MIT will receive $260 million from the Lord Foundation of Massachusetts, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. “The unrestricted nature of these funds gives us the opportunity to use them to invest in pressing needs that are often difficult to support through other means," said MIT Provost Martin Schmidt.
Research affiliate Judah Cohen speaks with WGBH’s Edgar B. Herwick III about what distinguishes a Nor’easter, an extratropical cyclone powered by "strong differences in temperature," from other storms. As cold air from the Arctic meets warm water and air from the Gulf of Mexico, it creates “a very large temperature differential over a relatively short distance,” says Cohen. “And that temperature differential gives you the energy for these storms.”
Washington Post reporter Emily Langer memorializes Jeanne Guillemin, a research associate and senior advisor at the MIT Security Studies Program, known for her pioneering work investigating the history of biological warfare. Guillemin was a “sought-after analyst of biological warfare,” Langer writes, “blending anthropology, sociology and security studies into a distinctive expertise in a field where men had long outnumbered their female colleagues.”
Janelle Nanos spotlights Profs. Esther Duflo’s and Abhijit Banerjee work aimed at alleviating poverty as part of The Boston Globe Magazine’s “2019 Bostonians of the Year.” Duflo explains that she hopes to inspire future economists interested in tackling social issues, explaining that there “is this tool and way of working that allows you to immediately be helpful and have an impact beyond any individual project.”
Boston Globe reporter Murray Whyte spotlights Alicja Kwade’s new exhibit, “In Between Glances,” on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “Kwade’s work is about nothing so much as the futile joy of trying to make sense of forces beyond our understanding, forces that govern reality at cosmic scale,” writes Whyte.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Simon Jaeger examines the impact of having worker representation on corporate boards in Germany, writes Edward Hadas for Reuters. The researchers found that “putting workers on the board leads to significantly more investment.”
Speaking with Bloomberg’s Rafaela Lindeberg, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee suggests that the U.S. must increase taxes in order to fight poverty more effectively. “If you actually want to deal with poverty, happiness and anger in the U.S., the government will need to have more resources,” says Banerjee. “I’m quite comfortable saying that, yes, taxes have to be raised.”
New research by postdoctoral fellow Claire Nichols provides evidence that the Earth’s magnetic field arose at least 3.7 billion years ago, reports Alexandra Witze for Nature. “The finding pushes back the time of the magnetic field’s birth to about 200 million years earlier than the commonly accepted estimate — around the time life first appeared on Earth,” Witze explains.
A new dataset developed by MIT researchers is “designed to illustrate the performance gap between machine learning algorithms and humans,” reports Kyle Wiggers for VentureBeat.
Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, speaks with Kaveh Waddell and Alison Syder of Axios about the potential impact of automation. "If we stay on the trajectory we're on currently, we're going to have greater income inequality, less social mobility, greater political unrest and greater income insecurity," says Reynolds.
MIT and IBM researchers have developed a new dataset aimed at improving how AI systems identify objects, reports Kaveh Waddell and Alison Snyder for Axios. "We don’t want them to only recognize what is very common," says principal research scientist Boris Katz. "We want [a robot] to recognize a chair that is upside down on the floor and not say it is a backpack."
Profs. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Dufo speak with Vox reporter Dylan Matthews about their book, “Good Economics for Hard Times.” Matthews notes that the book “tackles issues in both poor and rich countries, setting its sights on big-ticket macro issues: the impact of immigration, automation, and trade on workers; the rise of nativism and xenophobia; and universal basic income.”
Writing for The New York Times, principal research scientist Andrew McAfee explores how new digital technologies have enabled Americans to decrease total use of many critical materials while still maintaining economic growth. McAfee notes that technological progress “can allow us to get ‘more from less’ and better navigate a world of dwindling natural resources.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Profs. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson argue that to ease income inequality, the federal government must increase federal support for research and development in areas of the country that have underutilized technical talent. “To boost economic growth, we should strengthen scientific fields where breakthroughs are imminent and where any other country — China in particular — threatens to forge ahead,” they write.
WBUR’s Pamela Reynolds spotlights the new Becca Albee installation at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. “It's thinking about singular, intimate moments, somebody reflecting on a friendship or a relationship that was in the near past and then stepping back and thinking about time on a geologic scale,” says Yuri Stone, who curated the exhibit.