In the Media

Boston Globe reporter Laura Krantz writes about an event held at MIT to honor Robert Robinson Taylor, MIT’s first African-American graduate who was honored earlier this year with a new postage stamp. 

Professor Esther Duflo has been awarded Spain's Princess of Asturias social science prize for her work studying poverty in developing countries, the Associated Press reports. The organizers of the prize said that Duflo has “profoundly changed strategies for education, health and employment in Africa, Asia and Latin America.”

Alison Gopnik of The Wall Street Journal writes that new research by Professor John Gabrieli indicates that poverty can have a negative impact on brain development in children. The researchers found that “low-income children had developed thinner cortices than the high-income children.” 

TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington writes about WaitChatter, a program developed by researchers at MIT CSAIL that leverages unoccupied time by teaching users a new language. WaitChatter “uses a Google Chat extension to offer up quick vocabulary learning lessons right in your IM chat window.”

OptiBit, a startup that aims to make data centers more energy efficient, won this year’s MIT Clean Energy Prize, reports Vijee Venkatraman for BetaBoston. The OptiBit team explains that their technology offers “10 times more throughput, two times lower latency, and 95 percent less energy use” compared to copper-based chips.

BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about the history of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which marks its 25^th anniversary this year. Subbaraman writes that the competition “pioneered the college pitch contest, a style that now dominates the startup landscape.”

Slate highlights the biannual “MIThenge,” when sunrise and sunset line up perfectly with MIT’s Infinite Corridor. “Given the school's focus on engineering and industrial science, it seems strangely fitting that an exemplar of institutional building design should produce such a lovely show.” 

New York Times reporter Steve Lohr reviews “Strategy Rules,” a book co-authored by Professor Michael Cusumano that draws lessons from the careers of tech pioneers Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs. The authors provide a “a strategic framework to the corporate handiwork of the three, and find common themes.”

Nidhi Subbaraman writes for BetaBoston about WaitChatter, a new application developed by MIT students that could help teach users a foreign language while they chat online. “The application uses the brief window when the ellipses dominate the screen as an opportunity to spring a vocabulary quiz,” Subbaraman explains.

In a piece for the BBC about birdsong, Angela Saini highlights Prof. Shigeru Miyagawa’s research that shows human language could have evolved from birdsong. Miyagawa's theory suggests that "human language relies on two distinct systems, both of which had previously evolved in simpler animals." 

John Tirman, executive director of the MIT Center for International Studies, writes for WBUR about opposition within the Republican party to immigration reform. “Opposition to immigration reform is one of the more perplexing symptoms of Washington paralysis nowadays,” says Tirman. 

WGBH reporter Cristina Quinn reports on this year’s 2.007 robot competition, during which student-built robots faced off on a course inspired by the movie Back to the Future. “We really try to stress real life skills in this class and one of the biggest as a designer is realizing things don’t work as you thought they would,” says Prof. Amos Winter. 

Guardian reporter Jason Farago writes about Prof. Emerita Joan Jonas’ multimedia installation at the Venice Biennale. Farago writes that Jonas’ exhibit has been “has been the hit of the Giardini,” and “that in a show with too little regard for form, her profound and affecting new work proves that politics and beauty are not at odds.”

Sarah Shemkus writes for The Boston Globe about how the MIT Climate CoLab uses crowdsourcing to address climate change. Climate change “is not a problem where one person or one organization can solve the problem alone,” says Prof. Thomas Malone, founder and head of the Climate CoLab. 

MIT researchers have measured how gigantic underwater waves move, form, and dissipate, reports Justin Wm. Moyer for The Washington Post. The researchers found that these underwater waves are “big enough that they affect large-scale celestial motions,” explains Prof. Thomas Peacock.