In this compilation of WBUR videos, 11 neuroscientists from MIT, Harvard, and Boston University discuss their current research and the importance of their work. The videos feature five researchers from MIT: Ben Bartelle, Claire O’Connell, Anna Beyeler, Emily Mackevicius, and Neville Sanjana.
David Wessel writes for The Wall Street Journal about Professor Athanasios Orphanides’ research into the European Union’s management of the economic crisis. “Rather than work towards containing total losses, politics led governments to focus on shifting losses to others,” says Orphanides.
A Dustin comic that appeared in The Boston Globe features research by Professor Kripa Varanasi. Varanasi’s group developed LiquiGlide, a coating that can be applied to the inside of food and condiment packaging to prevent sticking.
“MIT’s big idea is to create printable camouflage coverings using algorithms,” writes Liz Stinson for Wired about new research from graduate student Andrew Owens that aims to hide eyesores. “These algorithms pull in environmental data via photographs and construct an image that best blends an object in with its surroundings.”
Seandor Szeles of PBS profiles Tom Scholz, an MIT alumnus and lead guitarist for the band Boston. Scholz first picked up guitar during his junior year at MIT.
MIT scientists have compared the brain activity of adults who had ADHD as children and adults who still have the disorder, reports Melissa Malamut in Boston Magazine. Researchers uncovered, “key differences in a brain communication network that is active when the brain is at wakeful rest and not focused on a particular task,” Malamut writes.
Los Angeles Times reporter Amina Khan features new MIT research examining a child’s ability to decipher when adults are committing “sins of omission.” Researchers found that, “kids can tell when someone isn’t giving them the whole story – and they learn not to trust the information that person gives them,” Khan reports.
Joel Brown reports for The Boston Globe on the new Innovations of Cambridge tour, which features several research labs at MIT. “It leaves them with the feeling that they’ve experienced MIT in a way that the casual person wandering the streets would not,” explains guide Daniel Berger-Jones.
Benjamin Swasey of WBUR reports on a project led by Professor Ofer Sharone that examines long-term unemployment. The project paired unemployed job seekers with career coaches and counselors. The research, “indicates to me that the damage being done by the unemployment can be mitigated,” explains Sharone.
Wired reporter Liat Clark writes about how researchers from MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a self-assembling lamp at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Arian Campo-Flores interviews Professor Kerry Emanuel for this Wall Street Journal article on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coyote drone, designed to measure conditions at low altitudes in a hurricane. If the drone is successful, “it will be an enormous boon,” says Emanuel.
Douglas Martin writes for The New York Times about the late Professor Morris Adelman who died at his home in Newton on May 8. Adelman spent six decades as a faculty member in the MIT economics department.
The Economist looks at the work of Professor David Autor while investigating how technological advances are influencing future employment. Autor’s research indicates that the fact that a job can be automated does not guarantee it will be and other factors, such as the cost of labor, play a role.
“Where noncompetes are not enforced, there’s a more open labor market — companies compete for talent,” said Professor Matthew Marx in this New York Times article by Steven Greenhouse. Marx sites California’s ban on noncompetes as a major reason for Silicon Valley’s success.
The Economist spotlights increasing concerns about how private consumer data is accessed and employed, highlighting the recent White House big data privacy conference hosted at MIT and Professor Vinod Vaikuntanathan’s work with homomorphic encryption.