“It might not be the first thing that comes to mind after the word ‘hackathon,’ but organizers of an upcoming one at MIT say the world is long overdue for a better breast pump,” writes John Johnson for USA Today. The Media Lab event is slated for later this month.
Executive Director at the MIT Center for International Studies John Tirman writes for WBUR about President Obama’s plan for combating ISIS. Tirman argues that without a coherent diplomatic strategy, the President’s plan is unlikely to succeed.
MIT PhD Student Tom O’Grady writes for The Washington Post about the upcoming vote on independence in Scotland. O’Grady argues Scotland’s case is unique in that nationalists and progressives are united in their support for leaving the UK.
Kat McGowan of The Scientific American cites research by Professor Angelica Amon that indicates recent findings may overestimate the amount of genetic variation in healthy human bodies. “Having the wrong chromosome number is not a good thing,” says Amon.
Scientists at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have discovered a new way to test for malaria using magnets, reports Charlotte Seager of The Guardian. The new method will allow for individual diagnostic tests to be performed for less than 10 cents.
David Weininger reports for The Boston Globe on Professor Evan Ziporyn’s upcoming concert to celebrate his “20,000th day on earth.” The concert is slated for Tuesday and will be held in Killian Hall.
A team of MIT researchers has developed an algorithm that will help NASA crews clean up debris in space, reports Nick Stockton for Wired. The research will allow crews to clear pieces of satellites spinning so wildly that they would typically be dangerous to collect.
Brooke Borel profiles edX CEO Professor Anant Agarwal for Popular Science. Agarwal recalls what the experience of failing his physics midterm as a college freshman taught him about how the quality of education varies throughout the world.
Wall Street Journal reporter Rani Molla writes about which colleges have the highest paid graduates. “After 10+ years in their career, grads from Harvey Mudd ($133,800), USNA ($130,000) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($128,800) topped the list for highest median pay,” Molla writes.
In a piece for Forbes, George Anders writes about how edX, the online-education initiative run by MIT and Harvard, is expanding its curriculum to offer, “26 new classes aimed at high-school students who are hoping to master some advanced-placement subjects before heading off to college.”
PhD candidate Josephine Wolff writes for Slate about last week’s NATO decision to explicitly prescribe a collective response to a cyber-attack on any one member. “[T]he change appears to be largely symbolic because sufficiently severe cyberattacks would likely have been covered under the nations’ treaty regardless,” writes Wolff.
MIT Professor Abhijit Banerjee and Varad Pande of Harvard write for The New York Times about the United Nations’ forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals. The authors provide suggestions for the development of successful objectives, including outlining specific goals and limiting the number of objectives.
“The online-learning collaborative edX, a partnership between Harvard University and MIT, is expanding its reach beyond higher education and will begin offering courses geared toward high school students,” reports Matt Rocheleau for The Boston Globe. “EdX plans to unveil its first free classes for younger students Wednesday.”
In the new book “Innovative Women: The Changing Face of Technology,” MIT alumna and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith co-authors a chapter about how to increase opportunities for women in technology. In an excerpt provided to Fortune, Smith writes that we’re at a “tipping point” and about to accelerate the path to lasting gender equality.
Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston reports that MIT researchers have proposed a new solar-powered, desalination system for purifying groundwater. “Wright and Winter argue that for the low levels of salt in the groundwater in up to 60 percent of rural India, they can extract enough power from solar panels to run their electrodialysis setup,” writes Subbaraman.