In the Media

"As India expands and overhauls its social safety net, from a new food benefits program to cash transfers, it has also been grappling with how best to select those who should receive this aid."

"Since becoming artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society, violist Marcus Thompson has taken advantage of his other position, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to curate programs built around connections, both solid and speculative, between music and science."

"As we sniffle, suffer, and stress about lurking germs, researchers across the Boston area are developing new ways of fighting the flu."

"One of the biggest challenges in designing social programs is to make sure you’re not just rewarding people for doing what they were already planning to do."

"Do you ever feel like the place you live is just a dot on a map? Well, if you live in the U.S. or Canada, Brandon Martin-Anderson just made you a dot on a map."

"By blending gene therapy, neural engineering and fiber optics, experimenters at more than 800 laboratories world-wide are making neurons into switches they can directly control by beaming a selected wavelength of laser light to a targeted cell in a living brain."

"Missy Cummings landed F/A-18 fighter jets on aircraft carriers when she was a Navy pilot. Now she studies unman-ned aerial vehicles — commonly known as drones — as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

"The 'Mona Lisa' has been to the moon and back -- or at least a digital image of her."

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology political science professor Charles Stewart III suggests Boehner may be operating in a time similar to that of the FDR administration."

"Airlines around the world grounded their Boeing 787 Dreamliners on Thursday after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered U.S. airlines to stop flying them."

"Robert Langer and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have blended two polymers to create a film that mimics structures found in muscle and plant tissues that bend when humidity changes."

"Last week, a friend commented to Keith Winstein, an MIT computer science graduate student and former health care reporter at The Wall Street Journal: 'Whoa. This flu season seems to be the worst ever. Check out Google Flu Trends.'"

"Bloomberg's Sheila Dharmarajan takes us inside the MIT media lab." (Video)

"You might be used to an x-ray, MRI, or a blood pressure cuff to monitor your health, but how about your car? Scientists at MIT are making that a reality."

"Joi Ito, director of MIT’s renowned Media Lab, announced the creation of a new type of fellowship, the Director’s Fellows, designed to involve individuals with 'less-than-traditional backgrounds' in the innovative work the Lab is doing. And the first class has some serious star power, including the likes of chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley and director J.J. Abrams, the man behind 'Lost' and the new 'Star Trek' movies."