The Financial Times features an excerpt from Professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Dr. Andrew McAfee’s book “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” on their shortlist of for the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
USA Today reporter Greg Toppo writes that edX has kicked off a series of free online courses on educational technology and game design. “The new courses aim to help students both inside and outside of MIT produce saleable products,” writes Toppo.
Thomas Davenport of The Wall Street Journal cites work by Professor Sanjay Sarma on radio frequency ID devices (RFID) and the Internet of Things. “Sarma argues that with RFID, many conservative companies blundered their way through incremental states that were successively worse,” writes Davenport.
Richard Eisenberg of Forbes writes about a symposium hosted by the MIT AgeLab, which explored the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia on financial planning. The symposium “brought together a broad spectrum of experts ranging from Alzheimer’s Association execs to neurology professors to financial advisers to people who have early onset Alzheimer’s or are married to them,” writes Eisenberg.
In a piece published by The Huffington Post, Chad Brooks writes about a new study co-authored by Dr. Sara Ellison, which found that increasing gender diversity in the workplace can make businesses more productive. “Despite the improved production, individual employees may prefer a less diverse setting,” writes Brooks of the study’s findings.
Zeninjor Enwemeka of WBUR writes about a new study examining diversity in the workplace by MIT economist Dr. Sara Ellison. The study found that while many workers actually prefer a homogenous workplace, shifting to an office evenly split along gender lines could increase revenue.
Dr. Otto Scharmer writes for The Huffington Post about a group of Indonesian leaders participating in the MIT IDEAS program. The program is a “15-month journey of profound individual and institutional innovation and change,” writes Scharmer.
Kevin Gray reports for Wired on CityFARM, a project out of the MIT Media Lab focused on developing sustainable urban agriculture. "I believe there's the possibility that we can change the world and change the food system,” says CityFARM founder Caleb Harper.
Carolyn Johnson of The Boston Globe reports on a new paper by MIT Prof. Pawan Sinha and others that says an inability to make good predictions may explain autism. “Researchers suggest people with autism spectrum disorder may perform repetitive behaviors because personal habits and rituals are a safe harbor in a world they find alarmingly out of control,” writes Johnson.
Founded by MIT alumnus Sidhant Pai and winner of the MIT IDEAS Global Challenge, Indian startup Protoprint compensates waste pickers in the Indian city of Pune for collecting the raw materials used for 3D-printing filament, writes Dhanya Ann Thoppil for The Wall Street Journal. “The point is to create employment and value add opportunities for the waste pickers,” says Pai.
In an article for the Financial Times, MIT President L. Rafael Reif writes: “Tomorrow’s research university will have the campus as the centre of a much-widened sphere… Digital technology holds the power to increase radically the number of students who can access our teaching.”
The Economist reports on an MIT study on the effectiveness of massive open online courses or MOOCs. Researchers found that MOOC participants “learned slightly more than they typically would in lectures.”
Boston.com reporter Erin Connolly writes about the MIT panel on women in STEM, highlighting the personal stories of three panel participants. “We really need to make sure that women have the privilege to move forward in any field we want,” said MIT senior Tami Forrester during the event.
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.