Della Bradshaw of The Financial Times writes about Professor Andrei Kirilenko, who recently spent three-and-a-half weeks in Ukraine advising the country’s government on how to stabilize the economy. Kirilenko is a U.S. citizen who grew up in the Ukraine.
Wall Street Journal reporter Irving Wladawsky-Berger examines Prof. David Autor’s research on income inequality. “Mr. Autor estimates that the difference in the yearly earnings between a college-educated two-income family and a high school-educated two-income family has risen by $28,000 between 1979 and 2012,” he writes.
Katie Couric speaks with Prof. Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, about the growing influence of online education and the opportunities edX has created for people around the world. EdX is a not-for-profit venture in online learning launched jointly by MIT and Harvard in May 2012.
“Sugababe took three years and a team of MIT and Harvard scientists to create,” writes Margaret Rhodes for Wired about a project by Italian artisit Diemut Strebe in which researchers genetically engineered an ear using biological material from Vincent Van Gogh’s brother’s great-great-grandson.
Kerry Flynn of Forbes reports on a new system developed by the MIT Senseable City Lab that reduces wasted energy by creating local, personal climates throughout buildings. The system targets and tracks people in a building and synchronizes climate control by sending data to heat-radiating bulbs.
Carey Goldberg of WBUR features Prof. Ed Boyden’s optogenetics research in a segment on neuroscience advances. “We might be in a golden age of making such tools because most fields of engineering had not been applied to the brain, so there’s just a gold rush of possibility,” says Boyden.
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.