In the Media

And Duflo found that the program was most effective when the money went to women, who are more inclined than men to invest in the welfare of their kids. - Story on MIT Economist Esther Duflo's research on cash transfers

"Guitar Hero, LEGO Mindstorms, One Laptop per Child, and E Ink all started off as Media Lab projects." - Story on 25 years of research at the MIT Media Lab.

"In between the retirement bookends of health and financial security is transportation – because if you can’t get to the big and little things that make up life, even health and money don’t matter." - AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin on how elderly drivers can stay safe and mobile

"We knew that passengers' costs were being underestimated by using the more simplistic approach. We didn't know the large extent they were being underestimated." - School of Engineering Interim Dean Cynthia Barnhart on how flight delays cost passengers nearly $17 billion.

"There's probably another million lost votes to be had by making ballots less confusing and by making sure that the boring stuff of election administration is taken care of." - Charles Stewart, head of MIT’s Department of Political Science, on voting problems in the U.S.

To say the idea paid off handsomely would be more than mild understatement. - Story, slideshow on the impetus for the MIT Media Lab, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last week.

The Shell funds will be used to pursue a number of advanced technologies, including the use of seismic data to explore underground oil and natural gas reservoirs, and the study of powerful ocean waves to measure their effect on high-strength steel. - Story on an agreement with Shell which will provided $25 million in energy research funding to MIT over five years.

The damage from the financial meltdown in the U.S. "takes some time to repair, perhaps a couple of years, but not a decade." - Department of Economics head Ricardo Caballero in a story on the U.S. economy.

The work is considered by many researchers to be particularly timely in today’s economic climate, in which many developed countries like the United States are facing stubbornly high unemployment rates. - Article on the work of MIT's Peter Diamond and two others who were named winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics today.

I was experiencing firsthand the potential of the building as a social condenser. Everyone’s work is visible to everyone else. And no doubt, the open atrium space sparks creative synergies between the students. - "On Architecture" column about the new Media Lab building

“We didn’t design this study to focus on the gender effect. That was a surprise to us.” - MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Thomas Malone, on research he and his colleagues completed on collective intelligence.

"The subject matter of the opera is this notion of feeling a connection to something but not really being able to completely embrace it." - Evan Ziporyn, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music, on his opera, "A House in Bali"

"What worries me is that the recent data suggests as many as 25 percent of people who have mortgages in the U.S., those mortgages are underwater." - William Wheaton, director of MIT's Center for Real Estate, on the current state of the housing market.

NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are giving 24 high school teams a chance to program satellites on the International Space Station.

"Of the last three recoveries, this one is having slower employment growth after the downturn." - James Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics and head of the NBER, on the end of the recent recession