In an article for The Washington Post, Daniel Weitzner writes that the U.S. government should respond to greater calls for access to communication and data in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks by “strengthening the public policy framework that governs surveillance, both domestically and globally.”
Alumna Michelle K. Lee, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, writes for USA Today about the need for women to pursue STEM careers. “The lack of gender parity is not just a social issue, it is an economic imperative,” Lee writes. “We need to get more girls into STEM education, and we need to empower more women in STEM professions.”
Washington Post reporter Jim Tankersley writes about a new MIT study that found trade may not help countries cope with climate-induced agricultural problems. The researchers found countries needed the “ability to substitute new crops for the ones that don’t grow as well under climate change.”
Senior lecturer John Reilly writes for CNN about how to effectively combat climate change. “I am confident that sound economic measures—a broad carbon price—will unleash the creativity of people and industry to use existing solutions and invent new ones,” he explains.
Jeff Guo of The Washington Post reports on Prof. David Autor’s research examining the academic achievement gap between boys and girls. “It’s well known that young women have surpassed young men in schooling but what struck us was that these gaps vary so much across race and socioeconomic status,” says Autor.
MIT researchers have found that the high-velocity cloud created by the average human sneeze can contaminate a room in minutes, writes Robert Preidt for U.S. News & World Report. Sneeze droplets "undergo a complex cascading breakup that continues after they leave the lungs, pass over the lips and churn through the air," explains Prof. Lydia Bourouiba.
Lincoln Lab researcher Albert Swiston speaks on NPR’s All Things Considered about the new sensor developed by MIT researchers that monitors vital signs through the gastrointestinal tract. “There are some bits of information from the body—namely the temperature of the body—that can only be monitored from inside the body,” explains Swiston.
MIT researchers have determined that the Earth’s geomagnetic field will not flip in the near future, reports Felicia Gans for The Boston Globe. While the intensity of the Earth’s geomagnetic field is decreasing, the current level is “double the planet’s average intensity over the past 5 million years.”
Prof. Barry Posen speaks with Tom Ashbrook of NPR’s On Point about how the United States should respond to the threat of ISIS. “If we can deprive ISIS of the illusion of success, the illusion of vitality, then this beacon role [that ISIS serves] is going to become a lot duller,” says Posen.
Prof. Thomas Levenson writes for The Boston Globe about the MRI Prof. Rebecca Saxe’s created of herself and her infant son. “Art does many things, but certainly one of them is to give us images that confront us with shards of the strange experience of being human,” writes Levenson. “Science, an artful craft, can do the same — as it does here.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Robin Wilson of The Chronicle of Higher Education for a piece about what it’s like to be a female astronomer. Seager explains that MIT is one of few places where she isn’t treated differently because she’s female. "I don’t think about my gender while I’m here,” she says.
Researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed an ingestible device that monitors vital signs, reports Dialynn Dwyer of Boston.com. Dwyer explains that the device is a “pill-sized stethoscope with a microphone that, once swallowed, transmits data from inside the body.”
Matthew Price of The Boston Globe reviews “The Hunt for Vulcan” by Prof. Thomas Levenson, which chronicles the history of the search for the non-existent planet Vulcan. “The key question, as Levenson puts it, is ‘what happens when a prediction fails to find its match in nature?’” writes Price.
Writing for Popular Science, Lindsey Kratochwill reports that MIT researchers have discovered that the hundreds of eyes on a chiton's shell can see. Kratochwill explains that the researchers hope that by “understanding how these eyes work and the materials that make them up could lead to manmade materials that are both protective and perceptive of their environments.”
Atlantic reporter Ed Yong writes that MIT researchers have found that chitons, a type of mollusk, have a suit of armor dotted with hundreds of eyes that can perceive objects. The researchers found that chitons could “detect the shape of a 20-centimeter fish from a few meters away.”