Writing for USA Today, John Waggoner writes about MIT Professor Eric So’s tip for predicting whether a company’s earnings will be good or bad. According to So, if a company moves the date of its earnings report up they have good news and if the date is moved back they are typically reporting bad news.
Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston writes about a new MIT study showing that while employees are happier when they work with people of the same sex, single-sex workplaces aren’t nearly as productive. Employees “liked the idea of diversity more than they liked actual diversity,” says Dr. Sara Ellison, co-author of the study.
Tania Lombrozo of NPR writes about MIT Professor Nancy Kanwisher's new video examining the basics of brain imaging. “Readers might be especially interested in Kanwisher's tips for critically evaluating functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies, explained in the video,” writes Lombrozo.
Barney Thompson writes for the Financial Times about how massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as those offered by edX, are changing higher education. “We offer 220 subjects in everything from law to medicine, humanities, arts, music, computer science and engineering,” says edX CEO and MIT Professor Anant Agarwal.
Tom Fox-Brewster writes for The Guardian about how researchers are using big data to revolutionize sports. Fox-Brewster writes that MIT Professor Cynthia Rudin believes “Big Data analytics can help in various ways, from tweaking training plans to determining patterns about competitors.”
Boston Globe reporter Jennifer Smith writes about HackMIT, a "code-writing marathon" held at the Institute over the weekend. HackMIT is, “exciting, because it’s one of the biggest hackathons and has a great atmosphere,” says participant Leila Chan Currie.
Professor Simon Johnson writes for The Guardian that relaxing some immigration constraints could help to reduce unemployment in the U.S. “[S]ome categories of immigrants tend to create jobs, so letting them in would directly increase employment opportunities for people already in the United States,” explains Johnson.
Professor Ernest Moniz, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, participates on NPR’s quiz show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!. “A number of young scientists around the country considered the pathway I've taken one that inspires them. And it's really a pleasure to be able to hopefully encourage these young students,” says Moniz.
Niina Heikkinen reports for Scientific American that MIT researchers have identified a new way to make yeast more ethanol-tolerant. The researchers were able to improve “alcohol tolerance and extend the amount of time that individual cells could produce ethanol.”
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the ‘Descience’ fashion show held at the MIT Media Lab. The science-themed fashion show brought together researchers and designers to create garments that reflected each group’s line of study.
Carol Hildebrand writes for Forbes about a new book co-authored by Dr. Andrew McAfee and Dr. George Westerman that examines how well organizations integrate technology into their business strategy. The authors studied more than 500 companies in various industries and found a small number that effectively use digital technology.
Colleen Shalby reports for the PBS NewsHour that MIT is launching a new laboratory to examine how people use social media, in particular Twitter. Twitter is granting MIT researchers access to every tweet sent in the social network’s history as part of this new project.
WBUR reporter Zeninjor Enwemeka writes about the new MIT laboratory launched this week to analyze social media. “The new lab will focus on understanding how people behave across various types of media, and develop tools to make sense of social patterns,” writes Enwemeka.
“In an ironic generational twist, the children of Baby Boomers are proving more inclined to turn to their grandparents for advice -- at least when it comes to learning about managing money and saving for the future,” writes Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, in an op-ed for The Huffington Post.
In a piece published by The Huffington Post, Bobby Magill writes about MIT’s 2014 Climate and Energy Outlook. Researchers found that, “Global energy use is projected to double by 2050 and most of that energy will likely come from fossil fuels, which, like today, are expected be the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases.”