in AI that are allowing researchers to discover and understand new materials at a rapid pace. Chen cites a study co-authored by Assistant Prof. Elsa Olivetti, who “developed a machine-learning system that scans academic papers to figure out which ones include instructions for making certain materials.”
Using several comparative models, a new study led by MIT researchers reveals that China’s pledge to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 could cut down on as many as 160,000 premature deaths. “Politically, the research confirms why Chinese officials have their own internal reasons to cut CO2 even though the U.S. is abandoning Paris and disengaging internationally on climate,” writes Ben Geman for Axios.