In the Media

"We’ve got sky-high unemployment. Employment and labor economics are Diamond’s Nobel prize-winning specialty. But ideology, he says, got in the way."

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have come up with a technology to run car batteries on something they call 'Cambridge crude,' which they hope will allow for cheaper, longer-range electric cars by the end of the decade."

"Robert Langer, a biomedical engineer at MIT best known for his contributions in the fields of tissue engineering and drug delivery, has been named the winner of the 2012 Priestley Medal, a prestigious prize awarded by the American Chemical Society."

"These waves, which by analogy can be likened to ‘ripples’ in Einstein’s space-time, carry energy and momentum away from the binary system, with the result that the entire system experiences a backward 'kick' or recoil. The black hole would end up being displaced by thousands of kilometers from its original location."

"To anyone attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1950s and 60s, a hack was simply an elegant or inspired solution to any given problem."

"The US could cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 8 per cent with minimal additional capital investment, simply by making more use of existing gas-fired power plants, according to a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released on Thursday."

"On this week’s Bits: Tech Talk podcast, J.D. Biersdorfer chats with Frank Moss, former director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, about his new book 'The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices,' which looks at the lab’s approach to creating innovative technologies."

"The World Science Festival’s panel on Probability and Risk started out in an unusual manner: MIT’s Josh Tennenbaum strode onto a stage and flipped a coin five times, claiming he was psychically broadcasting each result to the audience."

"It is noteworthy this year that two of the best in Boston – Harvard Business School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management – selected women executives as their commencement and Class Day speakers."

"We created a strain of E. coli that can specifically bond to a molecule that is present in most malignant cancer cells and is able to deliver a therapeutic agent to the specific cell."

"The more troubling answer, though, points to a fundamental misunderstanding: a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy."

Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose specialty is technology and relationships, calls this a particular sort of "Huck Finn moment," in which Huck "takes his parents with him. We all sail down the Mississippi together."

"The students work essentially as partners with their teachers, and together they have produced technological innovations that often seem touched by magic, from the e-reader to the lifelike robotic prosthesis now in development."

"They reveal the persistent gaps in understanding of the mix of atmospheric conditions in America’s tornado hot zones that can transform a stormy, turbulent day into a catastrophic outbreak of funnel clouds."

"He didn’t think he could do it, but people encouraged him. He ended up at MIT and earned a Ph.D. in laser physics."