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.
John Naughton includes research by Professors Eric Brynjolfsson and Sandy Pentland for this Guardian article on Big Data. Both Brynjolfsson and Pentland acknowledge that Big Data analytics provide a great deal of information about individuals and organizations.
Dan Adams covers the 2014 MIT commencement for The Boston Globe. “I want you to hack the world, until you make the world a little more like MIT,” said President L. Rafael Reif.
Joshua Rothman writes for The New Yorker about Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland’s book, Social Physics. “In fact, part of what makes the book so interesting is that Pentland has figured out how to capture, in numerical form, the intimate social vibrations of office life,” writes Rothman.
Kelly Kennedy of USA Today reports on Prof. Jonathan Gruber’s research showing that health insurance premiums went up 10% on average in the three years before the Affordable Care Act took effect. "The two main lessons are the notion that there was a pre-existing double-digit trend, and that it was variable," says Gruber.
In a piece for CNBC, Dan Margan reports that a new study by Professor Jonathan Gruber shows that individual health care premiums experienced large hikes and a high variability in rate hikes before the Affordable Care Act took effect.
Boston Magazine reporter Steve Annear writes about Prof. Harry Asada’s Supernumerary Robotic Limbs. When strapped to a person’s shoulder’s the device, “operates autonomously to help conquer things like securing a ceiling panel or holding open a door,” Annear explains.
“The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, which evaluates development projects, studied malaria medicines sold by pharmacies in four districts where BRAC and Living Goods work in Uganda,” writes Tina Rosenberg of The New York Times. J-PAL researchers found that efforts by non-governmental organizations are reducing the counterfeit drugs in Uganda.
“Economist David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the median woman with a college degree earned about $23,000 more a year than a woman who terminated her education once she earned her high school diploma,” writes Washington Post reporter Joann Weiner.
Prof. John Lienhard, head of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS), discusses the new lab with Najlaa Habriri of Asharq Al-Awsat. Habriri calls J-WAFS an "ambitious project to tackle worldwide food and water insecurity."