MIT Professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were honored with the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their work fighting poverty, reports John Detrixhe for Quartz. Detrixhe notes that the laureates “introduced a new approach to getting answers about how to fight global poverty: Their technique involves breaking substantial issues into more manageable questions.”
The AFP spotlights the work of Prof. Esther Duflo, one of the recipients of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics. The AFP notes that Duflo, “has brought fresh perspective to the field of development economics, treading a new path between proponents of huge transfers of aid to poor nations, and those who reject such help as a form of rich-world paternalism.”
Prof. Esther Duflo, who along with Prof. Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer of Harvard was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, speaks with NPR’s Scott Horsley about her research pioneering an experimental approach to studying and alleviating poverty. “The three of us stand for hundreds of researchers,” says Duflo, “who are part of a network that have worked on global poverty.”
A Mighty Girl profiles the work of Prof. Esther Duflo, the second woman and the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Duflo and her fellow laureates, “have helped millions of people around the world with their research to develop practical interventions to alleviating global poverty,” notes A Mighty Girl.
MIT researchers developed a 3-D model of a bridge designed by Leonardo da Vinci and found that “not only did it work, but it would have also revolutionized bridge design five centuries ago,” reports Andrew Liszewski for Gizmodo.
New York Times reporter William J. Broad writes that researchers from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute have found that sunlight can degrade polystyrene, a common plastic found in trash, in centuries or potentially decades.
Boston Globe reporter Murray Whyte spotlights the Alicja Kwade exhibit on display at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in a roundup of recommended museum shows this fall. Whyte notes that “Kwade brings her playful, monumental modernism to Cambridge with a new solo show.”
Boston Globe reporter John Ellement spotlights the work of John Goodenough, a longtime researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory who received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on lithium-ion batteries. “During his time at the Lab in the early 1950s, Goodenough was a major factor in the creation of a new type of RAM,” Ellement notes.
Popular Mechanics reporter Jennifer Leman writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique that uses radio waves to enable neural networks to spot activity through walls. The technology is low resolution and cannot identify faces and has been “proposed as a more secure alternative to visible light cameras, which can easily pick up a number of details.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal about mixing AI into cooking, Jaewon Kang highlights how MIT researchers developed an AI system that generates new pizza recipes. “MIT asked a chef to add final touches to these combinations and make sure they tasted good,” Kang notes. The researchers believe “collaborations between humans and algorithms generate the most creative results.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal David A. Shaywitz reviews Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s new book, “More From Less.” Shaywitz writes that McAfee “argues that when the ‘fuel of interest’ is joined with the ‘fire of genius’—that is, when incentive and talent combine—seemingly impossible things can happen, even environmentally friendly ones.”
Engadget reporter Christine Fisher writes that MIT researchers have developed a new technique that improves the speed and performance of video recognition models. Fisher writes that the new method “reduces the size of video-recognition models, speeds up training and could improve performance on mobile devices.”
Prof. John Goodenough, who worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory for over 20 years, has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to the development of lithium-ion batteries, reports the Associated Press.
Dr. Francis Collins writes for the NIH that MIT researchers have developed an imaging technique that makes it possible to view dozens of proteins in the human brain in rapid succession. The technique, “may shed light on key differences among synapses,” writes Collins, and “provide new clues into the roles that synaptic proteins may play in schizophrenia and various other neurological disorders.”
MIT researchers have developed a capsule to deliver medications that currently have to be injected, reports Steven Reinberg for HealthDay. “This experimental pill can withstand the trip through the gastrointestinal tract,” writes Reinberg. “When it gets to the small intestine, it breaks down into dissolving microneedles that attach to the intestinal wall and release the drug into the bloodstream.”